Creating RSS Emails

Tip: Are you looking for information about Constant Contact’s Email and Digital Marketing product? This article is for Constant Contact’s Lead Gen & CRM product. Head on over to the Email and Digital Marketing articles by clicking here. Not sure what the difference is? Read this article.

Locating Lead Gen & CRM 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 Lead Gen & CRM 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-Lead Gen & CRM 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, access your blog and login as an administrator. 

1. Right-click on your blog's page and choose the option View Page Source. 
   
   

    

2. Search for RSS in the HTML source page that appears until you find a code that resembles the following:
   href="http://www.example.com/rss.xml"
   
   

    

3. Select and copy the content following href=". 
   
   

    

Adding the RSS Widget to an Email

Once you have copied the feed URL from your blog, you can add the RSS widget to emails.

To set an email as RSS-based, create or edit an email create or edit an email from the Email tab in the left toolbar.

1. Click    RSS Subscription in the main settings menu of the email designer.
    
   Note: The    RSS Subscription menu is not available in email templates.
   
    
2. Click the Settings tab.
3. Click the checkbox for Enabled.
4. Enter the RSS feed URL to pull content from in the Feed URL box.
5. Enter the list name in the List box.
6. Set the frequency for the email send in the Frequency section, Send menu.
7. Select the date the email should be sent in the Frequency section, At and On menu. 
   
   

    

8. Click the Style tab.
9. Change the font family, size, weight, and color of the article title in the RSS Title Styles section.
   
   

    

10. Change the font family, size, weight, and color of the article paragraph text in the RSS Body Styles section.
11. Add padding or additional space between the images and text of your blog articles in the Image Styles section.
    
    

     

12. Click the Layout tab.
13. Select the number of blog posts to show in the email in the Number of Posts to Include menu.
14. Drag and drop a display widget into a layout section or content block of the email.
     
    Note: Emails will only be sent if there are new posts.
    
    
    

    Click to enlarge.

The following display widgets are available: 

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

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