Adding RSS feed merge tags to your newsletters help your subscribers stay up to date on your blog, by sending them your latest posts. Feed merge tags give you explicit, fine-grained control over which blog posts and what content is shown in your campaign.
Creating a category
By adding the merge tag *|FEED:http://blog.example.com[$category=example]|*, you can make sure that only posts with that particular category are brought into your newsletter. So, say for example, that you use your blog to talk about a variety of things, like Local Events, How To directions and exciting Store News. And your subscribers are all serious crafters, but don't live in town. You'd want your newsletter to focus on How To blog posts. That's where the category merge tag becomes handy.
The category merge tag will pull in the category you specify. In this case, your How To posts. Now, let's say that you've already got your RSS campaign set up with the merge tags to pull the last three articles posted and to display titles and descriptions (*|FEEDITEMS:[$count=3]|*, *|FEEDITEM:TITLE|* and *|FEED:DESCRIPTION|* ). When you add in the category merge tag, your newsletter will show your last three How To articles, their titles and descriptions.
This is the merge tag that you'll want to use:
- *|FEED:http://blog.example.com[$category=example]|*
Update the tag with your blog's address. Then, just fill in the name of the category that you want to focus on - exactly as the name appears, including spaces and punctuation. Here's an example from a Wordpress blog:
To just send a newsletter about Big Changes, use the slug Big Changes in your merge tag. It would look like this:
- *|FEED:http://example.wordpress.com[$category=Big Changes]
Category merge tags are great if you want to send targeted campaigns, enriched with content from your blog, to segments of your list.