Comments on: RSS to Email Tutorial

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:12:09 +0000

Sorry for delay Ben. I write posts on my blog and then deliver them to subscribers via an RSS to email service. Most subscribers prefer to get material by email and material is time sensitive..

By: Antony

Antony — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:37:30 +0000

Hi,
Is there a way to handle different RSS items differently? For example, can I style my 1st item differently than the rest?
If I use the individual RSS tags without the *|RSSITEMS:|* tag, I get the first item, but the problem is that I don’t have any control on any other items, and when I do use the *|RSSITEMS:|* tag, the first item will show-up again.

Regards,
Antony

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:34:37 +0000

Hi Dave. RSS-to-email was meant more as a convenient, passive way to automate content delivery. As such, a daily send schedule (or even weekly or monthly) isn’t normally an issue for users. People do request “instant” RSS-to-email publication from time to time, and I can suggest some workarounds, but was wondering if you could describe what you’re trying to do.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:34:54 +0000

Thanks for the tutorial. I was quite keen to transfer from AWeber but the once daily RSS-based emails doesn’t work for me when I want to push out a post as soon as it is published. if you could fix that I would shift straight away as other parts of your services seem much better.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:10:09 +0000

Hi Peter, the RSS-to-email feature simply looks for all new posts, then includes them all. There’s no built-in way to limit how many posts we grab. If you want 5 to display, but you posted 6 new articles, we’re going to show all 6. You could program a new RSS feed that has its own limitations, and feed that one to MailChimp. We also have a new RSS “FEED:” merge tag that has more control: http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/how-can-i-add-any-blog-post-to-a-regular-campaign but it’s meant for people who want to embed RSS feed content into a “regular” email campaign (not for the automated RSS-to-email campaign type).

By: Ben

Ben — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 10:27:39 +0000

Could be because you were trying this at the same time we were performing server upgrades ( http://blog.mailchimp.com/planned-server-maintenance-and-followup-to-server-outage/ ). I’d try again in a few hours, and if it still won’t work, contact support so they can troubleshoot: http://help.mailchimp.com/

By: Troy

Troy — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 05:24:33 +0000

Hi, I’m trying to link one of my campaigns to a Facebook RSS feed. One does already work but the other won’t accept the RSS URL (different url’s for the campaigns). I validated it and all seems ok, so I’m a bit confused. Validation result link – http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Ffeeds%2Fpage.php%3Fid%3D168670999905709%26format%3Drss20

By: Peter G McDermott

Peter G McDermott — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:32:45 +0000

How can I limit the number of items that are included in the e-mail?

By: Chris R

Chris R — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 10:33:45 +0000

Just to answer the question above, I’ve done some testing, and you *can* put the *|RSSITEM:TITLE|* tag in the subject line, and it works. I only post one item a day, and send out one email, so I can’t say which RSS entry’s title gets into the subject line. But I can confirm it works.

For what it’s worth, I write one blog entry a day, with a question as the title, and post out once a day using RSS-to-email, also incorporating the recipient’s first name. So my RSS-driven email’s subject line ends up something like this:

[Listname] Ben – Have you tried this?

By: Ben

Ben — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 02:45:32 +0000

It’ll basically send all new articles since the last time it sent. So if it sends 10, then it’s time to send again the next day at 9pm, and you only have 5 done, it’ll send those 5.