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RSS and E-mail: How They Can Work Together?
by: Rok Hrastnik
Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

For most marketers online e-mail is still the key marketing and communicational tool, with its use ranging from e-zine publishing, direct sales messages, loyalty campaigns to internal communications between team members.

But getting e-mail through due to spam filters and spam itself is getting increasingly difficult, while anti-spam legislation is putting even legitimate e-mail marketers to risk.

With 100% content delivery ratios, is RSS a replacement for e-mail?

At least right now, certainly not. However, it has become the key supplement to e-mail delivery. While many internet users are starting to ignore e-mail subscriptions and subscribe only to RSS content, the majority is just starting to explore the world of RSS.

As such, the time to get started with RSS is now … if you want to get an upper hand over your competition before RSS reaches mainstream and at the same time test the RSS marketing approaches that work for you.

Using RSS as a supplementary content delivery channel, next to e-mail, is one of the places to get started. But to use RSS in conjunction with e-mail, you first need to understand some of the basic relationships between these two tools and e-zines and blogs.

A) UNDERSTANDING RELATIONS BETWEEN RSS, E-MAIL, E-ZINES AND BLOGS

How do these four really relate and what does this mean for your internet marketing strategy?

The most common miss-conception is comparing blogs and e-mail, with many bloggers actually touting blogs as a replacement for e-mail. The truth is, there’s no comparison at all, just like comparing apples and oranges.

The second miss-conception is believing that RSS and blogs are somehow strongly related or even that RSS is good only for delivering blog content. The result of this on one side are marketers who do not see RSS as a full-powered communicational channel, and bloggers on the other side who refuse to see e-mail as a viable content delivery vehicle.

Let’s set the record straight in the simplest possible terms.

Blogs and e-zines or newsletters are "the what" --- what you publish online ... the content side.

RSS and e-mail are "the how" --- how you get that content or information to the reader ... the delivery side.

RSS/e-mail and blogs/e-zines cannot be directly compared. Blog content and e-zine content can both be delivered via RSS and e-mail, and there is no direct business/logical relation between, for example, blogs and RSS.

What makes sense, for example, is comparing e-zines and blogs. Blogs are "personal" conversations, opinions and news, delivered in a linear structure, usually written in a more personal style, and confined to a limited number of content types.

E-zines on the other hand are more similar to magazines or newspapers, carrying content presented in a complex non-linear content structure, and having the ability to carry many different content types that do not mix well together if provided through a linear content structure. For example, a typical e-zine might include an editorial; a leading article, representing the prevailing topic of a specific e-zine issue; supporting articles, clearly structured to show they are secondary to the leading article; links to the most relevant forum topics and posts; a news section; different advertisements (banner ads, textual ads, advertorials etc.); a Q&A section; a featured whitepaper; etc.

Providing all of this content demands a complex content structure and a strong and experienced editor. The blog format simply does not provide the level of structure needed to effectively present such a complex content mix.

B) INTEGRATING RSS IN TO YOUR E-MAIL MARKETING STRATEGY

If you can understand these basic relations you can in fact understand how much you can integrate RSS in to your e-mail marketing strategy as a supplement to e-mail as a delivery tool.

For now, here are some of the most basic generic opportunities in using RSS together with e-mail:

1. Use RSS to announce each new issue of your e-mail e-zine, which you make available in full on your website.

2. Provide a separate RSS feed for the articles you publish in your e-mail e-zine and get them to your subscribers as soon as the articles become available, without them having to wait to receive them in your e-mail newsletter. The same goes for your news section, if you have one.

3. If you publish much content in different topic categories in your e-zine, provide a separate RSS feed for each of those topics. Take another look at the elements we listed above that a typical e-zine might include. Each of those elements could in fact become a stand alone RSS feed.

4. If you’re doing e-mail autoresponder marketing, provide those very same autoresponders as RSS feeds, allowing your visitors to subscribe either to the e-mail or RSS delivery channels to receive the very same content.

5. If you have your own affiliate program, make sure that your affiliates can also subscribe to your affiliate notices via an RSS feed, not just e-mail. Basically, all you will be doing is duplicating the same content you’re sending out via e-mail in an RSS feed.

