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Does anyone have a good post to email workflow?

A couple of folk have asked me if I would send new posts to them via email. I'd love to do this, but don't have the energy for a big system setup or complicated workflow. Also clearly not worth a large amount of dollars, given the numbers and my focus.

Has anyone done this in a simple fashion with blot?


10 months ago, 8 replies   email   automation   Edit question

Hi, there are services like IFTTT or Zapier that might be useful (for free). You can connect to your RSS feed and generate an email to yourself. You would need forward that email to the folks who want to receive. You could do this manually, or I'm sure you could automate in your email service.

Answered 10 months ago · Edit answer

Ray has done this for this blot.im site, so it may be useful to reach out by email to inquire on the mechanics being used.

https://alongtheray.com/talk

Answered 10 months ago · Edit answer

Buttondown may be a good option for this. From this page, it sounds like you can have Buttondown slurp your Blot.im RSS feed and send email to those that have subscribed. Think of it as the "newsletter-ification" of your posts.

Buttondown has the ability to capture email addressed via a simple embed that should work on a blot.im page or as a post footer.

The page below focuses on Medium as the blog platform, but I don't think it is a Medium specific functionality.

UPDATE: It looks like the RSS to email option isn't part of the free plan with Buttondown, so this may not be a good option for the original post goal.

https://buttondown.email/features/integrations/medium

Answered 10 months ago · Edit answer

If you don't want to set anything up, I can only suggest https://feedrabbit.com

Answered 10 months ago · Edit answer

https://docs.recur.email looks interesting too.

Answered 10 months ago · Edit answer

This is a wonderful thread, thank you all for the feedback!

I currently use Buttondown, it works, but without paying it's very manual, hence the question. I also don't know if the RSS would really work (haven't tested due to paywall). Anyone who's tested, please let me know.

I will email Ray as well, thank you!

Answered 10 months ago · Edit answer

I did some searching around this and found feedmail.org which looks promising as an option: https://blog.feedmail.org/2022/02/providing-email-subscriptions-to-your.html?m=1

Answered 10 months ago · Edit answer

Hi all. I took a look at FeedMail and am happy to report that it has served as the right option for my needs. I'm sharing the details of my implementation in case it works for other Blot users. I know this is a long post, but trying to cover all the bases.

I decided to cover the cost for my readers, which FeedMail describes here. The FeedMail "small" plan is $10 and covers for 10,000 sends. Based on my current non-analytics based assumption that not many people are reading my site, that size is more than enough and if I ever need to increase to the bulk, the scaling cost is worth it in my opinion.

The nicest aspect of this is that I was able to work with the devs of FeedMail to customize the experience beyond simply pointing readers to the generic FeedMail page. They've setup an API endpoint that allows me to present the input form and subscribe button (and customize it with CSS) on the Blot side, that then does a "warm handoff" of sorts. When the reader clicks Subscribe, they are directed to a page on the FeedMail side that has their email address and the feed URL pre-populated and all they need to do is confirm the subscription there.

It highlights that this service is being paid for by the blog owner (not the reader). Once the reader clicks to confirm the intent, they get the message that there will be a confirmation email sent to them (pretty standard with these and newsletter flows). The FeedMail page also provides a redirect link to the blog that can be customized in the code implemented on the Blot side. This is huge, since you as the blog owner can specify where you'd like to send the reader back to on your site.

So, with all of that, below is the example in my post entry footer of how this looks in practice. I set the redirect to point readers back to my /archives page so once they subscribe for new post sends, they can come back to look at older posts that they wouldn't receive in that form (seemed logical to me). You could customize the Blot embed to redirect them to the same post they were on, or any other page you'd like. Really happy with this implementation.

Example of FeedMail implementation

Answered 10 months ago · Edit answer