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Creating RSS Emails

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Cris Echeguren
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Rich Site Summary (RSS) is a method of publishing frequently updated information (typically blog entries or website posts) through a feed, including a summary of the content and related metadata. RSS-based emails allow you to include the feed (and related data) within an email that can be delivered to a list of subscribers. 

The email designer within SharpSpring allows for the creation of RSS emails that populate with content from a blog, or posts from a website. These RSS emails can be sent automatically to a list on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This article provides information on setting up RSS emails within SharpSpring.


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Locating SharpSpring Blog Feed URLs

RSS Feed URL locations can vary depending on where your blog is hosted, or your content management system (CMS). To locate the Feed URL of your SharpSpring blog, do the following:

  1. Go to your published blog's landing page.
  2. Scroll to the bottom of the landing page.
  3. Locate the RSS Feed link.


Locating Non-SharpSpring Blog Feed URLs

RSS Feed URL locations can vary depending on where your blog is hosted, or your content management system (CMS). To locate the Feed URL in the majority of CMS platforms, do the following:

  1. Access your blog.
  2. Right-click on your blog's page and choose the option View Page Source. 
  3. In the HTML source page that appears, search for RSS.
  4. Search until you find a code that resembles the following:
    href="http://www.example.com/rss.xml"
  5. Select the content following href=". 
  
Note: Wordpress Feed URLs will often be wpblog
.yourdomain.com/feed/.

 

 


Adding the RSS Widget to an Email

To set an email as RSS-based, do the following:

  1. In SharpSpring's top toolbar, click
    Content > Emails.
  2. Create or edit an email. 
  3. In the the main settings menu of the email
    designer, click  rss.png  RSS Subscription.
  4. Click the Settings tab.
  5. Click the checkbox for Enabled.
  6. In the Feed URL box, enter the RSS feed URL to pull content from.
  7. In the List box, enter the list name.
  8. In the Frequency in the Send menu, set the time for the email send.
  9. Click the Style tab.
  10. In the RSS Title Styles section, change the font family, size, weight and color of the article title.
  11. In the RSS Body Styles section, change the font family, size, weight and color of the article paragraph text.
  12. In the Image Styles section, add padding
    or additional space between the images
    and text of your blog articles.
  13. Click the Layout tab.
  14. In the Number of Posts to Include menu, select the number of blog posts to show in the email.
  15. Drag-and-drop one of the following display widgets into a layout section or content block of the email:
  



Click to enlarge.
Note: Emails will only be sent if there are new posts.
Note: The drag-and-drop functionality does not work with legacy templates.
Widget   Description
Top Story  

Shows the image and description for your most recent blog post and links to the four other most recent blog articles.

  
Titles Only  

Shows only links of your most recent blog post titles.

  
Titles and
Summary		  

Shows links of your most recent blog post titles and a description for each.

  
Images and
Summary		  

Shows links of your most recent blog posts, an image, and description for each.

  


Once you have dragged-and-dropped one of the four widgets into the email, something similar to the following code will added to your email:

{!Widget_RSS_Items_5_top}

When your email is received, this widget code changes to display your blog articles in the format you selected. 


Testing and Scheduling Emails

Once an RSS email has been created, you can test it to see how it looks when it is sent. These tests can be sent to specified test lists and be scheduled to send at specific times.

The following are options for testing and sending emails:

  
Click to enlarge.
Option   Description
Litmus Tests   Perform Litmus tests (at monetary cost) to view the email across different platforms and devices.
Send to Lists   Immediately send emails directly to a list.
Schedule Emails   Schedule emails to send at a later date and time.  

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