What Is Content-to-Email Automation, and How Is It Different From Your ESP?

Content-to-email automation is software that turns the content and data a company already publishes into formatted emails and sends them automatically, or as ready-to-review drafts, through the email platform the company already uses. Feedotter is a content-to-email automation platform. It connects your CMS, feeds, APIs and spreadsheets to Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot, Eloqua or Salesforce Marketing Cloud, builds each email in your own template, and sends it through your existing ESP. There is no migration, and your lists, segmentation and reporting stay where they are.

Your ESP is built to manage contacts and send email. It is not built to watch your blog, read a spreadsheet or assemble a digest the moment something new is published. That gap is why so many recurring content emails are still built by hand, one issue at a time.

What is content-to-email automation?

Content-to-email automation takes information that already exists outside your email platform and turns it into finished emails without anyone copying, pasting or rebuilding a template. The definition has three parts.

1. The content and data you already publish. Blog posts, articles, RSS and JSON feeds, CMS entries, podcast episodes, videos, release notes and spreadsheet rows. Nothing new has to be written for the email.
2. Formatted emails. Each item is mapped into a template you designed once, in your own HTML. Headlines, excerpts and images land in the right blocks on every send, with images resized automatically.
3. Sent automatically, or as drafts, through your existing platform. The finished email goes to the ESP you already use. It either sends on a schedule or when new content appears, or waits as a draft for an editor to review and approve.

The key difference from most email automation is the trigger. A welcome series or cart-abandonment flow is triggered by something a subscriber does. Content-to-email automation is triggered by new content becoming available: a published post, an updated row, a new entry in a feed.

Feedotter has offered this layer since 2016. It sits between your content and your email platform, so each side keeps doing the job it is good at.

How is content-to-email automation different from an ESP?

An ESP manages your audience and delivers email. Content-to-email automation builds the email from your content and hands it to the ESP to send. The two do different jobs and work together.

• Contacts, lists and segments. Your ESP owns them. Feedotter sends to them, with no list migration.
• Delivery, deliverability and compliance. Your ESP owns them, and Feedotter leaves them unchanged.
• Reporting. Opens, clicks and campaign analytics stay in your ESP. Feedotter adds per-item and per-send reporting on the content.
• What triggers an email. In your ESP, a campaign schedule or a subscriber action. In Feedotter, new content: a published post, an updated row, a new feed item.
• Where the email content comes from. In your ESP, it is typed or pasted into the email builder. Feedotter pulls it from your CMS, feeds, APIs and spreadsheets.
• Recurring emails. In your ESP, each issue is rebuilt by hand. Feedotter fills in your template automatically on every send.

Many ESPs include a basic RSS-to-email feature, usually limited to one feed per campaign and a fixed layout. That covers the simplest case. Where those built-in features stop is covered on the Enterprise RSS email page.

What about newsletter production tools?

A newsletter production tool is content-to-email automation applied to newsletters. It pulls articles into an issue, lets editors arrange and review them, and sends through the ESP. Teams running many newsletters use it to cut production time per issue. In an ESP alone, each issue is assembled by hand.

Which emails can content-to-email automation handle?

Any recurring email whose information starts outside the email platform is a candidate. These are the most common:

• Blog digests. Daily, weekly or per-post emails built from your newest articles. See Blog digest.
• RSS emails. Any RSS or JSON feed turned into an email on a schedule or when a new item appears. See Enterprise RSS email.
• Alerts. Security advisories, breaking news or research alerts, sent when the new item is published rather than on a fixed day.
• Release notes and product updates. New entries from a changelog or product blog, packaged into a customer email.
• Video and podcast emails. New YouTube videos or podcast episodes pulled into an email for viewers and listeners.
• Financial and tabular data emails. Market updates, research updates and performance reports built from spreadsheets, databases or JSON.
• Newsletters. Recurring issues assembled from one or several sources, sent automatically or reviewed by editors first.

One email can combine several sources, for example the week's blog posts, a new podcast episode and an upcoming event in a single send. See Content automation for the full list of supported sources.

How does content-to-email automation work?

