Use Digesto to Automatically Notify Subscribers About Hub Content Updates

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Learn how to use Digesto to let visitors subscribe to your Hub, so that they can be automatically notified by email whenever you publish new content.

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Before You Begin

• To do this, you'll need a Digesto account. To sign up for one, visit Digesto's website.
• Digesto is an app for Marketo, so you need a Marketo account to use it. This also means that, to use Digesto with your Uberflip Hub content, you will need to integrate Marketo with your Uberflip Hub.

 

About Digesto

Digesto is an RSS-to-Email application for Marketo. If you're using Marketo as your Marketing Automation Platform, Digesto lets visitors subscribe to updates to your Hub, then automatically sends them scheduled email summaries of your latest content.

Here's how it works: in your Hub, you set up a Marketo-connected Form CTA that prompts visitors to subscribe to your content updates by entering their email (and any other information you want to collect):

You can place this CTA in a Stream, then set up Digesto to monitor that Stream's RSS feed. On a schedule you specify, Digesto will package new Items that have appeared in the Stream's RSS feed into an email "digest", and send it to any subscriber who submitted the Form CTA.

If you want to use Digesto in your Hub, here's what you need to do:

• Create a Static List in Marketo to hold subscribers
• Create a Form CTA to collect subscribers, attach your Static List to it, and place the Form CTA in the Stream you want to allow visitors to subscribe to
• Get the Stream's RSS feed
• Use the RSS Feed to create a Digest in Digesto
• Create a Program in Marketo dedicated to Digesto
• Configure the Smart Campaign in the Digesto-specific Program to send emails to subscribers

Each of these steps is described in more detail below.

 

Prerequisite: Set Up Required Integrations

Digesto is a Marketo app, so you need to integrate Digesto with your Marketo account before you can begin using it (with Uberflip, or elsewhere).

You can find instructions on how to do that in this article from Digesto:

Digesto: Connect your Marketo account to Digesto via REST API

This also means that, to use Digesto with your Uberflip Hub, your Hub needs to be integrated with your Marketo account. Before you can proceed, you'll need to set up this integration if you have not yet done so.

For detailed instructions on how to set up a Marketo integration with your Hub, see this article:

Set Up a Marketo Integration

 

Step 1: Create a Static List for Subscribers

To hold the email addresses (and other details) of visitors who want to subscribe to a Stream, you need to create a new Static List in Marketo. You will later connect this Static List to your Form CTA in Uberflip. As with all Marketo Lists that you use with Uberflip, you must create this List in the Lead Database section (not under Marketing Activities).

For instructions on how to create a Static List in Marketo, see this article from Marketo:

Marketo: Create a Static List

 

Step 2: Create a Form CTA

You'll collect subscribers to the Stream using a Form CTA. Create a new Form CTA for use with Digesto, and make sure that it is:

• Connected to Marketo
• Attached to the Static List you created in the previous step
• Only has one placement: an At Stream Level placement within the Stream you want to allow visitors to subscribe to

See the following article for instructions on how to create and configure the Form CTA:

Set Up a Form CTA

 

Step 3: Get the Stream's RSS Feed

Digesto knows when new content has been added to a Stream by monitoring its RSS feed. As a result, you'll need to get the RSS feed for the Stream that you want to let your visitors subscribe to.

Within your Hub, each individual Stream has its own RSS feed, and you can also get a Hub-wide RSS feed that covers content across all Streams (by default, the Latest Content Items on your Hub homepage). Expand the relevant section below for instructions on how to find the desired type of RSS feed:

 

Step 4: Create a Digest in Digesto

Now that you have the RSS feed you need, you can set up the Digest for this Stream in Digesto. Digests are the actual emails that will be sent out to subscribers to notify them of new content in the Stream. As part of creating a Digest, you will specify which RSS feed it should monitor (i.e. the one you just got from your Hub), as well as options like what the email will look like, the schedule on which it is sent, etc.

For detailed instructions on how to create a Digest, see this article from Digesto:

Digesto: Create your first Digest

 

Step 5: Create a Dedicated Marketo Program

Digesto requires a dedicated Program in Marketo, so you'll need to create this Program next.

The Digesto-specific Program needs to be configured in a specific way. To create this Program in Marketo, follow the instructions in this article from Digesto:

Digesto: Create a dedicated Marketo program

 

Step 6: Configure Smart Campaigns in Marketo

Almost done! As part of setting up the dedicated Marketo Program for Digesto in the previous step, you will have created two Smart Campaigns: one for testing, and one for production. What you need to do now is configure these Smart Campaigns so that they specifically email subscribers to your Stream (technically, you only need to configure the production Smart Campaign in this way, but we strongly recommending testing your setup first using the testing Smart Campaign).

1. Begin by setting up the Smart Campaigns as described in Step 4 of the Digesto article.
2. Under the Smart List section, add a single Member of List filter, and configure it as follows:
   

   

   (For Digesto Subscribers, substitute the Static List you created in Step 1.)
3. Continue to configure the Smart Campaign (i.e. Flow, Schedule, etc.) as described in the Digesto article.

That's it! The Smart Campaign is now set up in such a way that any visitor who submits the Form CTA on the Stream you chose will be added to the Static List, and will therefore be automatically pulled in to the Smart List on the campaign. The campaign will trigger the Digesto Digest, which will be emailed to your subscribers according to the schedule you set up in Digesto.

 

Configure Digesto for Additional Streams

All of the steps above describe how to set up Digesto to notify subscribers of updates to just one Stream, but you can allow visitors to subscribe to any number of separate Streams in your Hub.

For each additional Stream that you want enable Digesto on, simply repeat the steps above, with the following adjustments:

• Step 1: Create a new, separate Static List for each individual Stream. As a best practice, give these Static Lists descriptive names that will help you find them later (such as "XYZ Stream for Digesto").
• Step 2: Create a separate Form CTA for each Stream, and associate it with the Static List dedicated to that Stream's subscribers.
• Step 3: Get the Stream's RSS feed as usual.
• Step 4: Digests can only be associated with one RSS feed, so you will need to set up separate Digests in Digesto for each individual Stream.
• Step 5: You do not need to create separate Digesto-specific Programs in Marketo for additional Streams. Instead, add a new Smart Campaign to the existing Program for each Stream you want to add.
• Step 6: When you configure the Smart Campaign, make sure to set up the Smart List to pull in subscribers from the Stream-specific Static List you created in Step 1.