RSS-based Email Automation - Feature Request

Moving this request here from Github (and here).

Don’t think I really need to spend time justifying this feature (it literally puts the ‘automation’ in Marketing Automation Software), but RSS-based emails allow you to both automate the sending and the content of an email based on an external source (usually a website).

Proper RSS implementation consists of two parts:

  1. Pulling content from an RSS feed into an email. I.e declaring a source feed, and using template variables to display information from aformentioned feed (Post title, source link, enclosure image, etc.)
  2. Triggering emails based on feed activity. E.g. Send every X days if there is a new post in the feed.

MailChimp, Mailtrain, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud (personally, I’m partial to Mailchimp’s solution) all handle this very well and should be used for inspiration, and there was even a PR (linked above), that was discontinued after lack of dev adopters.

IMO this is the last major marketing feature that is clearly lacking from Mautic, and is the only thing stopping me (and many others I believe) from switching over 100pct (vs using Mautic for Drip, and another platform entirely for newsletters).

Use Cases

  • Email Newsletters (nuff said)
  • Sending notices of new product releases, protected content (in a series), events, and anything else you add to your website.
  • Reengaging users by sending Recent Activity to people who haven't visited your site in a while

A few weeks ago I created a plugin for “issue” 1 (pulling content from rss feeds). You can find it here:

https://github.com/ChrisRAoW/mautic-rss-to-email-bundle

If you have any question just let me know!

1 Like

Wow, @Chris, that looks amazing!

Sadly, Im out of the country for a while, but I cant wait to give it a whirl (and contribute if you need the help- php is way easier for me to grok than the JS that core Mautic is written in).

@chrisraow I followed your instructions on installing the RSS-to-email plugin, but I can’t seem to get it to work. I downloaded the zip and upload + extract it inside the mautic/plugins folder. I tried running “composer require etc.” but nothing happens. Am I missing something here?

Moving this request here from Github (and here).

Don’t think I really need to spend time justifying this feature (it literally puts the ‘automation’ in Marketing Automation Software), but RSS-based emails allow you to both automate the sending and the content of an email based on an external source (usually a website).

Proper RSS implementation consists of two parts:

Pulling content from an RSS feed into an email.
I.e declaring a source feed, and using template variables to display information from aformentioned feed (Post title, source link, enclosure image, etc.)
Triggering emails based on feed activity.
E.g. Send every X days if there is a new post in the feed.
MailChimp, Mailtrain, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud (personally, I’m partial to Mailchimp’s solution) all handle this very well and should be used for inspiration, and there was even a PR (linked above), that was discontinued after lack of dev adopters.

IMO this is the last major marketing feature that is clearly lacking from Mautic, and is the only thing stopping me (and many others I believe) from switching over 100pct (vs using Mautic for Drip, and another platform entirely for newsletters).

You said it!RSS implementation has helped almost every website to ever use marketing automation.
It has definitely improved the CTR, the number of clicks and every other aspect to be honest.
As of IMO, I am not sure when they will integrate it, but it sure would be nice.

I also think that this would be a great feature to have. It looks like we are missing the “triggering” system from the blog feed to Mautic to start the sending of the emails with the previous mentioned plug in. Even when I have found some paid options for that, noone includes updates neither has a demo.

https://lp.alanmosko.com.br/plugin-mautic-rss (WordPress plug in)
http://www.mauticplugins.com/mautic-rss-to-email

1 Like

Vote for this!

The plugin above sorts item 1 while the “restart campaign” option below appear to let you send and re-send emails automatically… It’s not as elegant as checking the feed but I think it’s the only way to do this right now…

https://github.com/mautic/mautic/pull/6132

There’s also a demo here…

https://navigatetomorrow.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-birthday-campaign-in-mautic

So here we are in Nov 2020 and it appears this plugin while very valuable and appreciated by those that were using it does not work in Mautic 3. I have attempted it and I’ve read a few different places online people having the same issue. Any one have any idea if the author is considering updating it?

1 Like

Just came across the plugin by @chrisraow: GitHub - ChrisRAoW/mautic-rss-to-email-bundle: Mautic plugin to send emails from RSS

It is compatible with 3.3.2 now.

Haven’t tested it yet. But will do it soon.

1 Like

It’s working…trust me :wink:

2 Likes

We are using this plugin it works really well with 3.3.3 as well.

We created a script, that is called every week, and the past week’s posts are pull in into the email via RSS. I also needed to install another WP plugin, that selects the RSS items based on date, not on number of items. The script creates a new segment email, pushes in the RSS fields, (so the plugin can process it), fills out mandatory data via API and sets the timing for Sunday morning.

Would it be interesting for anyone to read the process? I can make a blogpost about it.

5 Likes

Interested, please share the blog post.

ok, I’ll make it. Plz note, this is not campaign based action, just timed.

1 Like

Bump:
Not forgotten, jut busy.

4 Likes

Hi Joey, I would still be very interested in reading the process!
Think this functionality is golden.

Thanks, Jaap

This turned out to be a more tricky job then it sounds.

  1. Get a special (free) Wordpress plugin, that generates an rss feed from the last blogposts based on your time frame settings. (the name is RSS control)
  2. Download the plugin mentioned above
  3. Modify your template to fit the generated content
  4. Create a campaign, that loops your email generation

Now this solution doesn’t solve the problem of “trigger campaign when a new blog post is added”. It is a periodically generated email. Like Jaap’s Sunday News :slight_smile:

If you want to trigger the email generation, you need to make additional steps, and that is not covered in my tutorial, just the items above.

1 Like

Thanks Joey, that’s very helpful already!

Hi Joey, just wanted to start your tutorial, but this is not working anymore.

Got a refund from PayPal in the meantime, but you should take it down for the future.

Thanks,
Georg