Dear Barbara,
I am ready to start my newsletter and was going to sign up with SparkList.com or proautoresponder.com. But I have been reading articles about the “end of the age of emailing.” They’re saying they are having way too many non-deliverables using email. Are you planning to move your newsletter to your MovableType blog? I have been hearing that is the way to go.
I’m really curious as I don’t know if I should take the enormous amount of time setting up newsletter emailing if in fact it is better to tackle it with a blog.
Can you shed any light on this? If you can, I would be most appreciative.
Rob
Dear Rob,
Yes, email deliverability is a huge problem, and it will get worse before it gets better. That said, however, I still believe in email newsletters. But as an alternative, I also believe in RSS as a publishing media.
You mentioned setting up a blog. Most blogs (including Movable Type) can auto-publish an RSS feed for you — however I would NOT consider a blog to be a subsitute for a newsletter. A blog is a website …. not a newsletter. And an RSS feed can be created in other ways besides from a blog.
That said, I publish four blogs, and six RSS feeds. One of my RSS feeds is the same full-content as my free weekly newsletter. You can see it here:
http://www.surfnetkids.com/newsletter-rss.xml
For more from me on using RSS for newsletter delivery, see
http://barbarafeldman.com/archives/cat_newsletter_publishing.html#000080