Automation Guide: Mailchimp RSS-to-Email

To eliminate the manual effort of sending emails for every new post, follow these steps to set up an automated RSS-to-Email campaign in Mailchimp.

1. Get Your Feed URL

Your blog’s RSS feed is located at: https://nowheredifferentiable.com/index.xml

(Note: Ensure your latest site build is deployed so this file is accessible to Mailchimp).

2. Create the Campaign in Mailchimp

  1. Log in to Mailchimp and go to Automations > Pre-built Journeys (or search for RSS-to-Email).
  2. Select Share blog updates.
  3. Enter your Feed URL: https://nowheredifferentiable.com/index.xml.
  4. Choose the frequency (e.g., “Every day at 10:00 AM” or “Every week”). Mailchimp will only send an email if there is a new post in the feed.

3. Apply the Template

  1. In the Design step of your campaign, choose Code Your Own or paste the content from post_notification.html into a Text/HTML block.
  2. The template uses Mailchimp’s merge tags (like *|RSSITEM:CONTENT_FULL|*) to automatically pull in your post’s content and title.

4. Test and Activate

  1. Use the Preview and Test feature in Mailchimp to see how it looks with your latest post.
  2. Activate the automation.

Now, whenever you publish a new post using Quarto, Mailchimp will detect the change in index.xml and handle the delivery for you. No more hand-crafting emails!