Is there a way to pull in content for emails from an RSS feed? I'm thinking of using automation studio to fetch RSS data and import it, but don't know if it's possible to do that for data that needs to be images in the email content.
Perhaps using an external content block might work, but are there any methods that will be able to use RSS feeds with images to populate email content?
You have quite a few options. In Content Builder you can simply use an "External Content" block, which you can point to an URL.
You can also an ampscript function HTTPGET
Returns the content from a specified URL. This function only works with HTTP on port 80 and HTTPS on port 443
In Classic Email have you looked at content syndication
For example, you can include the latest entry in your company blog in your email by specifying the path to the latest entry. The program uses the path you entered to get the latest entry at the time of the email send and include it in your email.
Content syndication is designed to help you integrate your CMS or CRM system with emails. You can use content syndication to get content from any web site or your CMS into the body of your emails. Also, you can use the content syndication features to notify your system that an activity has completed. You can use content syndication through the application or by using the calls in the API. AMP Web Services currently does not support content syndication.
There are indeed quite a few ways. The most straightforward one is documented very well. You find it here.
It is a scenario based explanation of the httpget() variant already mentioned.
As RSS is a mostly standardized data structure it usually requires little effort to adapt the documentation to your needs. Most work usually goes into styling the content you "print" out in your content as it sometimes contains HTML elements that aren't compatible with email coding standards.
One thing to be aware of, however: the example code doesn't include images. You need to add some additional code to fetch those. This follows the same logic as the other elements, so it's usually easy to do.
Also, if your feed contains article elements with a varying number of images in a media element you need to handle this with some more logic. This is not a typical issue, however.
Hope this helps.
We just added a Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration to FeedOtter(my company). It's a bit more visual than the existing options and allows a non-technical user to configure and manage it. It can automate sending to your data extensions via Single Send Journeys or the legacy email campaigns. If it is of interest you can take a look on our website: https://www.feedotter.com/marketing-cloud
