Most merge tags for campaigns are available in RSS-to-email campaigns, so you can personalize the campaign as well as provide content via an RSS feed. An exception is the use of conditional merge tags, which are not available in RSS-to-email campaigns.
RSS-to-email campaigns have their own specific merge tags that help you format the content that we pull in from your RSS feed. We can either format your campaigns for you with our Automagical tags or you can choose which of the individual items from your RSS feed you'd like to include on your campaigns.
Automagical Formatting
With Automagical formatting, you can quickly pull in your content and go. We do all the formatting for you.
- *|RSS:POSTS_HTML|* and *|RSS:POSTS|*
- The POSTS tags create a progressively generated set of summaries for all of your posts in HTML format. Also shown will be TITLE, DATE, AUTHOR, COMMENTS, Facebook, Google +1 and Twitter sharing buttons. If you want to remove any of these items you can set up items individually.
- *|RSS:POSTS_FULL|* and *|RSS:POSTS_HTML_FULL|*
- The POSTS_FULL tag creates a progressively generated set of your full RSS posts in HTML format. It'll also show TITLE, DATE, AUTHOR, COMMENTS, Facebook, Google +1 and Twitter sharing buttons. If you want to remove any of these items, you can set up items individually.
- *|RSS:POSTS_TEXT|*
- Creates a progressively generated set of summaries for all of your posts in text format. It'll also show TITLE, DATE, AUTHOR, a link to your post and a link to the comments on the post.
- *|RSS:POSTS_TEXT_FULL|*
- Creates a progressively generated set of all of your posts in plain format. It'll also show TITLE, DATE, AUTHOR and a link to the comments on the post.
- *|RSS:RECENT|*
- Show links for the 5 most recently published entries before the posts in the email. By default, we pull in your 5 most recent post, but you can set this number to as high as 10 by adding the number of posts that you'd like to the merge tag. Example: *|RSS:RECENT8|*.
Format Your Own
If you want more control over what content shows up in your campaign, we let you decide which elements of your RSS feed to show on your campaigns.
Merge Tags for Feeds
Use the following merge tags to pull in information about your RSS feed.
- *|RSSFEED:TITLE|*
- The title of the RSS feed.
- *|RSSFEED:DATE|*
- The publish date of the feed.
- *|RSSFEED:URL|*
- The URL for the feed as a whole, if provided.
- *|RSSFEED:DESCRIPTION|*
- The feed description, if provided.
Merge Tags for Items
- *|RSSITEMS:|* and *|END:RSSITEMS|*
- Create the beginning and ending flags for each RSS item. The stuff between gets replicated for each post in the feed. So if you want to use individual RSS:ITEM merge tags, use *|RSSITEMS:|* and *|END:RSSITEMS|* as your open and close tags surrounding the following items you want to include.
- *|RSSITEM:TITLE|*
- The title of the RSS item.
- *|RSSITEM:URL|*
- The URL for the RSS item.
- *|RSSITEM:DATE|*
- The publish date of the RSS item.
- *|RSSITEM:AUTHOR|*
- The name of the author for the RSS item, if provided.
- *|RSSITEM:COMMENTS_URL|*
- The URL for comments on your post, if provided.
- *|RSSITEM:CATEGORIES|*
- A comma-separated list of the categories (tags and "posted in") for the RSS item.
- *|RSSITEM:CONTENT|*
- A short summary of the RSS item content in HTML format.
- *|RSSITEM:CONTENT_FULL|*
- The full content for the RSS item in HTML format, if provided.
- *|RSSITEM:CONTENT_TEXT|*
- A short summary of the RSS item content in plain-text format.
- *|RSSITEM:CONTENT_FULL_TEXT|*
- The full content for the RSS item in plain-text format, if provided.
- *|RSSITEM:IMAGE|*
- Lets you pull in images and format them to match your layout.
- *|RSSITEM:ENCLOSURE|*
- A link to any attached file (like a podcast) with an icon, file name, and file size.
- *|RSSITEM:ENCLOSURE_URL|*
- The URL for any attached file (like a podcast).
- *|RSSITEM:SOURCE|*
- A link to the external "source" of this item, if one is provided.
This tag will just type out your URL, it will not automatically create a link. If you want the source to be displayed as a link ,you'll need to create a link in your campaign. When you set up your link, set your protocol to "other" and place the merge tag in the "URL" field. - *|RSSITEM:SOURCE_TITLE|*
- The title of your source URL.
Social RSS Merge Tags
- *|RSSITEM:SHARE|*
- Add links for this item in your email to popular social bookmarking sites.
- *|RSSITEM:SHARE:Facebook,Twitter,Digg|*
- Add links for this item to specific social bookmarking sites.
- *|RSSITEM:LIKE|*
- Add a like button for the particular RSS item.
- *|RSSITEM:TWITTER|*
- Add a tweet button for the particular RSS item.
- *|RSSITEM:PLUSONE|*
- Add a Google +1 button for the particular RSS item.
- *|RSSITEM:INSTAPAPER|*
- Adds a "Read Later" button for the particular RSS item which directs subscribers to Instapaper's website to save the URL of the feed item.
Merge Tags Overview
You can personalize or customize your MailChimp campaigns through the use of Merge Tags. Merge Tags are automagically created for you when you add fields to your list. The fields that you set up ("Email Address", "Name", "Phone", etc) will not only become the fields in your list and signup form, but will also have a corresponding Merge Tag. Learn more about personalizing your campaigns and signup forms.
When creating your content, copy the Merge Tags from this article then paste the tag into your campaign as plain text.
