Okay, bloggers. For years, we’ve been cruising along, letting Feedburner take care of our email subscribers for us. Like a fix-it-and-forget-it crock pot meal, we set it all up once and let it do its thing, while we happily ignored it.
I’m sorry to say that those days are over. Google is no longer going to support Feedburner and bloggers I know are having trouble – losing subscribers, emails not working, etc. etc. It’s a nightmare.
So, what’s a blogger to do? Move your feedburner subscribers over to another service ASAP.
Mailchimp is a free service with a lot more options – pretty newsletters, stylish RSS blasts, and easy-to-understand stats. I’ve been using it for a year now, and love it. And, although the prep time is a bit longer for this recipe, it’s almost as fix-it-and-forget it as Feedburner.
Need more convincing? This is from the Mailchimp website:
Just like FeedBurner, we offer a Forever Free plan and you can link your Google Analytics to your MailChimp account.
Unlike FeedBurner, we offer live human chat and email support, as well as educational materials to help answer any questions you may have. We also have incredibly detailed tracking and reports, where we show you who opened, who clicked, what country your readers are from, and more.
So let’s get started.
How to Move your Feedburner Subscribers to Mailchimp
Here is the tutorial without pictures. The tutorial WITH screenshots is also included below.
1. First, log in to Feedburner using your Google account.
2. Click on the name of the Feedburner list you are working with.
3. Click See More About Your Subscribers beneath the graph and stats.
4. Click Feedburner Email Subscriptions then Manage Your Subscription List.
5. The second bullet point says Export: CSV. Click CSV and save the file.
6. Now, log in to Mailchimp (or create a free account, if you haven’t done so.)
7. Click Lists in the upper left corner.
8. Click Create List.
9. Click Create List again in the gray box.
10. Fill in the List Details and save.
11. A new screen will come up saying you have no subscribers. Click Import Subscribers.
12. Click Import from a CSV or TXT file.
13. Browse for your file (Mine was in my Downloads folder) and click Upload List.
Optional: Match the columns. Click on Make a Selection, click Custom, and type the column title from Feedburner (Subscribed is the blue column, Status is the red one.)
Ta da! It will take a few minutes for your list to upload (depending on how long it is) but when you click on Lists in the upper left corner again, you will see that you have successfully updated your list!
And now, for you visual learners, step-by-step screenshots. (Special thanks to Heather from The Heathered Nest. I was helping her out with some of this and she agreed to let me use screenshots from her accounts for this tutorial.)
1. First, log in to Feedburner using your Google account.
2. Click on the name of the feed you are working with.
3. Click See More About Your Subscribers beneath the graph and stats.
4. Click Feedburner Email Subscriptions
then Manage Your Subscription List.
5. The second bullet point says Export: CSV. Click CSV and save the file.
6. Now, log in to Mailchimp (or create a free account, if you haven’t done so.)
7. Click Lists in the upper left corner.
8. Click Create List.
9. Click Create List again in the gray box.
10. Fill in the List Details and save.
11. A new screen will come up saying you have no subscribers. Click Import Subscribers.
12. Click Import from a CSV or TXT file.
13. Browse for your file (Mine was in my Downloads folder) and click Upload List.
Optional: Match the columns. Click on Make a Selection, click Custom, and type the column title from Feedburner (Subscribed is the blue column, Status is the red one.)
Ta da! It will take a few minutes for your list to upload (depending on how long it is)
but when you click Lists in the upper left corner again, you will see that you have successfully updated your list!
Awesome! I totally need to do this, but was afraid to try it on my own. I am going to do this and then wait for your tutorials on how to set up my RSS and close down Feedburner! Thank you, thank you, thank you...and thanks to Heather, too. I am a visual learner! ;)
ReplyDeleteGlad it worked, Kim! Hopefully I can get the other tuts up soon!
DeleteI need to start this up! Can you add the subscribers to an established list rather than creating a new one if you have one?
ReplyDeleteI need to do this too, so thanks!
ReplyDeleteHere's an update for those who can't find the "Feedburner Email Subscriptions" link that they seemed to have gotten rid of...
ReplyDeletesteps 1 and 2 are the same... the rest will get you to the same location for exporting CSV...
step 3 - click on the "publicize" tab in the upper left corner
step 4 - in the left column - click on "email subscriptions"
Step 5 - scroll down to the bottom and click on "view subscriber details" and this will get you the screen that you got to the previous way and you'll see the list of emails and the "export: CSV" option
thanks for the awesome tutorial, it was so easy once I figured out the Feedburner change and what screen you ended up on.
Interesting! I always wondered how feedburner even worked. Apparently, I never set up email subscribers, because they don't exist in my account. Great tutorial!
ReplyDeleteOh my god Katie....you have NO idea how much I needed this post. I'm scheduling some time (sans kids, sans husband, etc.) to work on this. Thank you so much!
ReplyDeleteThank you Katie! I've known for awhile I need to do this and now I have no excuse, right? :)
ReplyDeletethank you for this. i am finally ditching feedburner due to all the problems , and it was probably time anyhow. your instructions couldn't have come at a better time.
ReplyDeleteTHANK YOU! I did this in about 10 minutes just now. I am so glad we connected in person today :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for this, Katie. I'm just curious if you deactivate your feedburner feed or keep it live? What's the very last step after we have our contacts imported and are ready to send our first email?
ReplyDeleteHmm...Let me go back and check. Okay, yes. I left the feed live, I think because it "feeds" to Bloglovin and such. (I guess that's why they call it a feed!)
DeleteBut you need to update your sign up forms on your site. That really should be my next tutorial. Mailchimp has some great instructions, though.