How To Configure Feed Burner Email Subscriptions

Feedburner is an innovative way to manage RSS feeds that you publish. It also offers advanced tracking features, so you can monitor the statistics for each feed. Feedburner also offers email subscriptions, which let your readers enter their email addresses, and receive updates whenever you have new items published. This is particularly useful for people who prefer to read content on their email inboxes rather than visit individual websites or blogs, or read through their RSS readers, such as Google Reader.

You can easily configure email subscriptions in Feedburner through the following steps.

* Sign in to your Feedburner account at www.feedburner.com. Since Google has acquired Feedburner, you will have to sign in using your Google account, assuming you have already integrated your Feedburner account.
* If you have more than one feed, you should click on the title of the blog or website feed you need to modify first. Then, under the “Publicize” tab, click “Email Subscription.”
* Click the “Activate” button. Once you click this, Feedburner will provide some HTML code, which you can copy to the template or theme of your website or blog.
* Before Feedburner’s email service can work properly, you will need to configure a valid email address that you can use with the account. This is particularly necessary if your Feedburner account is an old one created before Google’s acquisition. Under “Communication Preferences” in the left column. You can change the “From” email address.
* You can also change the appearance of your email through the “Email Branding” option. This lets you change the subject line of email updates, and include a logo. You can also change the color scheme of items as they are sent to users through email.
* Under “Delivery Options” you can configure when Feedburner sends emails to recipients. This is particularly useful if you want to limit sending to a certain time. This makes your site more visible, particularly since you can set updates to send either during peak hours or non-peak hours, when you expect more people to be able to read your content.
* Copy the HTML code onto the sidebar or any other area of your website. You can also get the link from within, if you prefer to use a direct link instead of an HTML form to get email addresses.


Once you have setup your Feedburner account to send updates through email, you can test the email form or email link yourself. Simply key in your own email address, then click the verification link when you receive the message. Your email updates should start arriving in your readers’ inboxes as soon as you have something published.

Email subscriptions are a good mix between the “push” type of content delivery that email features, and the “pull” type of content mechanism that blogs and websites have. It can enhance your readership, and it gives people more reasons to read your content. Be sure to use this capability responsibly. Write relevant content, and avoid becoming spammy in your content.