RSS Marketing Articles

How RSS can "save" your internet marketing?

by Rok Hrastnik, author of "Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS"

Comment: this article was first written in 2005 and is by now heavily outdated. So, instead of using it as a "how to" piece, rather look on it as a piece of internet history. This is how we saw RSS marketing more than 6 years ago!

Do you depend on e-mail and the search engines for most of your internet marketing?

Then you already know that e-mail content is getting harder and harder to deliver, while getting top placement in the key search engines is more difficult than ever.

RSS is just a "tool" and not a miracle, but it has the power to help us overcome many of the internet marketing problems we are facing today and bring us a few steps closer to our online marketing goals.

The E-mail Side: Is Your Content Getting Delivered?

• Most of your internet content never reaches your recipients. E-mail content is blocked by spam filters or stopped by recently changed e-mail addresses. When it is delivered, the recipients mostly don't read it. Chances are that more than half of your e-mail subscribers aren't getting your messages or aren't reading them.
  
  
• DoubleClick, a company that delivers millions of e-mail messages for its clients, reports (Q3 2004 Email Trend Report) that in Q3 2004 the average e-mail delivery rate grew slightly to 89.3%, while the average open rate is only 34.3%. The average click-through rate is 8.3%. The good news is that the click-to-purchase conversion rate grew to 4.2%, but having only 34.3% of all internet content read is still not something to be enthusiastic about.
  
  
• If more than half of your subscribers aren't getting your content, that's more than 50% of lost sales and relationship opportunities. How much does that amount to in losses in a few years?
  
  
• mportant messages and updates for your existing customers are getting lost as well. Imagine the negative impact this is having on your follow-up sales and after-purchase relationship building activities?
  
  
• People are afraid of subscribing to your e-mail newsletters; they cannot control the inflow of information as it is, increasing it only means more trouble.
  
  
• The US CAN-SPAM legislation is putting legitimate e-mail publishers at risk, enforcing rules that instead of being dangerous for the real spammers actually threaten legitimate senders.

This is the internet marketing reality in 2005.

The Question of Further Usefulness of E-mail

The key problem of internet marketing is that companies are dependant on e-mail to get their internet content delivered to their target audiences. Marketers are heavily depending on e-mail to communicate with their customers, build relationships with them and sell to them.

On the other side of the river, consumers are depending on e-mail to receive the content they want to receive and stay in touch with the companies that matter to them.

But while marketers and publishers are fighting to get content delivered to our audiences, internet users are fighting for better control of their content consumption . and sometimes even fighting to get the content they want.

The key problem we are all facing is the arguable inadequacy of e-mail to further serve us as the preferred content delivery and content consumption channel.

SPAM, enabled by the "democratic" nature of e-mail, has created such content delivery and consumption barriers that the entire internet content delivery process is in peril.

A] The first step in getting e-mail content delivered is acquiring the recipient's e-mail address and permission. A daunting task, considering that most internet users do not want to receive more e-mail, since their inboxes already resemble a tropic jungle.

B] After finally getting the e-mail address and sending our e-mailing, our messages are faced with various spam barricades from the recipient's Internet Service Provider.

C] After getting through the ISP barricades our message needs to "combat" the various filters in place on the user-side, such as third-party spam filters, usually partnered with an e-mail client spam filter. All this to make sure that nothing that even looks like spam gets through.

D] Then, the user still quickly scans the messages, eliminating the most obvious spam, and on top of that often also performs an in-depth scan to finally decide what messages to delete, move to the dreaded "to read" folder (which never gets read) or actually read.

There are just too many barriers on the way to make this a truly effective delivery system.

Believe it or not, people often call their recipients by phone to make sure they received their message. Sort of defeats the purpose of e-mail, doesn't it?

All of this a consequence of SPAM.

Certain solutions that might "cure" the spam problem are already in development, among those the Sender ID (intended to verify an e-mail sender's identity), being developed by Microsoft. But these are still far from being applied to everyday e-mail use.

In addition, it seems that e-mail postage via the Bonded Sender Program is also under strong consideration, which means more bad news for e-mail publishers. The Bonded Sender Program would require e-mail senders to pay a certain fee to get their e-mail messages delivered, just like traditional mail postage. If this program becomes a hard reality, what will small businesses and internet entrepreneurs do? Especially considering their midget budgets .

The future of e-mail does not look rosy.

But all of this is not to say that e-mail is no longer a valid option and that e-mail marketers should just stop using it.

Quite on the contrary.

According to a new study from the Winterberry group e-mail campaigns generate a $15.50 return per email-marketing dollar spent. That's roughly 17% more than in direct-mail campaigns and 73% more than telemarketing campaigns.

E-mail, regardless of its problems, still works and is still the primary internet content consumption channel for the majority of internet users. For most internet marketers and publishers, ceasing to use it would be like shooting themselves in the foot.

But we must still admit that e-mail is no longer the content delivery vehicle it once was, and that we now need to start complimenting it with other channels.

RSS is such a channel ...

The Search Engine Dilemma

The e-mail content delivery problem is joined with the ever-growing number of websites, all competing for the attention of the same visitors and the same search engines.

Search engines are still the #1 traffic generator for most websites, but getting high rankings for our website is getting more difficult every day.

If our prospects and customers cannot find us, how can we sell to them and build relationships with them?

We could use Pay-Per-Click advertising (sponsored keywords), but Pay-Per-Click prices are getting completely out of control. Many marketers can no longer keep up with high prices and can no longer generate a positive ROI through their PPC campaigns. The demand is just too high.

Part of the solution is using RSS to drive existing and fresh traffic to your site, by helping you increase your search engine rankings, getting your content published on other sites, serving as a direct link of communication with your prospects and by getting you found on the new generation of search engines and directories, which are also provided by the likes of Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

Can RSS Save You?

All marketers are experiencing e-mail and search engine problems, but RSS can help you.

Will it save your internet marketing?

As we said at the beginning, RSS is "just a tool" and not a miracle, but the fact is that it has what you need to help you bring your online marketing one step further.

Download the e-book for free!

Learn how to take full marketing advantage of RSS and get all the expertise, knowledge and how-to information for implementing RSS in your marketing mix, from direct marketing, PR and online publishing to SEO, traffic generation and customer relationship management.

"Unleash" starts with the basics, but also goes beyond to advanced RSS marketing topics not covered elsewhere, such as using RSS for direct and affiliate marketing, RSS metrics, RSS promotion and SEO and even internal communications.

Click here to download the e-book now or browse this site to find out more about RSS marketing and the contents of the e-book.

Just don't forget - it was written and published so long ago, that many things have changed since. While it still has its uses, look at it first as a piece of internet history and not as a reference guide for 2011 and beyond.