Documentation & Help

Getting Started

To use FlipRSS you need a Mailchimp account.

Connecting FlipRSS to your Mailchimp account

Sign up to FlipRSS in seconds using your existing Mailchimp account. This is secure and convenient option recommended by Mailchimp for integrations and third party services.

A key benefit of signing in with your Mailchimp account is that FlipRSS will be automatically pre-populate your campaign set up with templates and audiences from your Mailchimp account.

Read more about signing in with Mailchimp →

Audiences

Creating and selecting an audience

Select the audience for your campaign from the dropdown in the To panel of your campaign settings.

To create a new audience, click New Audience.

Lists are refreshed automatically when you log in. If for some reason an audience list from your Mailchimp account does not show, you can refresh your lists manually by clicking the Refresh button next to the audience dropdown.

FlipRSS does not hold your audience members' details - they remain in your Mailchimp account. FlipRSS only uses the audience dropdown to specify which list to use when the campaign is sent.

If you need to add or amend subscribers in Mailchimp, click View [audience-name].

Creating groups for your audience

Delivering customised content to subscribers is a core featue of FlipRSS. Adding Groups to your Mailchimp audience allows your subscribers to choose and receive only the content they want.

For more information on groups, read Mailchimp's getting started with groups which explains what they are, how they work and how to add use them in your audience.

To enable subscribers to choose only the content they are most interested in and customise your newsletters for each individual, create a group for each RSS feed within Mailchimp. FlipRSS will match the content to the correct audience groups.

Once you have created your groups in Mailchimp, they will appear in the Show to dropdown in the Feeds panel of your FlipRSS campaign. You can choose which group a specific feed is shown to, or choose for a feed to be shown to all subscribers if you want to make sure everyone receive content on a particular topic or from a specific feed.

Enabling Test Sending

To ensure you content looks how you expect, enable Test Sendingto allow you to send a single email to the address used by your Mailchimp account.

FlipRSS adds this email address to the current audience and tags it with fliprsstest. Click Send Test to send the campaign only to members with this tag which, by default, is your email address.

Add the fliprsstest tag to additional subscribers in your audience to also include them in test sends.

Read more about how Test Send works.

Refreshing audience lists and groups

Audience lists are updated automatically when you log in.

Click the Refresh button next to the audience dropdown to manually reload your lists and groups.

Campaign settings

Successful email campaigns engage subscribers by making the content relevant and personal to them.

This requires clear and relevant Subject and Preview text, and formatting the From name to be something they will recognise and engage with.

Writing a good Subject line

Keep subject lines to the point, personal, and make what you say engaging and relevant. It's likely to be the first thing they see when your email drops in to their inbox and will determine whether they open it or not.

Mailchimp have a useful article about writing good a subject line for campaigns that includes tips and best practices.

To further personalise your email you can use Mailchimp merge tags within your Subject and Preview lines to include the subscriber's name, the date, or some other relevant information.

Adding Preview text

Preview text appears in some email clients immediately after the subject line. It allows you to reveal more information about the contents of the email and can be effective at increasing open rates.

Use a verified email address

Mailchimp only sends campaigns from domains that you have verified via their Domains page. FlipRSS will only allow you to enter an address that belongs to one of your validated domains.

Ensure From email belongs to a verified domain in your Mailchimp account. See Verifying a domain in Mailchimp for more information.

RSS Feeds

Adding RSS feeds to an email campaign

Click on the Feeds panel in your FlipRSS cmapaign and add the URL of the content you want to include in your email.

You can add as many feeds as your FlipRSS plan allows, and the settings of each feed can be tailored for the output you want. By changing the RSS feed settings, you can customise whether it shows for all subscribers or to a specific audience group. You can change how many items should be included frnm the feed, whether it should only include new posts since the last email send and even the layout of the posts.

RSS feed urls are verified and added to the campaign automatically. If the url is to a webpage, FlipRSS will search for RSS feeds and add the first it finds. If it can't find an RSS feed or the feed isn't valid, it will show an error message.

RSS Feed Options

After adding an RSS feed, you can edit its title, specify the maximum number of posts to display, and set the audience group it should be sent to.

The feed Options panel allows you to set whether the feed should include new items only, or include old items regardless of whether they have been included in previous campaigns, and whether the feed title should be shown in the campaign email.

