Now that I switched Ashley’s site to WP Engine, I’ve been trying to figure out a good system to replace her outdated Feedblitz RSS to Email system so that her readers can get a weekly digest emailed to them (if they have subscribed to it).
The choices boil down to Aweber and Mailchimp and I’m in the process of deciding between them. They both offer RSS to Email options (see Aweber’s & Mailchimp’s).
There’s still not a perfect tool that exists for it – since they’re both fully automated and don’t allow for per-email customization. I’m wondering why this tool doesn’t exist (or if it does, I haven’t found it). Here’s the idea…
Semi-Automated RSS to Email
This would be the perfect scenario:
On Friday evening I get an email that says “Hey, it’s time to review the newsletter that’s going out tomorrow. Click here” so 1 of 2 things happens:
- If I ignore this email or don’t click over (I’m busy, traveling, whatever) it automatically sends out the email next morning (Saturday) with posts pulled directly from my RSS feed. It’s automated, requires no input, and makes sure my readers get my new posts.
- If I do click to review my email from the Friday night email, this happens:
- I get a UI interface that pulls all of my posts from last week (vi RSS) that I get to click “include” or “exclude” so I can select which posts (especially if I write a lot of them) are going to be included in the email that gets sent out tomorrow.
- I get a “would you like to add something at the top?” post box which lets me write anything I want to include before the RSS to email posts that I just selected. Here I can write a short recap, include some interesting links, or whatever – basically a way to personalize the email to my precious subscribers.
Why doesn’t this already exist?
Great name of this idea, “Semi-Automatic …”. I just put it down as a future enhancement to 10CentMail.