Set up an RSS-to-email blog subscription for an external blog

If you don’t host your blog with HubSpot, you can still offer an email-based subscription (RSS) to your blog using HubSpot.

Create a subscription type

Your contacts manage subscriptions to all your email subscription types separately. This way, if they decide to unsubscribe from one subscription type, they won’t have to unsubscribe from them all. To create a subscription type for your blog subscription emails:

• In your HubSpot account, click the

  settings

  settings icon in the main navigation bar.

• In the left sidebar menu, navigate to

   

  Marketing

   

  >

   

  Email. 

• Click the

   

  Subscription Types

   

  tab. 

• Click

   

  Create subscription type.

• In the dialog box, add a name and description for your new subscription type, then click Save.  
• If you have

   

  General Data Protection Regulation

   

  (GDPR)

   

  functionality enabled in your account,

   

  add a process and operation for your subscription type.

Create a custom property

Next, create a custom contact property for your external blog. This will be used in your subscription form to manage which contacts receive your blog subscription emails. Click the Field type dropdown menu and select Single checkbox. Then, click Create.

Create a subscription form for your external website

Next, create a subscription form for these emails that you can embed on your external blog pages so that visitors can easily subscribe.

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Lead Capture > Forms.

• Click Create form, select Regular Form and click Next.

• Under Add form field, use the search bar to find the property you just created, and click the

   

  property

   

  to add it to your form. You can

   

  embed this form on your external blog pages

  .

Next, create an active list of your blog subscribers:

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Lists.

• Click Create list.

• In the upper left, click the

   

  pencil 

  edit

   

  icon and enter a name for the list, then click the

   

  dropdown menu and select

   

  Active list. 

• Set your list filters to Contact property | select the property you created | is equal to |

   

  Yes.   

• Click

   

  Done.

• In the upper right, click

   

  Save.

If you already have an existing list of contacts subscribed to your blog emails, you can import the list from a spreadsheet. Be sure to include a column for Email with your contacts’ email addresses and a column with a header that matches the property label for your subscription status property. Enter Yes as the value for all rows in the subscription status property column.

Create a new RSS email

Next, create the RSS email that will go out to your blog subscribers. The RSS email is simply an email template that you can customize to include the latest items from a particular feed, such as the RSS feed from your blog. You can use any email template that you like for this email, as long as it contains a main email body module.

Depending on the email editor you are using, follow the corresponding instructions below to create your RSS email:

Create a new RSS email in updated classic editor

Create a new RSS email in drag and drop editor

Create a new RSS email in the updated classic editor

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Email.

• Click Create email.

• In the dialog box, select Blog/RSS.

• Select

  External blog

  and insert the RSS feed URL.

• In the Custom tab, select a template for the RSS email.

• In the dialog box, insert a name for your email.

• In the email editor, click the Edit modules icon in the left sidebar, then select Main Email Body.
• In the RSS feed URL text field, enter an RSS feed URL to see a sample preview of the feed.

• You can also set the number of posts to feature in each RSS email,

   and 

  customize the styling

   of your feed within the

   

  Item layout/style

   

  text box. 

  • You can move around the tokens in your RSS email or adjust the fonts and font sizes.

  • Click Advanced options to customize your author by line or set a max width for your post images.

Please note: each send will only include new posts since the prior send of the email, up to the maximum number you’ve chosen. For example, if you’ve set a maximum of five posts to display in your RSS email and the next week you only publish three blog posts, the next send of your email will only include those three new posts and will not pull in two posts from the previous week. 

• Make any additional edits to the email as needed and add your

   

  from details. 

• Click the Settings

   

  tab.

• Click the

   

  Subscription type

   

  dropdown menu to select the subscription type you created. Make any other

   

  settings changes

   

  (web version, campaign, etc.) as needed.

• Click the Send or Schedule tab. Under Recipients, select the

   

  list

   

  you created.

• In the right pane,

  select your send frequency and the time of day to send the RSS email. If you select 

  Weekly

   

  or 

  Monthly

  , you’ll also be asked to select a day of the week or month. 

• In the upper right, click Review and Publish. 

  Your RSS email will be sent to your subscribers every day, week, or month that a new entry has been added since the previous send.