The Benefits Of RSS Marketing Automation

Do I need marketing automation?

Marketing automation can handle marketing processes and multi-platform campaigns. Businesses of all sizes use automation to save time, simplify processes and improve ROI. It can improve the lead qualification process and generate targeted digital campaigns that can be optimized quickly.

IT SAVES TIME! AND ACCOMPLISHES MORE THAN ONE PERSON COULD MANUALLY.

Featured Images in RSS is the #1 plugin used with RSS email. Learn about the benefits of RSS marketing automation and ways the Featured Images plugin can be used.

Here’s How RSS Email Works

When a blog is published it is sent out via the RSS feed to anything that set up to capture the data, such as Mailchimp RSS Email. The feed triggers an email through your email service. The email service can have time and frequency settings for campaigns separate from the blog. Basic set up sends all blogs to all subscribers.

Nurture the Purchasing Funnel

Automation can help guide customers through the purchasing process by sending one email or a set of emails. Creating automation requires data and triggers, for example:

When someone signs up for something, trigger an immediate email “welcome message”.
A “drip”series of emails can be created with reminders, offers, or product uses.
When someone shows interest by joining a group or using the recommendations tool, trigger a customer journey series.
After completing a purchase, trigger an email educating them about the product.
With the integration of shopping cart data, trigger offers or reminders for items left in the cart or “cart abandonment” emails.
With information about past purchases, trigger related products suggestions and upsell offers.

Automated funnels can take a lot of work to set-up and strategize. The simplest automation to start with is RSS email. And with segmentation, you can increase email performance by sending out a category of posts or products to customers (rather than all posts to everyone which is the basic set up). Topics might cover product uses, testimonials and offers. Create a custom designed email template using the Featured Images plugin media and enclosure tags for attention grabbing messages to nurture the funnel.

Read how to use media tags with Mailchimp or how to feature a current blog post on any email.

Customer Retention

Businesses that depend on repeat customers can benefit from automation. With segmentation using customer data you can send specific content to customers automatically. RSS email topics might include product announcements, upsell offers, and support topics. Create a blog category for the topic, or use the Featured Images plugin setting to exclude categories, to create a specific campaign to existing customers. The plugin’s text wrap position and padding settings will perfect layouts with multiple help articles.

Just like nurturing the purchasing funnel, you can nurture retention using RSS email or more complex automation triggers and drip email tactics.

Build Cadence with Storytelling

One thing we know about blogging is posting on a regular basis is key. It keeps visitors coming back while attracting search engines to crawl fresh content. RSS email services provide options to send recents posts out immediately or on a daily/monthly/weekly schedule. A business can use frequency to tell the story about their brand and customers. For example, a jewelry designer client shared engagement stories from customers who proposed using their engagement rings. Even people who were off the market enjoyed reading them! Staying top-of-mind with “engaging” customer stories attracts new customers and referrals from past customers, or really anyone who loves it.

How-to:

You can start storytelling by brainstorming a narrative that extends out to a series. Determine how frequently to post and establish a content calendar to guide production.
Add an email opt-in form to blogs asking readers to subscribe to new posts.
Set-up the RSS email campaign to automatically send new posts to subscribers.

Our plugin’s publish delay feature adds a time buffer before new posts hit the RSS feed. It gives you a chance to make corrections before an automated email shoots out.

Storytelling frequency guide:

Daily – Be careful this is a big commitment and requires a lot of content variation, with the risk of burning out readers.
Weekly – Still a lot of work, yet a reasonable schedule to keep readers entertained.
Bi-weekly – Publishing twice per week is a good way to meet in the middle from daily.
Bi-monthly – Publishing twice per month can keep the work load down, versus weekly, while staying reasonably top of mind.
Monthly – The minimum commitment with the lowest cadence for engagement through storytelling. One good memorable story is better than no story.

Storytelling is best done visually.

Design emails for maximum visual impact. Customize your RSS email template to display full width images, with the title and text placed below the image. Using Featured Images In RSS Premium, set the image size option to “full size” and use media tags.

Start Using Featured Images In RSS for Free

Upgrade to Featured Images In RSS Premium to build beautiful custom automated email layouts with the help of our expert tech support in the United States. Download the free version to start the 14-day trial to make sure it works for you before you buy.