Affordable RSS to Email Tools?

[Anonymous]

Does anyone have a recommendation for an affordable tool that allows you to send emails that are auto-populated based on the content of your RSS feed? I just looked at Digesto from Perkuto, and it is AWESOME, but we have never done an email subscription for blogs before, and we have no idea if anyone will even subscribe to our blog, so I'm hoping to find a more affordable option, potentially one that allows us to pay per subscriber. What tools are y'all using? And if you are using a tool that doesn't really integrate with Marketo (I'm looking at Feedblitz), is there anything I can do to create some sort of makeshift integration?

[Ankit_Dua]

We are using Digesto from Perkuto and its awesome and simple to use. Also, they have a great support.

[Anonymous]

Hey Marcie!

We're using the RSS-2-Marketo tool from overstack.io

It's very customizable - we can keep using our existing Marketo templates. Their connector just updates the program tokens on a weekly basis and triggers the send flow. And the team really helped us with the special customization we needed.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Digesto is doing a perfect job for many of our customers.

-Greg

[SanfordWhiteman]

I also think Digesto is great.

There's also building your own using Velocity (blog entry coming soon).

[Chris_Saporito]

Hi Sanford Whiteman, did you end up creating a blog about doing this with Velocity? I'd love to learn more about that.

[SanfordWhiteman]

I didn't -- though did talk about it at one of my recent MUG talks. Maybe someday. So many drafts. I know I always say that but I have 32 open tabs right now w/blog drafts!

[Pierce_Ujjainw3]

FeedOtter is a great/affordable alternative.

[Brendan_Gallagh]

I could be wrong, but Digesto seems to be cheaper now, unless I am missing something.

[David_Desrosie2]

Hi Marcie. Did you decide to go ahead with automated blog email solution? Either way I just wanted to let you know that we have a new plan available where you pay only for what you use (no minimum monthly cost). You can check  Plans and Pricing | Digesto  for details.

Disclaimer: I work for Perkuto, the makers of Digesto

David

[Emily_Deemer]

Hi Marcie,

I'm going through the same thing right now, trying to find an affordable option to integrate RSS-to-Email with Marketo...FeedOtter and Digesto are too expensive for us, mostly because we have 6 different blogs.  Was wondering what solution you went with?  We could always use a tool that doesn't integrate with Marketo, but I'd love to be able to track activity on these blog digest emails within Marketo.

Thanks!

[Vipin_Mp]

Can anyone suggest .FeedOtter or Digesto is great/affordable?

[SanfordWhiteman]

They're both great and, depending on what you need/expect, affordable. Try them out!

[SanfordWhiteman]

Tracking activity is actually the easiest part: even when using an external content syndication service, you can track the pageviews resulting from emal clicks, even if you can't track the Clicked Email activity proper.

I think where an integrated solution really proves its worth is by letting you use the familiar Marketo UI to build email scaffolding, manage Smart Lists, and further personalize content based on lead fields.

[Andy_Theimer]

Hi Marcie,

Give FeedOtter a try, much lower cost.

Best,

[Guy_Goldstein6 · Accepted solution]

Hey Marcie,

I've used Digesto from Pekuto before - It's a relatively straightforward solution and the price was very reasonable.

Please allow me to suggest considering going a different direction...

If you're still unsure as to whether or there is any value in doing this at all ("will anyone even subscribe to our blog") then I'd suggest that any implementation/integration you go and do is going to cost you more time/money than you presently believe is worthwhile.

In order to test whether or not you should be looking for a long-term solution, may I suggest that you create a program template for a blog update, collect subscribers and manually clone the program, edit the email and send it for the first few months.

Once you've got the program in place, it shouldn't take you more than half an hour per email including sending, and if you're doing an email a week you're talking about a 2 hour time investment per month during your testing period.

Once you've done that, and you've seen that people do in fact subscribe, and that they also respond to your emails, you'll be able to determine whether you actually need a tool to automate the process, or whether the hands-on approach is a viable option for you at the moment.

This way, when you want to choose a tool, you won't be worried about the cost because you know there'll be a value

Hope this helps

--Guy