FeedBlitz

How to Send an Automated RSS Mailing

Automatically alerting subscribers to new updates added to your blog, website or store on a pre-set schedule is the beauty of our automated mailing campaigns. Also known as RSS to Email, you can easily add automated mailings to any list currently in place, which is what we'll show you how to do below.

Key Steps Steps in Sending an Automated Mailing Campaign:

1. Select the Campaign
2. Choose your Audience
3. Adjust the Campaign Settings
4. Shape your Content
5. Edit your Template
6. Review + Confirm your Automated Mailing

Let's get started!

1. Select the Campaign

From your FeedBlitz dashboard, you'll find two places to create a new email campaign. The first place is under Campaigns > New Campaign, and the second option is to select the site you'd like to work with from your dashboard and press New Campaign.

Both lead you to the same page shown below, where you'll select Automated Mailing.

2. Choose your Audience

Select which list you would like to receive your mailings and then hit Next Step.

3. Adjust your Campaign Settings

The next step of creating an automated mailing is to edit the campaign settings. You can control the Sender's name and email address, the Schedule of when the mailings should be sent, the Source feed which will power your mailings, the Subject lines of your emails, adjust the Tracking if necessary, and Filter any posts to specifically include or exclude categories or tags for your automated mailing campaign. 

We'll go through each one starting with checking the name and email address of the Sender. (This is also known as your envelope settings.) This will show as your default settings, but you can always change it for this particular campaign if you'd like.

Then continue to set your mailing schedule, telling FeedBlitz how often you want your automated mailings to go out.

As you can see, we offer a few different scheduling options:

  • Once a Day is for daily mailings of new posts during the time frame you choose.
  • ASAP is for immediate sends for feeds with PubSubHubbub enabled
  • On Demand is a manual delivery option, no posts will be sent
  • The Express schedule sends new posts within 30-45 minutes of the updates going live in your feed
  • We also have both weekly and monthly options listed, as well as hourly intervals if you post multiple times a day and your subscribers prefer to be updated frequently.

Note:

Many clients who mail regularly prefer to offer daily and weekly emails for their subscribers. This way the subscriber gets to choose the frequency of mailings they prefer. You can do this by setting up two separate Automated Mailings for the same list, one with a daily sending schedule and the other set to weekly.

We'll choose Once a Day and select our time frame for this tutorial.

Up next is to confirm the Source feed of your mailings. This can be the RSS feed of your website, online store, social channel, or your blog. You're able to set up category-specific mailings as well, as long as you know the RSS feed of a particular category of blog posts.

Your Subject line defaults to the automated version showing the title of your update for a single entry mailing or the title plus the total of additional articles for multi-entry mailings. You're more than welcome to edit this as you choose or leave as the default.

Your tracking is set to FeedBlitz tracking, however, you can adjust this setting to Google Analytics or your preferred tracking application here as well.

Filtering allows you to dictate which posts are and are not allowed in your mailings. You'll do this by adding categories or tags to the posts on your website and ensuring those categories or tags are listed here to be included or excluded. 

This is also another way to create category-specific automated mailings if you include only new posts tagged with a specific category.

When your settings are all in place, hit Next Step: Content to continue setting up your Automated Mailing.

4. Shape your Content

Content is where you’ll be able to adjust the length of your updates in the mailing. Leave this blank to send the entire post, enter 0 to send the headline only, or enter a number of characters and a call to action to direct subscribers back to the entry on your site.

Recap allows you to include links to your most recent updates at the end of your new updates. You can adjust this number here.

Adjust what social sharing you’d like to offer for each new update here. Keep in mind if you send multiple posts in an email, these social sharing options will appear at the end of each new post and can be in your email multiple times if there’s more than one update being sent.

5. Edit your Template

Moving on to the next step in creating your Automated Mailing Campaign, we enter our drag and drop Visual Template Editor, the VTE.

You'll notice the template you created when getting your FeedBlitz account started (link: https://feedblitz.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/43000039308-getting-started-with-feedblitz) will be the first to appear. You can use this template as is or make adjustments using the editor, or you can hit Templates to work with a blank template or one of your previously saved templates.

We'll stick with this template as is for now. When working in the VTE, don't forget the guided quick tour that's here in the corner for tips and suggestions.

Once you have things in place, preview the template on desktop and mobile, and send a test email.

6. Review and Confirm your Automated Mailing

On the next page, you'll be able to Review all your settings for this automated mailing campaign and make any last minute edits if needed.

If you're all set, hit finish and there it is! Your automated mailings will begin the next time your schedule comes up and new updates are available.

As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to let us know. You can find all of our great support resources and how to get in touch with us via email, chat or phone on our Support Page.


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