How to send your blogs out automatically on Mailchimp using RSS (and whether you actually should)
If you have a business there’s a fair chance that you:
have a blog on your website
have an emailing list
don’t have enough hours in the day.
If you don’t have 1 AND 2 from the list above, you almost certainly have some work to do!
Like anything in life, the more the mundane tasks of running a business can be left to technology to reduce the time they take, often (but not always) the better.
How to use RSS feeds to send blogs out automatically using Mailchimp
One of the things Mailchimp offers to remove a task is an "RSS feed" automation. What does that mean in plain English?
Well, you can set up an automation / workflow behind the scenes in Mailchimp so that whenever you write a new blog on your website, it automatically sends an extract and link or the full article out to your mailing list, or a segment of it.
That email can go out at a defined time when that occurs after it’s published or on a specific day say 9am on a Monday morning, and will only send if you have published a new blog.
By connecting it to your website’s blog feed, it will automatically pull in the title, date and either an extract with a link to the article, or the full content, straight into the email.
Easy peasy (after a little bit of initial faffing). But is it right for you? Well, here are the pros and cons for you to decide, and a quick how to guide to start you off.
The Pros
It makes life easier and saves you a job
It means your blogs will automatically be sent out to your mailing list after you’ve written them
It means that even if you do no other email marketing (but you do blog), you’re still keeping in touch with your mailing list and therefore in their minds
You can have a lovely efficient process whereby you batch write blogs, schedule them to be published on a specific time and date, and the email goes out automatically.
The Cons
You lose control of what goes out - personally I feel a little uncomfortable with automating too many things as it can be easy to forget about them
The blog content is the only thing that will be in the email (other than any “evergreen” content you put in around it which will stay the same in every email). This means that the blog can’t be preceded by a contextual introduction or story, which tends to increase clicks, or won’t be part of a “newsletter” with other new content.
You have to remember when it is scheduled to go out so as not to send an ad-hoc email shortly before or after (which can lead to unsubscribes) - it’s easier to do that if you time restrict so that they only go out at e.g. 10am on Wednesdays (regardless of when you publish the blog).
Because the automation’s Subject and Preview texts that will be seen in the inbox are restrictive/need to be evergreen, it’s harder to give a teaser that will encourage them to be opened in the first place
If you’re like me and ALWAYS notice a typo in a blog after you’ve published it, the email sharing it may go out before you’re ready if you don’t restrict send times.
Personally?
Unless you’re desperately time poor, I personally prefer to retain some control and either manually precede my blog excerpt and link with personal intro, or include it as part of a broader e-newsletter. However, if it comes down to the RSS automation email or them never hearing from you at all, then the RSS is a good place to start at least initially.
The basics of how to set it up…
Go to Create (the pencil) then at the top of the box you’ll see a word Automated. Click on that.
Click on this option:
3. Click on Begin and allow Mailchimp to guide you. It will ask you for your “RSS Feed URL” (which is where it finds your blogs). If you’re not sure how to get it, simply search on Google for e.g. “how to find blog rss for [squarespace][weebly][wix][wordpress]” and you’ll find the answer.
4. When creating the email itself, ideally use your own pre-saved template with your existing branding so that emails are consistent with anything else you send out, and be sure to include a greeting Hi *|FNAME|* at the start so that your emails are personalised too (assuming your data is clean and complete of course) and a personal introduction so that it doesn’t look too “system generated”. I would also recommend changing the email subject and preview from the ones automatically suggested by Mailchimp so that they look more human too. Just remember they need to be evergreen (i.e. always relevant regardless of the email’s content or when it is received).
5. When creating your email and are at the Design stage, go to the content blocks and you’ll see two RSS options - these are the ones you want and will need to drag into your content where you want your blog to appear. You may wish to drag one in, click on block options and then customise it.
6. Be sure to include an of your blog extract rather than the full content within your email. One of the purposes of blogging is to use it as a hook to get people to visit your website - while they’re there they might look around, take a look at your services, maybe even enquire. And of course every visitor who stays for a while will help your google reputation when it comes to SEO. If you include the full blog in the email then there’s no reason for them to visit your website.
Important - make sure you have have actually set introductory wording as an excerpt within the back end settings of the individual blog itself otherwise Mailchimp will still pull in the full content. This bit is done on your website.
7. Preview and test - always do this before sending ANYTHING on Mailchimp.
Do you have any questions or need a hand?
If so, get in touch via my contact page or book a Mailchimp etc. Help Desk appointment and we can screen share so that I can walk you through doing it for yourself.
Claire