The setup happens once. After that, every send builds itself from your live content.

1. Connect your sources. Link WordPress, Contentful, Arc XP, Airtable, Google Sheets, an RSS, JSON or XML feed, or an API. See all integrations.
2. Map content into your template. Your own HTML template defines where headlines, excerpts, images and links go. You design it once and never rebuild it.
3. Set the rules. Choose a schedule or send when new content appears, and filter by category, author, date or keyword.
4. Choose the level of automation. Feedotter supports three: fully automated sends, ready-to-review drafts that editors approve, and editorially curated issues where editors pick and arrange the content.
5. Deliver through your ESP. The finished email goes to Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot, Eloqua, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Mailchimp, Braze, Omeda or Iterable, and sends to your existing lists.

Your marketing team owns every rule, template and schedule. No developer is needed to set up a new source or automation. See How it works.

Do you have to change your email platform?

No. Feedotter prepares the finished email and hands it to the ESP you already use. Your platform keeps managing contacts, leads, segmentation, delivery and reporting, and your deliverability reputation and compliance setup stay exactly as they are. Nothing is migrated.

Your templates and design stay too. Feedotter fills in the template you already built, so your emails keep the design you use today.

This matters most when your reporting has to live in one place. YouGov's marketing team needed every newsletter tracked inside Marketo, which ruled out tools that sent from outside it. With Feedotter sending through Marketo, they went from 32 to 150 emails a month without adding staff. Read the YouGov case study.

See the integration pages for Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot, Eloqua and Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

How do publishers use content-to-email automation?

Publishers running many newsletters use content-to-email automation for newsletter production. The pain is the same at every publisher: hours per issue, multiplied by the number of issues a month. The results below come from Feedotter customers.

• The Channel Company produces more than 200 newsletters a month in Marketo. Each one used to take about two hours to build and now takes seven minutes, a 94% reduction that saves 376 hours a month. Read the case study.
• YouGov went from daily newsletters in 2 regions to all 9 target regions and grew its newsletter audience 350%. The team now builds 9 custom newsletters in less time than it used to take to build 2. Read the case study.
• IEEE has used Feedotter with Marketo for about six years. Replacing a Google Doc handoff cut the wait for editorial content from several hours to a few minutes. Read the case study.

Editors who want control keep it. In a ready-to-review workflow, Feedotter assembles the issue and editors review, edit and approve it before it sends. In a curated workflow, editors pick and arrange the content themselves. See Curated newsletter and Feedotter for publishing.

Frequently asked questions

What is content-to-email automation?

Content-to-email automation is software that turns the content and data a company already publishes into formatted emails and sends them automatically, or as ready-to-review drafts, through the email platform the company already uses. Feedotter is a content-to-email automation platform.

Is content-to-email automation the same as marketing automation?

No. Marketing automation platforms such as Marketo and HubSpot manage leads and run campaigns triggered by subscriber behavior. Content-to-email automation builds emails from your content and sends them through that platform, so the two work together.

Does Feedotter replace my ESP?

No. Feedotter hands the finished email to your existing ESP. Contacts, segmentation, delivery and reporting stay in your platform, and nothing is migrated.

Can editors review emails before they are sent?

Yes. Feedotter's ready-to-review mode creates draft emails, notifies your team and waits for approval before publishing.

What content sources can Feedotter use?

Feedotter pulls from WordPress, Contentful, Arc XP, Airtable, Google Sheets, YouTube, RSS, JSON and XML feeds, APIs and more. One email can combine several sources.

Do I need a developer to set it up?

No. Marketing teams set up sources, templates, rules and review workflows themselves.

In summary

• Content-to-email automation turns content and data you already publish into formatted emails, sent automatically or as drafts for review.
• It is triggered by new content becoming available, not by subscriber behavior.
• Feedotter sends through your existing ESP, so there is no migration and your lists, segmentation and reporting stay put.
• It covers blog digests, RSS emails, alerts, release notes, video and podcast emails, data emails and newsletters.
• Publishers use it for newsletter production: The Channel Company cut build time from about two hours to seven minutes per newsletter.

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