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Send Your Blog Posts Automatically To Subscribers Using MailChimp & MailMunch

There are a number of apps that do an amazing job of collecting emails.

The email marketing process is simply amazing and what you can start right now.

Being a blogger for a few years now, I came to know that for you to keep connecting with your audience is a high tick to build your readership.

This post is driven by the question one of my blog readers asked and I’m going to put the answer straight on this post.

The question is on sharing your blog post with your subscribers directly to your mailing list without having to do that manually and customizing an opt-in form, that is if you have a product to sell (e.g. an eBook).

For the question asked, personally I’ve used Mailmunch and MailChimp respectively. These two platforms are awesome and what every blogger or marketer needs to keep in touch with her customers and/or readers.

These two platforms are awesome and what every blogger or marketer needs to keep in touch with her customers and/or readers.

You can even check out the 13 Marketing Tools For Every Serious Online Marketer.

What do you need to build your mailing list?

First thing first, and it is that you need excellent creative content that can inspire your readers to subscribe.

Secondly, you must display the subscription form with good manners to subscribe your blog. In this sense, avoid too many pop-ups as this offends visitors and in some

In this sense, avoid too many pop-ups as this offends visitors and in some cases, they tend the leave the site.

In this blog, I use Mailmunch which at the time of this post you can find the header area of my blog.

With the above form alone I’ve gotten over 100 real subscribers.

Very hilarious, right?

The good news about this tool is that – it is totally FREE!

The behaviors include the plugin which should display at the right time and the right place, never forcing readers to subscribe and allow users close pop-up with ease.

Mailmunch is best Blogger and WordPress popup plugin that helps you to build your blog subscribers. I have used this plugin myself and you can see the proof in the above screenshot.

This plugin has some professional designs which include: top bar, popover, scroll box, slide bar, and sidebar.

There are several professional looking templates available that maximize your conversion rates. You can customize the form anytime whenever you want.

It has free and premium themes you can choose from.

After selection of preferred form design, you can choose a theme for your opt-in.

There are several themes available in MailMunch, but only a few of them are free.

These integrations involve a few more steps which you can read more here.

The focus in this post is using MailChimp to send blog posts automatically to your MailChimp subscribers and design op-tin forms for your subscribers.

Let’s hit the base hard… 1, 2, 3… GO!

MailChimp is an online platform where you can build your brand and sell more stuff.

We are humans and must be true to ourselves.

Advertising to grow your business can often feel like you’re throwing money into a black hole.

MailChimp gives you the power to see what’s working and the confidence to grow your own way.

If you have a blog, you may want to use an RSS campaign to email new posts to your subscribed contacts.

It could be on Blogger or WordPress.

The process is almost the same only that WordPress users will need to install a plugin.

RSS campaigns use merge tags to pull in RSS (Real Simple Syndication) content from a blog feed.

When an RSS feed is updated with a new blog post, MailChimp will pull that content into the campaign and send it to your subscribers on a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule.

How To Create an RSS Campaign With The Campaign Builder

Step 1: Signup on MailChimp

 In this post, I’ll not assume that everyone is at the same level using the email and campaign list builders.
For this reason, I have to start from scratch.
The first i is to signup with a reliable email service provider and I highly recommend using MailChimp.

They have over 10 million users worldwide!

Now, go here to signup and verify your email.

Step 2: MailChimp account activation

After you might have signed up on MailChimp, you will receive an email.

On receiving the email all you need to do is go to your inbox and click on “Activate”

After doing this you’d be taken to another tab while you fill in the required information and there you go.

Step 3: How to create your first list

After activating your email and filling the form/s as required you’ll want to create a campaign. So, click on create

So, click on create a campaign. This will leave you with options as seen below.

This will leave you with options as seen below.

Now, click on Create an email; another tab will come up while you click on the regular tab, enter a campaign name and choose a list.

After this, you click Begin.

After this comes the Recipients step where you choose a list from the drop-down menu. All you need to do here is to click on the Entire list option or you may want to pick a segmentation option.

While still on the process, click Next to proceed.
On the Setup step page, all you need to do is to input your e-mail subject, from the name, and from email address.
Enable tracking tools, connect Social Media, and configure advanced settings from the available options. When you’re finished, click Next.
After this, what comes next?
The Template step where you choose one of the following options to create and add your content.

From the screenshot above:

  • Click Layouts to choose a Featured or Basic template. Featured templates provide recommendations for the type of content to include in a campaign when you want to accomplish a specific goal, and Basic templates allow you to add content to blank layouts.
  • Click Themes to select from the predesigned layouts.
  • The Saved templates tab allows you to select from any templates you’ve previously saved or imported.
  • The Campaigns tab displays 25 recently sent campaigns and draft campaigns with content.

Choose from Featured, Basic, Themes, Saved templates, Campaigns, or Code your own to begin to design your campaign.

The Code your own tab displays three ways to import a campaign layout from outside of MailChimp:  

a. Paste in code
b. Import from zip, and  
c. Import from URL.

Things To Know Before Designing Your Campaign

Having used MailChimp for some time now and I learn that while sending a campaign through MailChimp, there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind when you create your content.

