RSS to Email: Turn Your Feed Into a Newsletter

RSS to email takes the new items in a feed, usually your blog, and sends them to your subscribers as an email. It is the easiest way to keep a list warm without writing a separate newsletter. There are two ways to do it, and they produce very different emails.

Two approaches

Automatic RSS campaigns. Your email tool checks the feed on a schedule, daily or weekly, and when there are new posts it builds an email from a template and sends it. Nothing to do after setup. Mailchimp, Kit and MailerLite all offer this. The email is a list of post titles, excerpts and links, the same format every time.

Drafted from the feed, reviewed by you. The tool reads the feed, and anything else you point it at, and writes a draft newsletter: an introduction, a summary of what is new and why it matters, then the links. You read it, edit it and send it. It takes a few minutes per issue, and the result reads like a newsletter rather than a feed.

Which one to use

Use automatic RSS campaigns when your readers want every post and nothing else, like a news site or a high-volume blog, and you want zero effort per send.

Use drafted and reviewed when the newsletter is part of your relationship with readers. A digest that says “here is what changed this month and what it means for you” gets more clicks than a list of titles, and you can add things that aren’t in the feed: an announcement, a question, a link you liked.

Setting up an automatic RSS campaign

The steps are similar in every tool:

  1. Find your feed URL. Most blogs publish one at /feed, /rss or /feed.xml.
  2. Create an RSS campaign. Mailchimp, Kit and MailerLite each have one, under slightly different names.
  3. Choose how often to check the feed and at what time to send.
  4. Design the template. Use the tool’s RSS merge tags for post titles, summaries, images and links.
  5. Pick the list or segment, then turn it on.

Check your feed first. If it only includes short summaries, the email will too. If your posts have no featured images in the feed, the email won’t have them either.

RSS to newsletter with Broadcast

Broadcast takes the second approach. Its Autopilot feature reads the sources you give it, RSS feeds, web pages or a GitHub repository, and writes a draft newsletter in your voice from tone samples you provide. It produces up to five drafts, you pick one, and it becomes a normal broadcast you edit and send. It never sends on its own.

You can run several autopilots in one install, for example a weekly product digest from your changelog and a monthly roundup from industry feeds, each going to its own segment. Autopilot uses your own AI key through OpenRouter, so you choose the model and pay its provider directly. See how to draft newsletters automatically for the setup.

Frequently asked questions

What is RSS to email?

A way to send new posts from an RSS feed to email subscribers, either automatically as a list of posts or as a newsletter drafted from the feed.

Is RSS to email still worth it?

Yes. Many readers never open a feed reader but do read email. Sending your posts to a list reaches them, and a subscriber list is yours in a way social followers aren’t.

How often should an RSS newsletter go out?

Match your posting rhythm. Weekly suits most blogs. Daily only works if you publish daily and readers asked for it. Sending when there is nothing new trains people to ignore you.

Can I send an RSS newsletter for free?

Kit’s free plan covers broadcasts to up to 10,000 subscribers, though its RSS automation needs a paid plan. Check each tool’s plan limits before you build around RSS.