Build Your Own Content Digest Using Mailchimp

 

RSS Feeds Are Boring

Sure the content contained within them can be pretty fantastic, but the means in which you view the feeds is weak and always has been.

A few months ago I decided that twitter just wasn’t working well enough as a content aggregator. I follow a number of design publications through Twitter for the purpose of seing their latest articles. I also follow idiots like Kenny Powers and Funny or Die + 300 others. So my design content gets lost. (Argue the case of custom lists all you want, they’re not practical) The solution I then found was a web app called NetNewsWire. I spent an hour or so subscribing to all the blogs I wanted to read and it worked out just fine.

A week later, I never opened the app again. I even set it up to open whenever I turned on my machine. Still never checked it. I just couldn’t work it into my routine.

So I let my need to read relavent design articles fester for a while. Until I came across a new feature in the Email Marketing Platform MailChimp. I already knew about the RSS to Email campaigns. That concept was novel and works for a number of people. But I don’t really want to get five emails every morning just to see what a couple pubs wrote about. Until a brand new Vital Design email marketing project introduced me to this badass new feature…

Feed Merge

The possibilities here are endless. Before, you could only subscribe to an email consisting of posts from ONE feed. Now, you can pepper one email template with as many feeds as you want. I will detail how to accomplish this below, but for now just think about the possible applications of this.

Create a Design Digest

The first idea that popped into my head was to aggregate all of the publication feeds that I wanted to read each morning. So I sat down, plugged in the RSS feed URL’s into the code listed below and set-up the email to send to me every morning.

I can now wake up each morning and have a brand new email sitting in my inbox – which I DO actually check everyday – containing the two most recent articles from each of my favorite publications.

No more running News Feeds every morning. Now everything I want is sitting in the one place I do go everyday. My inbox.

How It Works

With a simple short code users can now drop entire entries from any blog they want into an email. Plus the number of sources is unlimited.

Just drop in this code wherever you want the RSS feed to appear:

*|FEED:Feed URL [$count=Number of Posts Included]|*

Feed Merge Individual Items

If the default layout of the basic Feed Merge isn’t looking as clean as you would like it to you’re in luck. The shortcode below will allow you to break the feed up into individual elements. That way you can actually have some aesthetic control over what you’re displaying.

*|FEEDBLOCK:URL|* *|FEEDITEMS:|*
INSERT INDIVIDUAL ITEMS HERE
 *|END:FEEDITEMS|* *|END:FEEDBLOCK|*

For a full list of individual items available in shortcode form – plus a much more in-depth tutorial on how to use this feature head to the Mailchimp Support Page:

Mailchimp Support

Keep It Recurring

One thing you will quickly learn while attempting to build one of these eblasts is that your email will only be delivered when there is new content. This new content must come from the single RSS feed you define in the beginning. So if you’re blog is only going to have new content once a week, your digest only goes out once a week.

In comes Chimpfeedr, the RSS aggregator built by Mailchimp for Mailchimp. Just feed the chimp all of the RSS feeds included in your digest and he will spit out a single aggregated url, which can then then be inserted as your source feed.

So now the digest will only go out when ANY of your news sources publishes new content.

Problem solved!

Get Clever

Creating a simple and customized digest is just the tip of the iceberg with Field Merge. I took a real world problem and used this feature to fix it. To me it’s a game changer. We now have the ability to:

1. Build a custom designed eblast with infinite dynamic content sources
2. Aggregate relevant content the way YOU want it to be display and delivered
3. Give your readers a wider range of related content during your outreach
4. Build a daily relationship with your readers that adds value beyond your content

If you have questions about this feature or would like your clients to see a digest like this come from you. Contact Vital Design here.

Or if you want to subscribe to my Digest featuring this blog, Smashing Magazine, OneExtraPixel, DesignMag, and Inspired Magazine click the link below!

Sign up for Design Essentials Digest!