1. MailChimp works best with HTML and plain-text. For example, Flash and Javascript aren’t supported.
2. MailChimp automatically includes both an HTML version and a plain-text alternative version for each of your subscribers.
This allows your subscribers view your content as expected, regardless of the email client or program they use.
3. Each recipient on your MailChimp list is hidden from all the other recipients. Which means, you deliver a completely separate copy of your email to each recipient, so you can personalize your content for everyone.
This also allows MailChimp to track clicks and opens.
 4. Endeavor to test your campaign before you send to your entire list. For the best possible result, I recommend sending tests to all the popular web-based email services, like Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail respectively.
You may as well want to use the Inbox Preview tool to preview how your email will appear in multiple clients before you click the send button.
Remember to Preview and Test using the drop-down menu to enter preview mode, send a test email, push to mobile, open link checker, or customize Social Cards before you click the “send” button.
While you are done with the creation process you can test your campaign, send the campaign immediately, or schedule it to go out at another time.
Send or schedule

One of the reasons, while I love MailChimp, is their simplicity and availability of Basic templates which combine blank layouts with the Campaign Builder’s drag-and-drop editor, so you have you full control over the layout of your campaign.

The Basic templates which are available in regular and full-width versions. Full-width templates extend the background of each campaign section across the entire width of the client it’s being viewed in.

Full-width templates extend the background of each campaign section across the entire width of the client it’s being viewed in.

One of the benefits of using MailChimp which I like is the ability to send your site updates (blog posts) automatically to your subscribers.

Email Your Blog Posts Automatically To Subscribers

You may not have all the time to write, edit and send your blog posts to your subscribers one-by-one.

Some people even prefer to get news via email instead of checking blogs or using an RSS reader.

With the RSS-to-email, you can publish your content once and send it to your email subscribers without even thinking about it.

Why should you do this?

Without the automation process, you can log into your MailChimp account and manually send out an email campaign containing your latest posts but that’s far from optimal. Luckily, MailChimp has a feature called “RSS to Email” that makes this far easier if you’re running WordPress.

Luckily, MailChimp has a feature called “RSS to Email” that makes this far easier if you’re running WordPress.

How do you do this?

Create your own RSS template, and control how many posts go out and how frequently you send—daily, weekly, or monthly.

And don’t worry: A campaign will only go out when you post something new.

If you’re feeling fancy and want something cool, you can even combine multiple RSS feeds into one email newsletter.

For WordPress users, using a so-called RSS Driven Campaign you can have MailChimp check your site for new posts at a regular interval.

If there are new posts, you can choose to send out a newsletter at a set time.

To do this, you’ll need the URL for your RSS feed.

If you want to include content from multiple feeds, you can use the FEED merge tag to add multiple RSS feeds to one campaign as I discussed earlier.

Or use a feed aggregator like RSS Mix to combine multiple RSS feeds into a single feed.

One good this about this is that you can’t control the RSS content via the Campaign Builder.

If you want your content formatted a certain way, edit the RSS source directly.

What To Know About RSS Sends

When you first set up an RSS campaign, MailChimp shows the last post that was added to your feed as an example as you build your campaign. They don’t send campaigns to your list unless there’s something new to send.They don’t send campaigns to your list unless there’s something new to send.

For example, if you set your campaign to send weekly but haven’t posted in more than a week, MailChimp won’t send to your list until there is a new post on the day your campaign is set to send.

If this is the first time you send your RSS campaign,  they will only send posts from the last 24 hours for daily, from the last seven days for weekly, and the last 30 days for monthly.

How To Create an RSS Campaign

 The RSS campaigns are built in a series of steps, like other email campaigns.So, to create a new RSS campaign, follow these steps.
  1. Navigate to the Campaigns page.
  2. Click Create Campaign.
  3. click create campaign
  4. Click Let Us Guide You.
    click the let us guide you button
  5. In the pop-up modal, click Connect with new contacts to expand the available campaign options.
    click connect with new contacts
  6. Click Share blog updates.
    click the share blog updates card
  7. Enter a campaign name and choose a list.
  8. Click Begin.
    click begin

The RSS Feed Step Setup

You’ll choose the RSS feed you want to use and other settings on the RSS Feed step.

  1. Type your feed’s URL in the RSS Feed URL field.
  2. Choose your send time and other options.

Feed and Send Timing

Choose from Everyday, Every week, or Every month.

Use the drop-down menus and checkboxes to choose the day(s) and time you want your RSS campaign to send.

Don’t fail to resize RSS feed images to fit the template.
Check this box if you want MailChimp to resize the images in your feed to fit your template.
This will help prevent your campaign from stretching. Currently, this option won’t work when the campaign is viewed in Outlook, and videos can’t be resized.
If you see an error message when you enter your RSS feed address, run it through a feed validator.

Conclusion

Having read up until now I believe you’d learn something new or build on your existing knowledge.

If you still have issues with this contact us laying your complaints using the contact us page while we respond to your quest.

Your turn

Have you used any email service provider to automate the whole system of email marketing? What’s your experience using them?

Prince Akwarandu

8 comments

  1. Avatar
    Kay 6 January, 2019 at 17:08 Reply

    Thanks for this Prince Akwarandu.

    You just taught me how to do this easily with Mailmunch.

    But can I send daily blog posts with Mailmunch too?

  2. Avatar
    Andrew Radford 21 January, 2019 at 15:49 Reply

    Hello Prince,

    A great article, thank you for sharing. Has reminded me to focus on building myself that mailing list I keep putting off. Think I will go for Mailchimp.

    I will be using your helpful guide!

    • Prince Akwarandu
      Prince Akwarandu 22 January, 2019 at 11:14 Reply

      You’re welcome, Andrew.

      Thanks for reading, and I’m glad you found it helpful.

      If you have any problem with setting up MailChimp, you can always reach out to us and we’ll try our best to help you.

      Have a great day.

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