Newsletters

RSS Merge for Newsletters

An RSS merge requires a developer, or other knowledgeable party to work directly with your Mailchimp template to integrate your Broadstreet ads. These steps will work with any newsletter platform, but the majority of businesses use Mailchimp and so they are used for the below examples. Make sure that you have your zones created in Broadstreet and ready to connect to your newsletters. See the documentation here on how to create zones in Broadstreet.

For RSS merges you will need to get the RSS URL for your zone and then apply it to your newsletter template. This isn’t recommended for someone who is not a tech savvy user and is usually a process that should be handed over to a developer.

Keep in mind that certain features for ads and campaigns will not work in newsletter zones. For more information see the article Understanding Newsletters.

The instructions below show you how to find the RSS URL for a merge.

Locate the RSS URL

Navigate to the Zones option in the left side menu. 

This opens the Zones page in Broadstreet. Here you can see a list of all existing zones on your account. Locate the zone that you want in your newsletter and click on the zone name.

The page for the individual zone opens. In the top right corner click Get Zone Code.

This opens the Zone Code page. Along the top tabs, select RSS. 

The RSS URL can easily be copied below the Advanced User warning. Once you have the URL click Okay got it to close the window.

It is recommended to turn over the merge to a developer once you have the RSS URL. The person doing the template modification will need to review the following article from Mailchimp here. 

For native-style ads, an example of code using the RSS merge is below — it’s up to a developer to arrange/style the HTML elements containing the merge tags as needed to match the look and feel of the rest of the newsletter.

<!-- for native advertisements, ?rss_fields=true is a required parameter -->
<!-- Make sure NETWORKID and ZONEID are replaced with the appropriate IDs -->
*|FEEDBLOCK:https://my.broadstreetads.com/api/0/networks/NETWORKID/zones/ZONEID.rss?rss_fields=true|* 

<!-- control how many items are pulled in -->
*|FEEDITEMS:[$count=1]|*

<!-- place the image, mailchimp supplies the entire img tag -->
<a class="mcnTextContent" href="*|FEEDITEM:URL|*">
  *|FEEDITEM:IMAGE|*
</a>

<!-- place the title -->
<h1>
  <a class="mcnTextContent" href="*|FEEDITEM:URL|*">
    *|FEEDITEM:TITLE|*
  </a>
</h1>

<!-- place the content -->
<p>*|FEEDITEM:CONTENT_TEXT|*</p>

*|END:FEEDITEMS|* *|END:FEEDBLOCK|*