How to create an RSS-Driven Campaign with MailChimp?

If you’re a newbie, coming up with good content for your email marketing and your blog is an ongoing challenge. Case in point, when you are very busy in your assignments or homework or office works, you can’t write any useful content that worth enough to read. Anytime you can consolidate your efforts in this area, you are saving precious time, yet still reaching your audience with your unique message. To this end, I created an RSS (Really Simply Syndication) driven Email campaign in MailChimp, so that my blog posts will automatically go out to my newsletter subscribers. This way, if I don’t create an actual monthly newsletter, I’m still keeping in touch with my readers. I’ve set this up to run once a week, only if there are new blog posts generated within that week.

Though you can even control how often you send out content as you’re setting up your campaign. Below we walk you through how to create an RSS-Driven campaign using Campaign Builder.

How to create an RSS-Driven Campaign with MailChimp?

1. Navigate to the Campaigns page in your account.
2. Click the drop-down menu next to the Create Campaign button and select RSS-Driven Campaign.
   
3. On the RSS Feed step, enter your feed’s URL in the RSS Feed URL box and set the send settings for your RSS-Driven campaign.
   You can send RSS-Driven campaigns at a specific time every day, every week, or every month. If you choose to send your RSS-Driven campaign every day, you can also select specific days for the campaign to send. For example, you may not want your daily RSS campaign to send on weekends, so you’d uncheck Sat and Sun from the day of the week options.
   
   After you’ve set the send settings click the Next Button in the progress bar in the bottom-right-hand corner.
4. On the Recipients step, select the List you want to send to.
5. To send to your entire list and go ahead to the next step, click the Setup step in the progress bar or the Next button in the bottom-right-hand corner.
   To send to a segment of your list, click the name of the list and select Send to a saved segment to choose an existing segment or Send to a new segment to add new segmenting conditions. Then click the Setup step in the progress bar or the Next button in the bottom-right-hand corner.
6. On the Setup step, add your Email Subject, From Name, and Reply-To Email Address. Use the options below to select tracking, connect Social Media options, and set advanced options. When you’re finished, click the Template step in the progress bar or the Next button in the bottom-right-hand corner.
7. Navigate to the Templates step and choose a template from the available options. You can use any of the Basic layouts or pre designed Themes for your campaign, but I recommend choosing one of the 2 RSS layouts if you’d like a template that already contains RSS content blocks.
8. Move to the Design step using the progress bar or the Next button in the bottom-right-hand corner.
9. Drag and Drop the RSS content blocks into your layout to customize the look and feel of your campaign. The RSS content blocks are pre-loaded with RSS merge tags to pull in content from your feed.
   
10. Once you’re satisfied with your design, click the Confirm step in the progress bar or the Next button in the bottom-right-hand corner.
11. Review the pre-delivery checklist presented on the Confirm step.
    
    Any errors or missing info are noted on this screen, click Resolve to navigate directly to the step to fix the error. If you’d like to make any additional changes, click the Edit button to return to a step.
12. Use the Preview & Test drop down at the top of the page to Open Popup Preview, Send a Test Email, Run Inbox Inspection, or Test with Delivery Doctor.
13. Click the Send Now & Start RSS Campaign button to immediately send a campaign to your list before the RSS email settles into the designated send schedule. The Start RSS Campaign button activates your RSS-Driven campaign.
    

DONE!

That’s All! I hope this helps you to stay in touch with your audience a bit more effectively. If you find this post useful then please share it along with your friends! If you have any questions or comments then leave them in the comments section below, I’ll be more than happy to assist you