Data Feeds

Data feeds let you pull live content from an external source directly into your email at send time. Instead of editing the template every time the content changes, you point the email at a feed URL and bluefox.email fetches the latest items when the email is sent.

This is useful for newsletters, digests, weekly roundups, product highlights, recommended articles, or any email where the content should reflect up-to-date data.

Data feeds are available on every email type:

• Transactional Emails
• Triggered Emails
• Campaigns
• Automations (inside Send Email and Notify nodes)

Supported feed types:

• RSS / Atom XML
• JSON

Adding a Feed

Every email card has a Feeds section, just below the Details section. Expand it to see existing feeds or to add a new one. Click + Add Feed.

A form expands where you configure the feed:

Fill in the following fields:

• Feed URL: The URL of the feed you want to pull content from.
• Feed Type: Select the type of feed (RSS / Atom XML or JSON).
• Variable Name: The name you'll use to reference this feed's data inside your email template using Handlebars syntax. For example, if you name it news, you'll reference items as news in the loop expression.
• Required (checkbox): If checked, the email will not be sent when the feed fails to load. See Required Feeds below.

Click Preview to verify the feed is reachable and to see the items + available fields.

Then click Save to store the configuration.

TIP

You can add multiple feeds to a single email by clicking + Add Feed again after saving the first one.

Using a Feed in Your Template

A feed is an array of items. How you render those items depends on which editor you're using: the Visual Editor uses a drag-and-drop Loop block, while Raw HTML and Plain Text use directly-typed Handlebars syntax. The steps below cover the Visual Editor, see Raw HTML / Plain Text further down for the code-based approach.

Step 1: Insert a Loop

In the drag-and-drop editor, drop a Loop block where you want the feed content to appear.

Step 2: Configure the Loop Expression

On the right side menu you will see the loop's settings and select the expression.

The table you will see, lists every feed you've added to this email by its Variable Name.

Pick the one you want.

You can also set:

• Skip: Number of items to skip from the start (e.g. 0).
• Limit: Number of items to render (e.g. 2 to show the first two).

Step 3: Reference Item Fields Inside the Loop

Inside the loop, you can drop normal content blocks (text, image, button, divider, etc.) and reference the current item's fields using merge tags. So just click the merge tag icon in any block's toolbar to see the available fields from the feed.

When the merge tag picker is open inside the loop, you'll see the item's fields (the keys available on each entry of the feed). Outside the loop, only the top-level/generic keys of the feed are visible per-item fields are only accessible from inside a loop bound to that feed.

Common RSS / Atom fields you'll reference:

• item.title
• item.link
• item.description
• item.enclosure.url: the image URL for items that include media

For a JSON feed, the field names depend on your feed's response shape, use Preview to discover them.

Images from a feed need the Dynamic Image block

A regular Image block expects a static URL set at design time. If you want the image to come from a feed item (e.g. item.enclosure.url), use the Dynamic Image block instead and set its source to the merge tag. A regular Image block will not render feed-driven URLs correctly.

Raw HTML / Plain Text

Feeds are added to a Raw HTML or Plain Text email the same way as any other email, from the Feeds section on the email card. The difference is how you consume them inside the editor: there's no canvas, so there's no Loop block to drag in.

Instead, open the Merge Tags panel from the editor toolbar and write the loop directly using Handlebars, referencing the feed's Variable Name:

{{#each articles skip=0 limit=2}}
  {{this.title}}
  {{this.link}}
{{/each}}

Place your cursor where you want the loop to start, then use the Merge Tags panel to insert the feed variable and item fields at the correct spots. Per-item fields (like this.title above) are only meaningful inside the loop, the same way they're only visible in the merge tag picker while inside a Loop block in the Visual Editor.

Since Raw HTML has no separate Image element, there's no Dynamic Image distinction either, just reference the feed's image field directly in a normal image tag:

<img src="{{this.enclosure.url}}">

Click Preview with data to confirm the feed items render correctly, same as in the Visual Editor.

Step 4: Preview With Data

Once you've set up the loop and referenced the item fields, click the preview button in the editor. Here you can view the raw email preview, but to see the feed items rendered, switch to Preview with data mode.

Here you will be able to see the feed items rendered in the loop, and confirm that the fields are pulling through as expected. If you see errors or missing data, double-check the feed URL, type, and field references.

Required Feeds

The Required checkbox on the feed controls what happens when the feed fails to load at send time:

• Required = on: If the feed fails to load, the email will not be sent. Use this when the feed content is essential (e.g. a digest that is meaningless without it).
• Required = off: If the feed fails to load, the email is still sent and the loop simply renders nothing for that feed. Use this for optional/supplementary content.

If an email has multiple feeds, each feed's Required flag is evaluated independently.

Multiple Feeds

You can attach as many feeds as you need to a single email. Each feed has its own variable name, so you can loop over them independently in the same template (e.g. one loop for news, another for products).

Editing or Deleting a Feed

In the Feeds section of the email card, expand a feed to edit its fields or delete it. Deleting a feed only affects this email, other emails using the same URL are unchanged. If you delete a feed that's referenced by a loop in the template, that loop will have no items to render.