Setting the feed title

Defaults to the title of the RSS feed. It can be renamed by clicking to edit.

Setting the maximum number of items

You can change the maximum number of items/posts that will be shown for a particular feed. If the feed is showing new items only, the actual number of posts that appear in the email may be fewer than the maximum setting.

For example, if you set the maximum number of posts to 5 and only 3 posts have been published since the last campaign, only 3 posts will appear in your email.

Selecting the group / Show to

Select the audience group you want to receive the feed. Only subscribers assigned to this group will receive the content in their email.

If you want a feed's content to appear for all subscribers, select All subscribers.

Layout

Select how each feed's items are displayed:

• BlockThe image will be full width and displayed above the feed title and summary body
• InlineThe image will be aligned to the left of the feed title and summary body
• HeroThe image will be full width and displayed above the feed title. No summary body is shown.
• Text onlyNo image is displayed, just the feed title and summary body

Options

The options panel includes additional information and settings:

• New items only - Only items added to the feed since the last time the email campaign was sent will be included.
• Show feed title - Show the feed title alongside each item in the campaign email.

Preview

Click to view a live preview of the RSS feed in a popout panel.

Delete

Permanently remove the RSS feed from the campaign.

Reorder

Click and drag to reorder the RSS feeds. Items are included in the order they appear in the list.

Design and templates

To get started, use our basic pre-designed template or create one of your own. A pre-designed template is perfect for getting started with FlipRSS, or if you are not comfortable manually editing an existing campaign template.

Using the Starter Template

Our simple starter template is pre-configured and is ready to be imported into your Mailchimp account. Once imported, customise the text, images and colours using Mailchimp's Classic template editor.

Change the logo and colours to match your branding, and write your own copy to reflect what you want your campaign to say.

Once imported, click the Refresh button to reload your templates and select it from the dropdown list.

Using a Custom Template

Design your own template using Mailchimp's Classic template builder and select Code Your Own.

To enable FlipRSS to insert the campaign content in the correct location, the template must have mc:edit="fliprss_content", to the element you want the content to appear within.

For example, you can add a <div> inside the main container cell:

<td>
      <div mc:edit="fliprss_content"> 
          <!--- FlipRSS will insert content here ---> 
      </div>
  </td>

Using a Mailchimp "Drag-and-Drop" Template

Mailchimp's drag-and-drop template builder is useful for quickly creating an attractive template but requires some additional steps for FlipRSS to use it.

Steps

1. Design the template with the Mailchimp drag-and-drop editor as normal.
2. Once you are happy, click the Edit button to the right of the template and click “Export as HTML”.
3. Open the downloaded file in a text editor add the FlipRSS mc:edit="fliprss_content" attribute to the element in your template where you want content to appear.

   Note: The attribute should only be added to one element in your template.

4. Save the file and upload it to your Mailchimp account by clicking Create Template, then Import HTML. Select the file from your computer and give your template a name.
5. Back in FlipRSS, click the Refresh button to reload your templates and select it from the dropdown list.

Styling feed content

Control the layout for individual feeds by setting its Layout Options.

Customise feed block styles

Basic styles for each layout option can be customised using the Customise Block Styles panel.

This allows basic customisation of the font size, line height, padding, font style and color of all main elements of each feed block.

Styles are applied to the feed content when it is inserted into your template and will override any styles set in your Mailchimp template CSS.

For more advanced styling, you can edit the template in Mailchimp and add your own CSS to customise the appearance of the main template area and target specific elements in the feed blocks.

Sending and scheduling

Test a campaign

The Test Send feature enables you to preview the final campaign email content without sending it to your entire list.

Test Send creates a member with your email address in your Mailchimp audience with a fliprsstest tag which is used to send the campaign just to you when you click “Send Test”.

Once a campaign is fully configured, a Send Test button will appear in the top-right of the campaign screen. This will send your campaign to members/subscribers with this tag. If you want other testers to be included add fliprsstest as a tag to any subscriber in your Mailchimp audience.

Feeds with New items only selected will not cause FlipRSS to update the date of the last sent campaign. This allows you to send any number of test campaigns (for example when working on your template design) without it preventing new feed content from appearing in your live campaign.

Choose a delivery schedule

FlipRSS supports both scheduled and manual sending schedules and dispatches the campaign to Mailchimp for delivery for the selected audience.

