Adding email subscriptions

Using your blog's feed, visitors to your site can subscribe to receive email notifications of new posts to your blog. FeedBurner offers an email subscription tool to publicize your blog.

Setting up FeedBurner Email Subscriptions

If you haven't already set up a FeedBurner account, you can do so following the instructions in the setting a FeedBurner feed article.

Once you have your FeedBurner account, you will need to sign in to FeedBurner at http://feedburner.google.com and click on the name of the feed. From the FeedBurner dashboard for your feed, click to Publicize > Email Subscriptions. You will then have the option to add the Subscription Form Code or Subscription Link Code to your blog.

By adding the Subscription Form Code, a form will be placed on your blog where the reader of your blog can enter their email address and subscribe to receive email notifications of new posts directly on your blog.

Subscription Link Code will place a link to subscribe to your blog which will open a new window where an email address will be entered to subscribe.

Once you've decided which option to add, you can select to Use as a widget in Typepad by clicking the Go button.

You'll be routed to your Typepad account where you can select which blog to add the widget. Please note blogs using an Advanced Template design, the Chroma theme, or Artistic, Calendar, Three Column with Recent Photos, Four Column, or Timeline layouts will require you copy the code, instead of using the widget option, and you will not be able to select blogs using any of those options to add the widget.

To add the email subscription form or link to a blog using an Advanced Template design, the Chroma theme, or Artistic, Calendar, Three Column with Recent Photos, Four Column, or Timeline layout, go to Design > Content and select the Embed Your Own HTML module. There you can copy the code from FeedBurner into the module to be included on your blog.

Finally click the Activate button at FeedBurner to start sending out email notifications of new posts.

FeedBurner offers other options to manage your email subscriptions:

• Subscription Management: View the number of subscribers and their email addresses.
• Communication Preferences: Customize the confirmation email sent to new subscribers.
• Email Branding: Customize the format of the emails sent to your subscribers.
• Delivery Options: Select the time the emails will be sent to your subscribers. FeedBurner will only send out one email per day with your posts published in the last 24 hours at the time you designate within your account.

Adding other email subscription options

Using the Embed Your Own HTML module at Design > Content, you can add the HTML for another service to your blog.

Most of the services require that you submit the Feed (or RSS) URL for your blog. The Feed URL is should be similar to:
http://example.typepad.com/blog/atom.xml

You can find more information in the article on feeds.

Adding an "Email this" option for the post

FeedBurner's FeedFlare feature allows you to add an Email this link to the end of your posts. The Email this link allows you to email a copy of the post. More information on adding FeedFlare to your FeedBurner feed is available at the FeedBurner support site.

Adding a sign up form for a newsletter

If you're looking for an option that will allow you to communicate with your users on a less frequent basis, you may want to look into an announcement mailing list. Services like Google Groups, Yahoo! Groups, BraveNet, and MailChimp may be helpful. Some of these services will also give you HTML code to add to your blog with a Embed Your Own HTML module.