Wordpress Adds Blog Subscription By Email Option

While browsing some blogs today that are hosted on Wordpress.com (as opposed to the self-hosted Wordpress version), I noticed something new. Under the comment box, there is now an option to, “Notify me of new posts via email.” Seems like a small change and you might be wondering why I would even bother to make a post about such a minor change.

It’s because the change isn’t minor. Today’s change will offer bloggers more discovery and more traffic. Wordpress blogs have allowed you to subscribe to comments by email which basically means that each time a person posts a comment on a blog post that you have commented on, you will receive an email notification. I’ve long believed that these notifications are a big help in getting visitors back to a blog because many commenters are hit-and-run. The email alerts the commenter that another person has left a comment. The email recipient will then click on the link (providing another pageview) and then can continue to interact.

This new post email notification option is even more important because it provides a reader with an instant update each time a new blog post is added. FeedBurner offers an email subscription service (here’s our email subscription link) which creates a daily email from a blog’s RSS feed. It appears the Wordpress version sends an email for each new post. Another benefit of the local email subscription option is that you control the email list. With Feedburner the list is basically managed by Google.

The only issue I have with the new email subscription option is that you must leave a comment to activate it. I’d prefer that a reader can opt-in for the emails even without leaving a comment.

While the social media experts tell us that email is dead (Twitter is the new email right?), the early adopters tell us that RSS is the way to go for subscriptions, email is still alive, well and might still be the best way to get people back to your blog.

In any case, I hope the next update to the self-hosted version of Wordpress includes this email subscription option.