Marketing Studies

This is a response to John's last and final article regarding the "Death of e-Mail Debate". It seems John has had enough of our little battle and to tell you the truth, in a way, I've had enough as well ... just probably not in a manner you would expect. But more on that in the next article ...

Rather than continue the exchange ad infinitum, I am going to make some final comments to summarize my own views on this discussion and then move on to other topics. Rok and I could continue this discussion from now to the Second Coming and neither of us will convert the other because of some fundamental differences I will explain below.

The point is that every other option for easy communication falls short in many areas, still keeping e-mail on top. Whether RSS will replace e-mail as the preferred content delivery tool is yet to be seen, but it cannot and will not replace e-mail communications. Believing that it will is not only naive, but goes against all logic.

RSS is good because it gives back to individual users the power to choose and select content. This, along with timeliness, portability and cost-effectiveness, are probably the best reasons why you should understand how and why RSS is going to change the way you select and receive your information, news and updates.

John Botscharow returns to the e-mail debate today, responding to some of my comments and to Dana's article and goes head-on with us on our statements.

We received a response to the e-mail debate from Tom Hespos today. Tom gives some additional insight on RSS replacing e-mail as a content delivery vehicle. I must say I agree with him on the issue about integrating RSS in to popular e-mail clients ...

Instead of the ordinary response, Dana VanDen Heuvel (http://www.danavan.net) enters our discussion with an article about RSS for the real world.

Email was supposed to lighten the load, kill paper and make life easier but instead it has added to the problem. We're talking quality versus quantity here. Today I fired up my PC after a week away to find my spam filters had trapped over 400 emails but still some got through. I had over 100 emails that needed to be read (yours included). A few years ago I never had this problem but now it's just added to my workload. So I deal with email by scanning, quick responding, filing and deleting. To use such a tool to deliver marketing materials is a waste of time.

Clearly email marketing has some tough challenges, primarily spam and viruses. It seems premature to call "dead" something that people are still learning to use. But email marketing is sick, and I hope we find the cure for spam.

First, everyone hoping for such a radical change of consumer behavior must take in to account the entire population, not just some of its smaller sub-groups.