From the Sending panel of the campaign, select either Manual, or one of the recurring schedule options.

Campaigns default to Manual and can be sent immeditaly and at any time by clicking Send in the top-right of campaign view.

Alternatively, choose either a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly recurring schedule and FlipRSS will send it automatically. Once you've selected a schedule, click Save.

If using a schedule, FlipRSS will send at the scheduled date and time until the campaign is changed or deleted.

Subscription

Subscribing to a plan

After registering and starting your free 30 day trial, you can subscribe to a paid plan from the Account page.

FlipRSS has a range of plans to suit your needs so you can select the one that fits. You will then be asked to enter your credit card details and confirm payment through our secure payment provider Paddle.

Cancelling or amending your subscription

From the Account page, you can view your current plan and modify your subscription by clicking the Change plan button. This will take you to the Paddle website where you can select a new plan or cancel your subscription.

Troubleshooting

Content not appearing in a campaign email

If your campaign is sent successfully but there is no content, there are a few potential reasons:

• Is the mc:edit="fliprss_content" attribute present in your template?

  Make sure the template contains the mc:edit="fliprss_content" attribute on the element where you want your content to appear. You can check by editing your template in Mailchimp and searching for the attribute in the HTML.

  You can read more about how to add this attribute to your template in the Using your own template above.

• Do your feeds contain any content?

  Check the RSS feeds to make sure they have valid, recent content for the campaign.

  Open the RSS feeds in a browser or feed reader and make sure the feed is not empty.

  If this is an existing campaign that has been successfully delivering content and New items only is selected for one or more feed, check that new items have been added to the feed since the last campaign was sent.

• Is the feed source unreachable?

  Network issues can prevent FlipRSS from retrieving content from your feeds. Check the feed source is reachable and the content is available.

  By default, FlipRSS will still send a campaign even if one or more of the feeds were unavailable at the time of processing.

• Has the subscriber been assigned the correct interest preferences in Mailchimp?

  Check the subscriber associated with the blank email in your Mailchimp audience.

  Make sure they are assigned to groups associated with the feeds you expect to see in the campaign email.

Campaign not sending

• Missing mc:edit="fliprss_content" attribute

  If the mc:edit="fliprss_content" attribute is missing from your template, FlipRSS will not be able to insert content into your campaign and it may result in an error during sending.

  Again, check Mailchimp has not removed the attribute when saving your edited template.

• Invalid or reserved characters used in audience group names

  Mailchimp will allow you to create groups with invalid characters, but FlipRSS will not be able to send to these groups due to the way Mailchimp's API works.

  If you are experiencing issues with sending, check the names of the groups you are using in your campaign and ensure they do not contain any invalid characters like /;:'| etc.

• Sender address is from an unverified domain

  Historically, the most common reason a campaign would fail to send send is that the "From email" address is not one you have verified within Mailchimp. If that is the case, change it to a verified address.

  See Use a verified email address above for more information.

  Sender email address is in a compliance state

  Email addresses can be in a compliance state if they have been used to send campaigns that have been marked as spam, or if the user has unsubscribed from your campaign.

  Check your Mailchimp audience to see if the address is in a compliance state.

• Revoked API key

  If you are using an API key to integrate with Mailchimp, it is possible you have revoked it within your Mailchimp account. You can check this by going to the "Account" section within Mailchimp, clicking on the "Extras" drop-down list and selecting "API keys".

• Ensure FlipRSS is a Registered App for your Mailchimp account

  If you log in to FlipRSS using Mailchimp, you can check FlipRSS's access has not been revoked by going to the "Account" section within Mailchimp, clicking on the "Extras" drop-down list and selecting "API Keys".

  Scroll down to "Authorized applications"and you should see FlipRSS in the list.

  If you do not see FlipRSS in the list, you will need to re-authorise FlipRSS to access your Mailchimp account by logging in to FlipRSS and following the instructions to connect to Mailchimp.

Changing the delivery schedule to a time after the campaign has been sent on the same day, sends the campaign again

If a campaign is scheduled for a date and time in the future, it will send at that time even if it has already been sent that same day.

For example, if a campaign that is scheduled to send every Friday at 9am is updated at 10am (after it has been sent), to a new schedule for 17:00 each Friday, it will be sent again at 17:00 on the same day.

If you want to change the time of future schedules, wait until after the new schedule time has passed before updating it.