Most of us know that Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is the best E-mail marketing SAAS solution providing free and premium services online.
In this article, you will learn how to automate sending newsletters of your website/blog’s latest content or posts by integrating RSS campaigns. This exciting feature from Brevo is of a great way of alerting your readers who are subscribed to your website getting updates of latest blog posts or content right into their inbox and it can be scheduled on a weekly, monthly or can be sent immediately when any new content is added to feed.
Pre-requisites before starting to use the feature:
- An RSS Feed URL.
- To be sure that blog posts are pulled into an RSS campaign, publish them at least 1 hour before an RSS campaign is sent.
- You need an RSS-compatible template for your RSS campaign design. If you are getting started with RSS feeds, we strongly recommend you edit our RSS default template instead of creating a new template from scratch.
I have been using Brevo’s service for my business and believe me it’s a great platform to integrate all your email sending needs to your subscribers and thereby increasing your audience reach and engagement and keeping them updated about your latest content or products and services.
Please note: “Brevo” is the new brand name replacing the old name “Sendinblue”
Let’s get started:
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- Login to your Brevo account. If you don’t have one till now, sign up here.
- Click on the + icon on the top menu and then click on the Integrations tab as shown below.
- Scroll down the page and click the RSS Campaign option.
- Next, name your integration and click Create Integration
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- In the Configure RSS Feed section, enter your RSS Feed URL as shown below and click the Load RSS feed button. (In this example, we have taken WordPress site feed which would be by default xyz.com/feed. For non-WordPress sites it could be in .xml at the end.)
When you Load RSS Feed and is validated, it would load the feed and generate a preview as shown above.
- When you scroll down you will see pre-formatted key names from your RSS feed is generated. Click the continue button to move on to the next step.
- Now comes the Email design part. To design the emails created by your RSS Campaigns Integration, you’ll need to use an email template. For that, select any one option:
RSS Default Template (Recommended): This allows you to go with the RSS default content prepared by Brevo. After choosing this option, make sure to edit the template before moving forward (Logo image and Social media link should at least be updated). When you select the RSS Default Template option and click Confirm email template, you will see the Edit email content button. After clicking the same, a new window containing Brevo Responsive Template Builder will load. Here you can see various tools to get your preferred template design. You have the option of setting up Design elements, Header elements, Footer elements Content elements, Logos Social Media links. You can check PC, Mobile, or Tablet responsiveness from the top.
You can customize your email template based on your RSS feed:
Here is how you can insert elements from your RSS feed in your email template:
To call tags from the channel, you should use {{params.feed.XXX}} (where XXX should be replaced by the tag name)
To call tags from an item, you should iterate over the dynamic list {{params.items}}For Example:
To call the <title> from channel, write: {{params.feed.TITLE }}
To call the <pubDate> from channel, write: {{params.feed.PUBDATE }}To call a tag from my different items, create a loop that will iterate over the dynamic list {{params.items}}.
You can use the variable name item for each element of your list
To call the <title> from an item, write: {{ item.TITLE }}
To call the <pubDate> from an item, write: {{ item.PUBDATE }}
My email Templates (Advanced): Choose a custom template that you have created earlier from scratch for your RSS campaign integration. You can create a new template at any time from Campaigns > Template.When you have completed the template designing, click on Continue.
- Next, select your recipients for your campaign from the list(s).
And click Continue
Note: It is highly recommended that you test your whole RSS campaign integration before selecting real recipients. Click on Continue when you are done.
- Now, Configure your Campaign settings.
There are quite a few options as well as Advance options settings to configure in this step. Once you are done with, click Continue
- Now comes Campaign Creation and Scheduling. The creation of campaigns can be done automatically based on feed updates. You can set those as explained below:
Choose Specific days of the week option if you want your email campaigns to be created weekly.
Choose Specific day of the month option if you want your email campaigns to be created monthly. After your campaign is created, click Continue
Note : An email campaign will be created if a new item has been added to your RSS feed otherwise not. Campaign mailing: You can set either Automatic or Manual sending options from this.
- Now comes the last step of final confirmation: Click the Save and Activate button to activate the integration.
If you want there is an option of Save and Inactivate and thereby saving your integration as a draft which you can activate later when you are ready. After all, the above steps, You will be redirected to the Integrations page, where you can view the newly created integration. Also, You can check your campaigns reports at any time from Campaigns > Emails section located in the top menu.
- Login to your Brevo account. If you don’t have one till now, sign up here.
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Don’t have a Brevo account yet? Sign up here
