Plea for Custom RSS Feeds to allow Automatic Newsletters of Upcoming Events

[Mike]

This post was inspired by this User Voice request:
http://tribe.uservoice.com/forums/195723-feature-ideas/suggestions/3775098-custom-rss-feeds

Modern Tribe’s answer to this request was:

In 2014 we switched the RSS feeds to set the RSS to the event date. This has caused a lot of controversy as a future breaks a lot RSS readers. Further our RSS feeds currently only include the necessary information for them to be a valid RSS feed. We are very limited by what RSS is intended for, posts (which always have past pubdates). Events are a different beast. The only thing on this list of requests that is possible is to include which categories will be shown. But, since that is already possible by combining the feed of multiple categories using an RSS tool like Yahoo Pipes! we are currently not interested in building out this feature.

We really thank you for your interest in improving the plugin. We really wish that there was more we could do with RSS.

Cheers!
– The Modern Tribe Support Team

And this is my response:

I believe that this is a shortsighted response from Modern Tribe. Yes, RSS feeds are primarily intended for posts, but the ability to automatically post upcoming event newsletters via email services with the ability to read RSS feeds (like MailChimp) would EXPONTENTIALLY increase the reach and response rates for customers promoting events, which is THE core function for The Event Calendar (and its subsequent add on Ticketing plugins to monetize those events).

Modern Tribe’s goal as a developer is to maximize our ability to promote events. They have developed a beautiful product, but the nature of a website is static… people have to come to the website to see our events. Newsletter are a simple and cheap way to take an active role in promoting our events, and with just a few relatively simple additions to the existing RSS feeds they could provide a powerful tool to actively campaign for attendees.

I am petitioning Modern Tribe to re-open consideration into expanding RSS functionality by the implementation of event specific fields. If you are interested in promoting your events, then you should add your voice to this request.
http://tribe.uservoice.com/forums/195723-feature-ideas/suggestions/3775098-custom-rss-feeds

In specific, I am asking for the inclusion of the following fields to be added to the RSS feeds for the Event post types:

• Title
• Post Excerpt
• Featured Image
• Purchase/Book Link
• Event Start Date
• Event Start Time
• Event End Date
• Event End Time
• Venue Name
• Venue Location
• Venue Website
• Organizer Name
• Organizer Telephone
• Organizer email
• Organizer Website

I argue that it is best to include EVERYTHING, as we can choose what to use when mapping the RSS feed into another application. For example, for an Email Newsletter, I would utilize fields similar to a list view, so the RSS Template would look something like:

[Featured Image]
[Title]
[Event Start Date] @ [Event Start Time] – [Event End Time]
[Venue Name], [Venue Location]
[Purchase/Book Event Link]

Then tell MailChimp to load the next 15 events (or whatever).

If I were Modern Tribe, I would even pre-build a few HTML Templates for the big email newsletters with different layouts for event listings, based off the existing layouts available for TEC Pro (list, calendar, photo, etc)

This is a small project that could have huge monetarily rewarding payoffs for TEC users in promoting events and gaining additional sales. Please reconsider.

Thanks for your time.

• This topic was modified 10 years, 5 months ago by Mike.

[Brian]

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback we appreciate it.

I am going to bring this up in our next meeting after Thanksgiving.

Cheers

[Brian]

This reply is private.

[Charles Bartlett]

I would like to second this feature request.

The ability to populate an email template with future events (filtered by event properties) is a high-value feature.

By Start Date range
By Category
By Venue
By Cost (Free)

[Brian]

Hi cbzen

If you would like to request that feature please head to our UserVoice Page and add your own or upvote that feature as they will increase the chances of it being added to a future version.

http://tribe.uservoice.com/forums/195723-feature-ideas

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