A bigger vision and a smaller focus

Introducing FlipRSS 4.0 (Maple) — Personalised Multi-RSS Feed Newsletters for Mailchimp

With a view to the future, and how we can best deliver on our mission, we’ve re-written the FlipRSS system from the ground up. FlipRSS Maple offers us a scalable platform for growth that provides enhanced functionality for our customers. Alongside additional functionality, the interface has been redesigned to make multi-RSS feed email campaigns simple to set up for non-technical customers.

Think Big

Our mission remains unchanged — to support, delight and connect content producers and their subscribers.

Act Small

One big change we’ve made is to act smaller. We’ve narrowed our focus from supporting multiple email service providers to just one — Mailchimp. This has enabled us to deepen our integration with Mailchimp and deliver a more seamless and simple experience. The changes we’ve made in FlipRSS Maple lay the foundations for some truly exciting future developments.

Be Simple

Our primary driver for the rebuild was simplicity. We had to make it easier for non-technical users — those of us who do not know code — to produce an automated email newsletter that gives their subscribers the choice of content they receive.

Is FlipRSS for you?

FlipRSS is for content producers and curators. It provides a simple way to automate the delivery of content to subscribers whilst giving them the ability to personalise the content they receive. The system’s low friction and high relevancy for subscribers drives engagement and interaction while reducing the time required to manage and distribute content.

Since developing FlipRSS for the recruitment market, our user base has expanded into education, government, news publishing, sales and more as it solves the real issue of delivering relevant content to relevant audiences at the right time.

Over the last 5 years, we’ve found great flexibility and success integrating with Mailchimp as an Email Service Provider. With FlipRSS Maple, we now exclusively integrate with Mailchimp. Focussing on just one partner platform has enabled us to create a seamless experience and simplify the set up of new campaigns.

A simpler experience — no technical knowledge needed

Concentrating on one service provider has also enabled us to further enhance the security of the product. Using Mailchimp Oauth2 when creating your FlipRSS account removes a number of steps, increases security and control for users whilst enabling a far simpler and more familiar set up experience. No coding or technical experience is required to get started with a personalised multi-RSS feed campaign.

Introducing Oauth 2 for Mailchimp

We now offer users the option to sign up using their Mailchimp account through the Oauth2 API. Signing in with Mailchimp automatically connects your FlipRSS and Mailchimp accounts. It’s also easy to disconnect at any time through your Mailchimp account giving you full control. This is Mailchimp’s recommended method of connection for third party services and is more secure than requesting your API key — read more here.

Simplified multi-RSS campaign set up

With enhanced Mailchimp integrations, setting up multi-RSS newsletter campaigns is much simpler. Once you’ve signed in using Mailchimp, we pre-populate the main drop downs making the set up a breeze. New campaigns can be set up in a couple of minutes and can run on a schedule saving you hours of time every week.

Validating your “From” email address

Previously, it was possible to set everything up correctly but use an email address that wasn’t verified within Mailchimp causing the campaign to fail. We now validate the from email address field to ensure this doesn’t happen.

Testing your newsletter

You can now set up a test email address to your main list as part of your campaign set up. Just check the “Use Test Send” checkbox and we’ll add your email address to you list and tag it to enable us to email to this address independently. You can add more test email addresses or change this at any time.

Once your campaign is set and if you have selected to use the Test Send feature, up you’ll see the option to send a test email. We’ll use your campaign settings to instruct Mailchimp to send a test newsletter to your address. You’ll be able to see the newsletter design, the feeds as a subscriber would.

If you want to change the feeds your email address is subscribed to — log in to your Mailchimp account and update the preferences in your main Audience List.

No newsletter template, no problem…

One area we were keen to address was newsletter templates. If you want to quickly test FlipRSS to see what it can do within your 30 day free trial, or you don’t have a template already set up within Mailchimp, you can now click to add a pre-configured template to your Mailchimp account.

Clicking the template option will take you to your Mailchimp account. If you’re not already logged in to Mailchimp you’ll need to sign in and then the template will be added to your account. You can go to your templates section to update the logo and add or edit the content.

That’s it — your template is set up and configured. Alternatively, you can still use your existing template and add the custom FlipRSS code where you want your feed content to appear.

Customise your newsletter layout with independent feed styling

A big difference in FlipRSS 4.0 is the ability to choose the layout for each feed independently. This enables a range of newsletter layouts without any coding knowledge. You can choose between ‘block’ layout, ‘inline’ or ‘text only’.

• Hero — displays full width image with post headline online below.
• Block — displays full width image with post headline and excerpt below.
• Inline — images are left aligned with headline and excerpt displayed to the right.
• Text only — no images displayed, headline and excerpt shown with padding between posts.

An example would be having a ‘hero’ post by setting the featured feed to only show the latest one post. Secondary feeds could be shown as ‘inline’ with tertiary feeds as ‘text only’ below this.

If you are an Enterprise customer and opt to have a custom RSS Feed template, per-feed layouts do not apply. Custom templates offer much greater flexibility, and need to be applied by the FlipRSS team.

Custom RSS output for enterprise customers

If you have non-standard RSS fields you want to include, additional styling options or customised layouts, then custom feed layouts offer maximum flexibility. As well as including different content, custom feed outputs provide greater ability to style individual feeds. They enable you to vary layouts, update feeds styles with specific colours per feed, amend padding, add separators and much more. If you have any specific requirements please get in touch.

De-duplication of multiple RSS feed newsletters

This feature is closely connected to custom output functionality. If you have posts that might appear in more than one category, but you only want the post to appear for each subscriber once, then we can enable de-duplication for Enterprise customers.

How to set up an RSS to email campaign with Mailchimp and FlipRSS from scratch — in under 10 minutes…

In this screencast, we show just how easy it is to set up a personalised multi-RSS feed newsletter campaign in FlipRSS Maple. No coding required. This is a detailed demonstration of a full campaign set up, giving subscribers multiple content preference options, automating multiple RSS feeds and includes both FlipRSS and Mailchimp settings.

What sets us apart?

We’re a small team. Small enough to really care. We care about the quality of the product we produce, we care about the experience of every customer we have the privilege of working with and we care about our impact. We’re here to do a great job of supporting, delighting and connecting you and your subscribers.

Try FlipRSS here (30 days free, no credit card required).