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FeedBurner RSS-to-Email Hack

December 4th, 2008 | by Amanda

Douglas Karr at The Marketing Technology Blog has been using MailChimp’s RSS-to-Email feature in combination with FeedBurner to send out his email newsletter with ads included.  Doug was gracious enough to share his hack with me, and now I’m passing it along to our readers.

Step 1. Sign up for Adsense for Feeds through Google Adsense. (Doug notes that in his case, this required him to work directly with Google to move his feed’s address and convert his account.)

Step 2. Set up a new list in MailChimp for your FeedBurner subscribers.

Step 3. Export your email list out of your FeedBurner account and import these into the “FeedBurner subscribers” list you set up in MailChimp.

Step 4. Create a new RSS-to-Email Campaign in MailChimp using the FeedBurner feed address rather than your blog’s regular RSS feed address.

Step 5. Design your email and then select the “FeedBurner subscribers” list as the one you want to send to.

Essentially, this pushes the feed, with ads, directly into your MailChimp email.  It looks great and has relevant advertising!

My email list continues to grow - much better than it did with the plain ol’ FeedBurner email.  I don’t make a fortune off of the ads since I have less than one-hundred subscribers - but it’s a few bucks a month that I wouldn’t have had before!

Even without a gigantic list of subscribers, this is one way you can start monetizing your RSS-to-Email campaigns with very little effort.  Thanks again to Doug for the great tip!

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Posted in Emarketing, Business, MailChimp Customers, RSS, Using MailChimp |

6 Comments

    • Shane says:

      Correct me if I’m wrong, but this violates Google’s program policies for Adsense. Have a look at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=48182 under “Ad Placement”. It states:

      “No Google ad or Google search box may be displayed in a pop-up, pop-under, or in an email.”

      It’s a great idea, but it could lead to getting Adsense publishers’ accounts disabled, which then becomes incredibly difficult to get resolved. I personally wouldn’t suggest this.

      Reply to this comment
    • Ben says:

      I think they mean, literally, a “Google ad.” As in, a banner or text ad about Google. Or a Google search box. Not the “ads fed through google adsense.” Which people are sticking in Feedburner emails all the time. It’s pretty common to send ads from adsense out through feedburner’s rss-to-email, but those don’t come with any in-depth tracking of opens and clicks.

      Reply to this comment
    • curt says:

      Are you using blogspot for your blog then?
      Do you use a email sign-up box on the blog that is tied into your mailchimp account, also?

      Reply to this comment
    • Ben says:

      Hi Curt,

      You can use any blog platform. Just give us the RSS feed to deliver. And yes, there’s a signup box you put on your blog, and it’s tied to a MailChimp account that you’d setup ahead of time. You’d also setup a nice, HTML email template with your branding.

      Reply to this comment
    • Derek says:

      By using this hack, do your subscribers signup through MailChimp or feedburner?

      If I am reading right, they sign up through Mail Chimp but are DELIVERED content from Feedburner feed, correct?

      Reply to this comment
      • Ben says:

        @Derek - Yes, everything happens through MailChimp (signup, delivery, tracking) but content is fed to MailChimp via Feedburner.

        Reply to this comment

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