Add a JSON Web Feed to a Campaign

Use the web to inject dynamic content into your messages

Here's an exciting feature that offers clever marketers all sorts of product promotion possibilities. You can inject custom content from an outside web feed source into a tinyEmail campaign template. 

What can you do with this tool? Here's one time-saving idea.

• Create a campaign template with an HTML block that promotes one product. Before tinyEmail sends the campaign, it grabs the production information from your external web feed and adds it to the message's HTML block.
• Next week, clone the campaign and promote a different product by changing the web feed (that takes about three clicks). Everything else is the same. Because you cloned a campaign, you can reuse the settings and content (e.g. audience, branding, etc.). 

Before you start

To create an external web feed source, you need one or more JSON files with links to images (if applicable). Be sure to copy the URL of each JSON file.

Each JSON file must be hosted in a place that can assign a URL. If you work for a big company, the IT team will know how to set that up. If you are a small to medium-sized operation, one cheap and (sort of) easy solution is to create a free GitHub account. You can create JSON files and store images in the same repository (i.e. folder).   

Adding a JSON feed

You add the JSON web feed URL in the middle of the campaign creation workflow. I'll skip most of those steps because we covered that work in a different article.

While creating a campaign, you'll come to the Details page. This is where you insert the JSON web feed URL.

1. Scroll down the Details page to the RSS URL (optional) heading.
2. Click the Edit button.
3. Paste the JSON file URL into the field.
4. Click Save.
5. Go to the top of the page and click Continue.

Adding HTML to a template

On the next page, select a campaign template. Click Use. The template editor displays. 

1. Make sure the Content tab is selected.
2. Click the HTML block and drag it to the canvas.

Double-click the HTML block to open the editor.

Add an HTML tag and label for each JSON property (e.g. title, description, etc.) you want to display in the campaign message. For image properties, be sure to include src attributes. 

tinyEmail adds property placeholders to the template canvas.