Multiple Feed Emails

Create automated emails that incorporates content from multiple RSS feeds.

When building an automated email template you can incorporate multiple RSS feeds to display data from multiple blogs, event calendars, news sources or any content that is delivered in an RSS feed.

FeedOtter's advanced plans support combining multiple data sources into a single stream or displaying content sources in separate loops. This feature can help you consolidate data from multiple places and display content in different sections of a newsletter with ease.

Example 1: There are two loops. The first loop displays the first post from RSS Feed 1. The second loop displays 3 posts from RSS feed 2. The important part to note is the loop text "feedotter.posts". Adding a number to this will allow you to access the data from multiple feeds. "feedotter.posts" is always feed1 - the topmost feed shown in the UI.

  ###Display 1 post from RSS Feed 1###
     [% for post in feedotter.posts | slice(0,1) %]
          [[post.post_title]] - [[post.post_url]]
     [% endfor %]

     ###Display 3 posts from RSS Feed 2###
     [% for post in feedotter.posts2 | slice(0,3) %]
          [[post.post_title]] - [[post.post_url]]
     [% endfor %]

Example 2: In the example we use a special filter to combine the data from feeds 1 and 2. This filter will remove duplicates and order all posts by their published date.

###Combined Posts From All Feeds. De-duped and sorted by Published Date###
     [% for post in feedMerge([feedotter.posts, feedotter.posts2]) %]
          [[post.post_date | date("n/j/Y")]] == [[post.post_title]]
          [[post.post_url]]
          ###
     [% endfor %]

Considerations

Compared to single-feed automated campaigns. Multiple feeds introduce several nuances that need to be considered.

Automated Email Triggering Considerations

In a basic, single-feed automated email FeedOtter will always evaluate the feed content and look for new content published after the last send date. With multiple feeds this you have the option to specify which feeds to look at when determining if an email should be created.

Toggle this in the FeedOtter interface:

<screenshot of checkbox>

Displaying new content vs. any content

Default behavior is for only new content to appear in a post loop. When using multiple feeds you should decide if you want to display the first x posts from a given feed without any date filtering or you want to only show new posts. Showing only new posts is great but care must be taken so that subscribers do not receive an email with an empty section.

To solve this you can do one of the following:

Show the first 3 posts in a feed no matter what.

<h3>Display Content for Dogs</h3>
<!--## [% for post in feedotter.allPosts |slice(3) %] ##-->
<ul>
        <li>[[post.post_title]]</li>
</ul>
<!--## [% endfor %] ##-->

feedotter.allPosts will return the articles in an RSS feed without any date filtering.

Show a group of posts ONLY if there is at least 1 new post

<!--## [% if feedotter.posts|length > 0 %] ##-->
        <h3>Display Content for Dogs</h3>
        <!--## [% for post in feedotter.posts %] ##-->
            <li>[[post.post_title]]</li>
        <!--## [% endfor %] ##-->
<!--## [% endif %] ##-->

The primary reason this is done, is to show and hide a section header based on the presence of content. This way your subscribe never sees a Headline with no content underneath.

Example Including Pardot Conditionals

Certain ESP's such as Pardot, MailChimp, Marketing Cloud, and Active Campaign have the ability to wrap content in subscriber conditionals.

Using these ESP tokens allows us to personalize the content shown to subscribers based on data stored on the contact record.

{{#if Recipient.Dog_Category}} //Pardot if conditional
    <!--## [% if feedotter.posts|length > 0 %] ##-->
        <h3>Display Content for Dogs</h3>
        <!--## [% for post in feedotter.posts%] ##-->
            <li>[[post.post_title]]</li>
        <!--## [% endfor %] ##-->
    <!--## [% endif %] ##-->
{{/if}} //Close Pardot if statement

In this approach you would build out your multi-feed email the same as usual in FeedOtter. Then add your ESP conditionals around each section of content that you wish to toggle based on subscriber data.

In FeedOtter your email will be loaded with data for ALL sections. When this email is processed through your ESP various sections will be removed and customized for each subscriber's preference.

FeedOtter saves you the time building a gigantic email full of content and your ESP customizes the email for each recipient.