<< Implementing RSS as a Marketing Tool
RSS and Email Marketing
With that being said, RSS should not be used solely in place of email marketing campaigns. Instead, it should be used to enhance what is already in place. For most marketing directors, this is the easiest and best way to start implementing RSS into their marketing strategy. RSS feeds combined with email marketing provide a secondary method of subscriber acquisition and an alternative way to reach audiences.
Marketers know that email blasts are a great way to reach their customers, members, and target audience. The end users have shown an interest in the products and services by signing up to receive the information, and the email campaign allows the sender to personalize the emails by including the subscriber’s name, city, favorite product, etc. It also allows the sender to track the messages to see who is reading, deleting, and responding to the emails. It contains all of the metrics that marketers need in order to analyze results of their campaigns.
However, to achieve a successful email campaign, the sender has a few hurdles to overcome. Deliverability of the message is key to the success. Many times, messages are accidentally blocked or filtered to the users’ junk mail folder before the user has a chance to read the message. Or, users are so overwhelmed with the amount of commercial emails in their inboxes that they mistakenly report the message as spam. A good email marketing solution provider will help increase deliverability, but nothing can remove the threat entirely.
RSS, on the other hand, has no deliverability issues. To receive the information, the user simply has to click on a button to subscribe. There are no filters, no blocks, no spam reporting. However, because RSS is used to blast information out to many people at a time, it lacks the customization and detailed reporting tools found in email marketing solutions.
To be successful, marketers need to implement both email marketing and RSS into their marketing strategies. One way to do this is to find an email marketing software provider, like Listrak, that offers an easy way to publish RSS feeds. Listrak’s software allows users to do this by choosing “enable RSS feed” as an option while authoring the email message if they wish to send the RSS feed along with the email message.
A good way for marketers to get started with RSS is to send feeds along with the emails announcing press releases, podcasts, and corporate blogs. Subscribers are used to receiving this kind of information via RSS, and it’s an easy way for companies to become familiar with RSS technology. It also provides organizations a way to send this important information to subscribers without it coming across like an advertisement for business; yet it drives subscribers directly to the organizations’ websites. Marketers can track how many times the RSS feed has been viewed and how many subscribers have clicked through to the landing page, but due to the open nature of RSS, they won’t know who the subscribers are.
Not every email should contain RSS feeds. RSS feeds need content that subscribers will find interesting, informative, and new. Email marketing should still be used for communications that need to be personalized to the user, presented in a company template, and tracked for measurability.