6. If you’re sending out special notices or updates to your existing customers via e-mail, create a special limited-access RSS feed to deliver those same updates via RSS as well.

These should be enough to get you started thinking in the right direction.


About the author:
Find out all you need to know about RSS and how to use it to get your content delivered, win back your customers, make more sales and increase search engine rankings. »Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS«, acclaimed as the best and most comprehensive guide on marketing with RSS by top RSS industry leaders, experts, developers and top marketers. http://rss.marketingstudies.net/index.html?src=sa18


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 Tracking and Measuring RSS Feeds
 by: S. Housley

Measuring and tracking RSS while a fairly simple concept, is really anything but. Unlike websites, RSS have the added caveat of potential syndication, making accurate tracking a challenge to anyone but the extremely tech savvy.

It is not unrealistic for marketers to want to know how many subscribers they have, which items in their feeds attract the most interest, or how many click-throughs are generated as a result of an RSS feed.

There are a number of 3rd party providers who focus on tracking the consumption of RSS feeds. Some solutions are rudimentary but likely sufficient for a small business testing the waters with RSS. Other RSS tracking solutions are more complex and while they can come close to being accurate, with syndication there is no solution that tracks with 100% accuracy.

Techniques Used to track RSS Consumption

Small businesses can view web logs to provide information on how many times a specific file (RSS feed) is requested. The logs and information is rudimentary but will give a basic sense of a feeds success. Many 3rd party tracking options have additional tracking information available.

Hosting

The most common method to track the number of feed accesses or individuals accessing a feed is to use a 3rd party feed host. Companies like FeedBurner essentially track feeds based on accesses. The downside to using a 3rd party like Feedburner, is that the url is a FeedBurner url and any PageRank or popularity associated with the url will benefit the feed host rather than the feed creator. Additionally, no distinction is made between unique views or syndicate feeds.

FeedBurner provides a free no frills service to host RSS feeds and they have been proactive in circumventing user concerns. Recently implementing a service that eases users concerns about migrating from FeedBurner. There is a 3 step process for users interested in migrating from FeedBurner's free service, implementing a permanent redirect, and url forwarding.

Details can be found at: http://www.burningdoorc.om/feedburner/archives/001251.html

Some publishers, who were concerned about lock-in or wanted to retain control of the domain and feed urls often resist a hosting service. The new program FeedBurner Partner Pro is not free, but allows for users to point to their own domain, retaining complete control of their feeds without sacrificing statistical tracking.

The downside to using a service like FeedBurner is that some filtering applications used on corporate proxy servers block feeds residing on FeedBurner or other free hosts.

Redirects

Companies like SyndicateIQ have more complex tracking solutions that generate unique urls for each subscriber. The tracking benefits to such a customized solution is obvious. Individual user habits can be monitored and any users abusing their access and inappropriately syndicating a feeds content can have their feed turned off. The downside of course is that the success of RSS is in a large part due to the anonymity. Users don't want their personal habits tracked.

Considering the venture capital interest in these 3rd party hosting services. It is important to note that their value is in the data that they collect. As with any 3rd party service, it goes without saying that publishers should read the privacy policy carefully, be aware of who owns the rights to the collected information, and how that information might be used. It goes without saying that the value in many of the free services currently available lies in their aggregate data.

Uniquely Named Transparent Images

Uniquely named transparent 1x1 graphics can be added to the description field of an RSS feed. Users can use standard web logs to see the number of times the image is viewed and determine the number of times the feed was accessed.

Companies Specializing in Tracking and RSS Metrics

Pheedo - Pheedo creates tools that enable individuals, organizations and corporations to promote, analyze, and optimize their weblogs and content.

http://www.pheedo.com

SyndicateIQ - SyndicateIQ's position in the content distribution chain provides clients a set of analytics.

http://www.syndicateiq.com/

FeedBurner - FeedBurner offers a full range of services to help you build awareness, track circulation, and implement revenue-generating programs in your feed(s).

http://www.feedburner.com

Each individual using RSS needs to make a decision of the extent and importance of the analytics they require. Realizing that any system they employ is not going to be perfect.


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