- RSS 1.0
- RSS 2.0
- Atom
Step 1: Create an RSS email template
Go to the Messages section and click on Compose New Message. You can either create a campaign from scratch, or use the existing Basic RSS to Email Template that appears as an option when you click on with a JangoMail Smart Template. Click the Select icon to select this template.
An RSS campaign template can have the following personalization variables in the Subject and Message areas:
%%rss_author%%
%%rss_title%%
%%rss_content%%
%%rss_url%%
The provided basic RSS template makes use of all of these variables. You can also customize the basic template by choosing it and then making your own modifications.
Important Note: To save your template to the system, just Send or Preview it to at least one recipient.
Step 2: Setup your blog's RSS feed in JangoMail
Next, set up your blog's RSS Feed under Settings --> Sending and Receiving --> RSS Feeds.
If you don't know your blog's RSS feed, try your blog address, followed by "atom.xml" or "rss.xml". For example, the feed for the JangoMail In Progress blog can be accessed at either:
http://blog.jangomail.com/atom.xml or http://blog.jangomail.com/rss.xml
You will need to know the location of your blog's feed before you can proceed with this feature.
Click on Add RSS Feed and fill out the rest of the form, as shown below. In this example, we are monitoring the TechCrunch blog, and the feed URL is http://www.techcrunch.com/feed/atom. We have to set it to send immediate email notifications whenever a new blog post is published, and the emails will go to the List #41172369, as well as to recipients from the web database included in the given SQL query:
Choosing Recipients
When specifying which recipients will receive RSS email campaigns, you can choose from:
- An entire Email List, or multiple Email Lists.
- A segment of an Email List. If there are no items in the dropdown menu, you can create List Segments under Lists. Click on the Edit Lists Icon next to the list you would like to filter. Then click the List Tools Tab and go to Filter and Send. Choose your filter settings and save the query. It will now show up as an option undder Send to List Segment in the screen above.
- A SQL query called against your web site's database. For this to work, you must have a Master Profile already set up under Settings --> Integrating JangoMail with Other Systems --> Set Master Profile for Web DB. Once this is set, specify a SQL SELECT statement in this box.
Scheduling
JangoMail will check feeds for new posts once every minute and will send out your new post to your subscribers almost instantly, if you have your feed Schedule set to send Immediately. If you instead set it to Daily and enter a time of day, then JangoMail will wait until the specified time, either on the same day, or the next day, before sending out new posts.
Reports
After you've sent some RSS email campaigns, you can view your campaigns' statistics under the Reports tab. Go to Broadcast Message Reports and click the Filter icon. To view just the statistics for RSS email campaigns, set the appropriate Filter:
How is JangoMail's RSS-to-Email feature different from other RSS-to-Email services?
JangoMail's RSS to Email campaign feature does much more than other RSS/email tools, including allowing you full control of the design of the emails, full tracking (opens, clicks, integration with Google Analytics), and complete list management (unsubscribes, bounces, complaints via feedback loops).
Additionally, JangoMail's tool allows you to send to an entire Email List, a segmented portion of an Email List, or a set of recipient data pulled in real-time from your web site's database.
Resources:
To read more about RSS and ATOM specifications, see the articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_%28standard%29
http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/Rss20AndAtom10Compared
