Share Your Blog Posts with Mailchimp

If you have a blog or other web content with an RSS feed, send an RSS automation to automatically share new posts to your contacts. This type of automation pulls in RSS (Real Simple Syndication) content and emails it to your audience based on a recurring schedule you choose.

In this article, you'll learn how to create an RSS automation.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• You'll need the URL for your RSS feed. If you want to include content from multiple feeds, you can use our FEED merge tag to add multiple RSS feeds to one automation. Or use a feed aggregator to combine multiple RSS feeds into a single feed.
• You can't control the RSS content via the email builder. If you want your content formatted a certain way, edit the RSS source directly.
• To be sure that blog posts are pulled into an RSS automation, publish them at least 3 hours before the automation is set to send.
• RSS automations will only send once per day. You won't be able to trigger a second send, even if you update your blog and adjust send times.

About RSS sends

RSS automations use merge tags to pull in content from your RSS feed. Mailchimp automatically emails this content to your audience according to a schedule you set—daily, weekly, or monthly.

To set up an RSS automation, you’ll create an email that Mailchimp will copy and populate with new blog feed content for each send. You can think of this as your 'parent' automation, and each copy as a 'child' email.

We won't send RSS emails unless there's something new to share. For example, if you set your automation to send weekly but haven't posted to your blog in more than a week, we won't send to your audience until there is a new post on the day your automation is set to send.

The first time your RSS automation sends, we'll only include posts from the last 24 hours for daily, from the last seven days for weekly, and the last 30 days for monthly. After that, each new send will pull all posts made to your blog feed since the last send.

Create an RSS automation

To create a new RSS automation, follow these steps.

1. Click Automations, then click Flow templates.
2. In the Nurture leads section, click Share blog updates via RSS.
3. Enter a Campaign Name and choose an audience.
4. Click Begin.

RSS feed step

You'll choose the RSS feed, schedule, and other settings on the RSS Feed step.

1. Type your feed's URL in the RSS Feed URL field.
2. Choose your send time and other options.

• When should we send?
  Choose from Every day, Every week, or Every month. Use the drop-downs and checkboxes to choose the day(s) and time you want your RSS automation to send.
• Resize RSS feed images to fit template
  Check this box if you want Mailchimp to resize the images in your feed to fit. This will help prevent your email from stretching. This option only resizes images pulled in via the *|RSSITEM:CONTENT|* or *|RSSITEM:CONTENT_FULL|* merge tags. It won't work when the email is viewed in Outlook. Videos can't be resized.

If you see an error message when you enter your RSS feed address, run it through a feed validator.

Recipients step

Choose the audience or segment you want to send your automation to. To send to a new segment, select Group or new segment on this screen. Choose Segment or tag to use a saved segment.

Setup step

The Setup step is where you'll enter the Email subject and From name that recipients will see when they receive your blog posts in their inbox.

1. Type in your automation details in the fields provided.
2. Check the boxes next to any additional settings or tracking options that you want to include.

The *|RSSITEM:TITLE|* merge tag can be used in the subject line of your RSS automation to pull in the title of your most recent blog post, but you should thoroughly test your automation before you send. A few factors contribute to whether the title of the most recent post will always display.

Template step

The Template step is where you'll choose the layout you want to use. You can create an RSS automation from any of the available templates, and use our RSS content blocks to pull content from your feed.

Design step

The Design step is where you'll design your email. When you first design an RSS email, we show the last post that was added to your feed as an example.

Use RSS content blocks pre-populated with our RSS merge tags to customize the content that's pulled into your automation.

RSS merge tags pull information from your feed into your automation and tell our system what to look for when checking your feed. If these tags are missing, your emails will deliver without content.

Confirm step

The Confirm step is where you'll review and start your automation.

To review and start your automation, follow these steps.

1. Review the Pre-Delivery Checklist, and preview and test your automation if you haven't already. Click Resolve or Edit to make changes to any section of the automation.
2. Click Start RSS to send your RSS email based on the schedule you chose, or click the drop-down arrow and choose Send now and start RSS campaign to immediately send an email and start the schedule.

View RSS automation reports

We generate a report for each sent RSS email. To see an overview of the email reports for an RSS automation, follow these steps.

1. Click Analytics, then click Reports.
2. If you have more than one audience, click the Audience drop-down and choose the one associated with the automation you want to work with.
3. Find the RSS automation you want to see and click View Report. This will take you to a list of all the sent emails for that RSS automation.
4. Click View Report to view the report for an individual.

Troubleshoot your RSS automation

If your automation has errors, take a look at our troubleshooting resource to find out how to resolve common issues with RSS.

Troubleshooting RSS in Campaigns