Randy tuned R|Mail a bit and it’s becoming a popular web service with 27.272 users and 68.504 subs. R|Mail is crawling 34.065 feeds. That’s very cool. At this time, my blog is ranked 12th with 264 subscribers. The widget to subscribe to my feed is in the sidebar of the blog. You’ll get your blog-update notification shortly after I’ve set the new post live, if you subscribe, you’ll be amongst the first to know of new goodies, so if you haven’t done so already, enter your e-mail address and join the club!
I asked Randy to give me three good reasons why R|Mail is better than FeedBlitz and here’s what Randy had to say:
Many FeedBlitz users say it doesn’t work and they never get their emails
A FeedBlitz publisher gets your email address when you subscribe, you are giving up your email to both FeedBlitz and the publisher, he can unsubscribe you and he can subscribe you to other mailing lists without you wanting that
FeedBlitz is confusing. You can’t just go to http://www.feedblitz.com/ and subscribe to something
He also added: if you read the FeedBlitz blog, then you’ll find a few times every month where the end user asks why his stuff isn’t working – they don’t even bother responding
FeedBlitz is actually broken and many users are switching to Rmail. Recently I’m gaining about 100 subscriptions per day. Here’s some posts that I’ve found on the FeedBlitz problems.
And if you read the FeedBlitz blog, you’ll find the last 2 weeks that it’s mostly entries about why their service is not working.
Further, if you read the comments for the last two months on their blog, you’ll see people complaining that they are not getting their emails.
So, that’s why I’m very happy with R|Mail, with the speed it delivers the news and the ease of use. If you need a trustworthy service for your readers, I’d put my money on R|Mail and give it a go. You’ll see.
R|Mail Subscription page
R|Mail Blog
R|Mail Stats
Randy Charles Morin
October 15, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Thanks dude!
Phil Hollows
October 15, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Randy’s right – on the few occasions when we have problems we’re fully transparent about them and inform our users of any untimely delays; being up front with our users is a hallmark of what we do.
When your circulation is an order of magnitude larger than any comparable service – R|Mail included – there will also be the occasional publisher for whom it doesn’t work the way they want. We work to address these challenges, but in some cases it doesn’t work out. Still, given that we typically add 2,000 to 5,000 subscribers a day, we have a terrific track record. Randy points to posts back in June while we were changing database platforms; those issues were swiftly resolved and that publisher is in fact expanding his use of our services, as are hundreds of other publishers every day. We’re 30x larger than R|Mail and growing faster, despite being a younger service. There’s a reason for that, much as our competitors might wish it otherwise.
The other thing we do is support users in private, not public. If a user raises an issue in the blog’s comments instead of writing to support, we’ll contact them and solve their problem. Our view is that the blog’s comments function is not an appropriate place to solve technical problems, and we’ll take them offline (but not take down the comments because we will not run the risks of being accused of hiding issues). The blog is not a forum or bulletin board.
As a marketer, you surely want to know who your subscribers are. Subscribing gives your email address to the service, be it R|Mail or FeedBlitz or FeedBurner or anyone else, because the mail has to be sent out. So you have to trrust them. Yes, we give them to the publisher because that makes sense and is a fair trade. We’re up front about that and offer anonymous subscriptions free for those readers who want them. But savvy marketers understand the value of contact information and relationship building. And yes, you can (and should) manage your subscribers.
Should you have the opportunity to block competitors from your mailing list if you want to? Yes.
Should you be able to action an unsubscribe request that comes to you directly? Yes.
Can you temporarily suspend and then restart syndication? Yes.
You can do all this and more in FeedBlitz. (But you can NOT resubscribe an unsubscribed user).
Our privacy record is impeccable. Randy is throwing FUD to imply otherwise, and he knows it. In a few days we’ll be releasing V2 which will make our GUI dramatically better. And no, we don’t invite readers to subscribe to something from the home page because if *you* want to sign readers up to *your* content then *your* site is the place to do it from, not ours.
Bottom line: With FeedBlitz, your subscribers belong to *you* not us. That’s why we let you export them so you can, if you wish, take them to a different service. You can’t do that if you don’t know who they are – you’re trapped.
We believe in surviving on our own merits. If our service isn’t right for you – and we can’t meet everyone’s needs perfectly – then you’re welcome to leave and take your readers with you. We hope to win you back later. But we’re not a walled garden, and never will be.
Instead, we offer services for publishers and subscribers at FeedBlitz.com, including feed and subscription management, real-time reporting, multiple signup options, import and export capabilities, preview and test functions, the ability truncate posts, click through and open analysis, an interactive knowledge-base, and much more. All these features are free, and – unlike others – we’re focused on email messaging services. Then there are the premium upgrade plans too. Please visit our growing feature list at http://www.feedblitz.com/features.htm to find out more.
#1 for a reason. Transparency, integrity, capability. http://www.FeedBlitz.com.
Randy Charles Morin
October 16, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Phil, way to spin the truth.
Randy Charles Morin
October 18, 2006 at 4:57 am
A follow up on Phil’s comments about FeedBlitz’s impeccable security.
http://www.r-mail.org/blog/?guid=20061017205703