Set Up an RSS to Email Connector

• Dynamics 365

RSS to Email Connector Wizard

The RSS to Email Connector Wizard walks you through all of the steps involved with setting up the connector. On the first screen, the following fields will be displayed:

Connector Name: Create a name for this connector

RSS Feed URL: This will in most cases not just be the URL to your blog but there is a different link and it should end in something with rss or ".xml". Search on the site where your blog is hosted for RSS URL to find the format of the URL. Some will be the blog URL + "/rss.xml".

Here are some examples:

• Blogger: The URL format is the blog URL + /rss.xml For example, "http://blogname.blogspot.com/rss.xml" where blogname is the name of your blog
• WordPress: The primary RSS feed is installed in the /feed/ directory. For example, if your site is www.exampleblog.com, your feed can be found at the following location: www.exampleblog.com/feed/.

Click Next at the bottom. When you do this it will attempt to verify your RSS Feed URL, and if this value is correct, you will be directed to the next page.

On the next page, you will fill in:

Subject: This will be the subject of every email that will go out.

Category: This allows you to select a predefined option to help identify and better understand your email statistics.

From User (Optional): You may use this lookup to automatically pull in a From Name and From Email from a user record in Dynamics.

From Name: This will be the name that appears in the From area when the email is received.

From Email: This will be the email that appears in the From area when the email is received.

Reply To Email (Optional): If someone replies or has an out of office email their email will go to the email address you place here. If you do not use this field any replies will go to the From Email.

Marketing Lists: Choose the marketing list(s) that these emails will go out to every time.

Transactional: Denote whether or not the email sent from the RSS connector is a transactional email. This means the email does not contain marketing materials, the email will not respect an unsubscribes, it will send to everyone who has not bounced too many times or marked your emails as spam. Read more about transactional emails here. NOTE: You will only see this field if your account has been switched to the opt-in subscription management method.

Subscription List: If the RSS connector email is not set as a Transactional email, a relevant Subscription List must be specified here to allow recipients the option to opt-out. NOTE: You will only see this field if your account has been switched to the opt-in subscription management method.

Click Next to set up the when the emails will go out.

Time Frame: Set how often the updates will go out. It well send an email with the posts that have been added since the last email that went out.

It will not send any emails with posts posted prior to setting up this connection.

Days to Send: By clicking Daily/Weekly, the Email Send will be sent on each day that you choose. If you choose to keep every day selected, it will send updates each day if there were any new posts. If you just choose Monday it will send everything that was posted from the past week:

If on Time Frame you chose Monthly you will choose which day of the month to send on:

Time to Send: Choose what time you would like the email to go out

Time Zone: Choose which time zone you would like to use when referencing the time in the field above.

RSS to Email Connector Email Template

Click Next and select whether you want to start with a new template or an existing one. If you choose an existing one, it will not change the original template.

Click Next to see the editor. You will see the New Drag and Drop editor with an extra block for where the content from your RSS feed will go.

Click on that block to edit the styles and order of content.

Maximum Number of Posts: This regulates how many posts can be in an email at one time. For example, this could come into play if you choose to send this email once a month and you posted 15 posts that month. You may only want to show the last 5 in the email. Also note that the first time the email goes out for the connector it will take the last 5 if you put 5 in the Max Number of posts field.

Amount of Content Per Post: You can choose to show the 'Full Post' which includes entirety of each post, including text, links, and an image, or you can show an 'Excerpt' with a specific number of words.

Read More Link Text: You'll see the link in the canvas area that says "Read More" you can change that to say whatever you'd like. It will be a link to that specific post. If you do not want this to be there just delete the text from this field.

Edit RSS Content: You can select and reorder the information that will be displayed from your RSS post. You can remove a piece of content by unchecking the checkbox next to the content item.

Click on the RSS Styles tab to change the styles of this particular block. Here we have changed the size and color of the post titles.

You can add other blocks above and below this and add images and text to the rest of the email. Everything in the other blocks will be the same in every email that goes out for this RSS feed connection.

Once you're done, click Save and Close at the bottom right, this will save the email template and the entire connector's settings.

Post-Set Up

These emails will create Email Sends just like any other ClickDimensions email. You'll see the statistics and email events in the Marketing area as well as on the Contact records.

Please make sure to test this with a small internal Marketing List first to double check that your RSS URL is correct and your emails look as you would like them to look.