RSS stands for RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. An RSS file containing information is usually referred to as an RSS Feed.
An RSS feed is a web feed which is an online XML file containing information such as news stories and blog posts, in a standardised and computer readable format. The content within the RSS feed is published in real time, meaning the latest content will refresh and always be at the top of the page. You can see an example of an RSS feed here.
Within our email marketing platform CMAdvantage, you can pull RSS feeds into your email campaigns, to efficiently generate content automatically. Latest information can be pulled in from your website or other online resources. You simply place the RSS feed tokens into the required position in your email and leave the rest to the platform. Your content becomes dynamic with minimum effort.
In addition to the time saving element, incorporating RSS feeds in emails can help increase campaign engagement as you are providing content hot off the press. In turn, recipients could share the content with others, so potentially leading to increased subscribers too.
It’s worth noting that RSS integration tools provided by email service providers are not all the same and some will have limitations in some scenarios, such as not being able to place content in the specific order you ideally want.
In CMAdvantage, using our Advanced RSS feeds module, you have complete creative control so you can produce the layout you wish.
Let’s delve into one such creative scenario.
NASA’s email campaign contains different types of RSS feed links for different types of content. For example, one for breaking news, one for space station news and another one for education news. Each feed contains different items which in turn include RSS elements such as title, link, description, image and publication date.
In this example, I firstly want to add multiple RSS feed links within one campaign. I also want three breaking news articles in one section, where each news topic is on its own row. In another section within my campaign, I would like to have three space station news articles next to each other. Finally, towards the bottom of the campaign, I would like to have two education news articles under each other.
Translated into the visual representation below, the grey represents breaking news, light blue represents the space station news and green represents the education news.
Boost your email marketing further by incorporating RSS feeds within automated campaigns, so now you have pre-made templates, being automatically populated with dynamic content and being launched at your set schedule. For example, daily or weekly round-ups can be created as automated campaigns to be launched based on the rules you set within your account. They contain RSS feed content so daily or weekly they are launched as new campaigns with refreshed content, without any manual intervention!
Actually, it doesn’t stop there. You can pull in other externally hosted HTML content too if you wish, as we cater for both RSS and other online hosted content.
At Campaignmaster we pride ourselves on going above and beyond for our clients and maximizing their email marketing potential.
Get in touch at info@campaignmaster.co.uk to discuss further and discover how our tools can greatly boost your email marketing efforts.
