Magento 2 blog is the best marketing tool you can use to attract more customers to your store, share some relevant information and gather loyal subscribers who strive to learn more about the experience shared in your blog posts. Content is king and it would be a crime not use it to its full extent to get more traffic.
By managing a blog on your Magento 2 store you create a community of followers. They share your idea and want to receive updates on the topics they are interested in on a regular basis.
Correspondingly, except for sharing your blog posts on social media, you need to consider emailing them to your subscribers. Having hundreds or thousands of blog subscribers it will be impossible to do it manually.
That is why in this article you are going to learn how to email your Magento 2 blog posts automatically using the Mailchimp, all-in-one Email Marketing Platform.
Before you start configuring your Magento 2 blog posts emails, you obviously need to set up an account on Mailchimp: fill out the contact info, add contacts and create the email templates.
The automatic blog posts emailing on Mailchimp is performed using the RSS Feed, the XML file that contains all your blog posts and is located in the Magento 2 Blog Sidebar, usually at the bottom.
To start sending your Magento 2 blog posts to your subscribed contacts automatically using Mailchimp you need to create the RSS Campaign.
Create RSS Campaign in Mailchimp
Take the following steps to set up the RSS Campaign on Mailchimp:
1. Navigate to the Create section of your Mailchimp dashboard and choose the Email from the dropdown.
2. Switch from the Regular to the Automated section and select the Share blog updates option.
3. Enter the Name of a campaign and choose the Audience.
4. Fill out the RSS feed and send timing information.
- Enter your Magento 2 Blog RSS Feed link. In case you are using our Magento 2 Blog Extension the link is as follows:
Note: you are also able to set Magento 2 blog posts of a certain category to be automatically sent to your blog subscribers. In this case, you need to add the category ID to the blog RSS Feed link.
- Set the Frequency, Time and Day or Days you want the blog posts to be sent on.
Note: in case you set posts to be emailed to your Magento 2 blog subscribers weekly but fail to publish anything during the week, the emails will not be sent. The system emails your blog posts automatically just in case there is at least one new post published during the frequency frame you set in this config.
- Mark the Resize RSS feed images to fit template in order for your blog posts images to look responsive in the email.
- Press the Next button.
5. Choose the Audience, Segment, Tag or Group you want to send your Magento 2 blog posts automatically to and press the Next button.
6. Fill out the Campaign Info.
- Set the Campaign Name.
- Enter the Email Subject and Preview Text.
- Set the From Name and Email.
Configure the Mailchimp Campaign Tracking in order to make your Email Campaign even more productive and get some useful information from it. You will be able to analyze, and use the received information to make your future email campaigns more effective.
Additionally, Mailchimp provides flexible social media management allowing you to publish your blog posts to Twitter and Facebook automatically after the email sending out. However, our Magento 2 Blog extension already has the feature of automatic publication to Facebook.
Once you finished with the RSS Campaign info, you can move to the Next step
7. Choose the RSS Campaign email Layout from the variety of templates provided. Once you choose the template, you will be directed to the Design stage.
Note: you can change the template later, if you need to.
8. Select the RSS content blocks which are pre-loaded with the Mailchimp RSS to merge tags that will be pulled from your Magento 2 blog RSS Feed into the Mailchimp RSS Campaign. You can also add other blocks and customize your template as you want to
i.e. add the company logo, social sharing buttons, and any relevant info.
Pay attention to RSS merge tags, since they pull information from your Magento 2 Blog RSS Feed into your Mailchimp RSS campaigns. In case some of the RSS tags are incorrect or missing, your blog subscribers will receive empty emails.
At this stage, you're also able to Preview the template that will be sent to your Magento 2 blog subscribers. Besides, you can Send it to one of the contacts to see how it will actually appear in the email your customers receive. That gives you an opportunity to make the necessary improvements.
The test email will be as follows, and will contain all the info according to the RSS block you have set in the template:
9. Start RSS.
When you finish setting up the RSS Campaign for your Magento 2 blog post automatic sending, you will see all the stages and error reports, if there are some on this stage.
So, once everything is set as it should be, you can press the Start RSS button in order for the RSS Campaign to be enabled and start according to the schedule or....
...you can choose Send now and start RSS Campaign for emails to be sent to your Magento 2 blog subscribers immediately.
So, that's it. From now on your Magento 2 Blog posts will be sent to your subscribers automatically with the help of the Mailchimp Email System. By sending the blog posts to your subscribers you keep them updated, create a friendly environment, and establish a community of like-minded people on your Magento 2 store.
Blog is one of the basic ways to drive traffic to your website. However, sending the blog posts to your Magento 2 blog subscribers is the best way to retain customer loyalty.