How to Send RSS Email From Pardot

Before we begin automating RSS emails we have to create the necessary Pardot lists and campaigns. Pardot lists will allow us to group all of our subscribers together.  Creating a single Pardot campaign for our RSS email will allow us to report on our RSS email's engagement; clicks,opens... over time.

1. Login to Pardot
2. Navigate to Marketing > Campaigns
3. Click the Add Campaign button and create a new campaign with a description name such as Weekly Blog Subscriber Digest Email

If you already have a list or dynamic list in Pardot that contains your subscribers you can skip this step.

1. From the left-side Pardot menu select Marketing > Segmentation > Lists
2. Click the Add List button and create a new list to contain your RSS email subscribers. Give it a descriptive name such as Blog Subscriber List or Monthly Blog Digest
3. If you use the Pardot Email Preference Center and want this email to appear as an option, check the Public list checkbox

Before you can begin automating RSS emails with Pardot you will need to find the data source: an RSS feed.

Many websites have a feed tag that can be appended to the base url.  An example is any website built on WordPress where the RSS feed typically looks like this:

https://website.com/feed/
https://website.com/category/feed/
https://website.com/tag/feed/

Where "feed" is appended to the end of the website, blog, category, or tag URL.

If your website is running on Drupal or Expression Engine it might look like this:

https://website.com/blog/rss.xml

If you can't find your RSS don't give up! Almost every modern content management software supports RSS feed natively or with a simple plugin.  Don't be afraid to ask your website developer for help finding the RSS feed URL they will more than likely be able to supply it.

1. Log In to your FeedOtter account (or create a free trial account ) and click on the New Pardot RSS Campaign button

2.  Give your email campaign a memorable name and select "scheduled" as your automation type.

We have setup our Pardot RSS email to automatically send every week, on Thursday at 9am CT. By default, FeedOtter will only send an email when there is new content. While optional, this is most typically left on. You can change this setting by clicking Show Advanced Options at the bottom.

If you haven't already, find your RSS feed URL and paste it into the appropriate box in the FeedOtter interface.

FeedOtter supports any valid RSS/Atom/XML datafeed. In addition, FeedOtter supports adding multiple RSS feeds which can be combined into 1 content stream or used to create complex multi-section newsletters automatically.

If you’re not sure if your RSS feed will work with FeedOtter we recommend using https://validator.w3.org/feed/ to ensure your feed is valid. Any valid feed will work with FeedOtter.

Here, we also told FeedOtter to display 5 posts with each email send. This means FeedOtter will only send up to 5 new posts in your email.

If you are using one of the built-in email templates you can choose from any number of customization options.  The most important ones are:

• Adjusting colors to match your brand
• Uploading a logo or header file
• Configuring the email, name, reply-to
• Think of an engaging subject line and include the title of your first RSS post using a token

Our RSS email will rely on Pardot's built-in campaign reporting to measure email engagement statistics such as opens and clicks but we also want to measure the increase in website traffic delivered by our content emails. To do this we can use UTM parameters.

FeedOtter has a built-in feature that will automatically add the correct UTM parameters to your content links.

When you are done with the campaign setup its time to publish your new automated RSS email to Pardot where we will complete the last step of setting up our email audience.

Click the Integration tab button in the left column of your campaign window.

If you have previously setup a Pardot connection in your FeedOtter account you can select it from the dropdown. Otherwise, click the Add a Pardot Connection button.

Integrating Pardot with FeedOtter requires that you complete this one-time step.  You will need to perform the following tasks in your Pardot account:

• Create a dedicated Pardot user for FeedOtter
• Activate this new Pardot account
• Gather the email, api key, and password
• Enter those 3 details into FeedOtter

Pardot connects to FeedOtter using an ultra-secure REST api integration.  If you have integrated Pardot with other add-ons you will be familiar with this process.  We've created a helpful guide that will walk you through the entire process.

Read our Pardot API setup guide.

When you have completed the above steps you will be presented with an interface that allows you to select the following:

A Pardot Campaign

This is the campaign we setup earlier. Start typing to search and select it.

Pardot Lists & Suppression Lists

Here you can select which lists will receive your email and which ones should be suppressed.

Click the Save Settings and Start Campaign button to complete the setup.

Now that you've started your Pardot RSS email campaign in FeedOtter.  You can view, pause, and interact with your automated RSS email from the dashboard.

When the next scheduled send time is reached, FeedOtter will pull content from your RSS feed and compose a new email in Pardot.

This email will be scheduled to send.  Sending will begin as fast as Pardot can process the email.