[This is a teaser of a post. I have original research data about RSS usage to report, but I ramble on and on first and only deliver the goods in the last paragraph.]
I’ll admit it, when I first discovered RSS, I was all excited about it, too. I even gave in to the hype and joined the popular speculation that RSS might be a viable alternative to email for marketing purposes. But then, like the guy in Monty Python’s Holy Grail who complained of having been turned into a newt, I got better.
Frankly, I’ve always been a bit underwhelmed by RSS. I know that’s not cool to admit (the gals over at BigBlogCompany will probably get their panties in a bunch to hear me say it), but there it is. Yeah, in principal it’s great, but having tried several RSS syndication apps, I haven’t been impressed with the execution. The main thing I hate about most of them is the ephemeral quality of posts: if you let a few days go by without checking in on your feeds, the older items scoll off into the ether, and if you want to go back and look at old links, you’re SOL. I did love NewsGator when I first discovered it and even paid the $30 for it. The idea of having RSS feeds turn into email messages really clicked for me. The only problem is I don’t use Outlook for my email. I’m a Eudora user and have been for many years and I’ll give up on Eudora in favor of Outlook when you pry it from my cold dead hands. For a while, I was using Outlook exclusively for my NewsGator RSS feeds, but somehow I couldn’t keep up the momentum of regularly using yet another Internet communications app; I haven’t checked my NewsGator feeds for months.
But I do have a point here aside from just my own lukewarm experience with RSS. I just came across a post titled Seven Reasons to Switch from EMail Marketing to RSS Advertising on Pheedo.info. Bill (whose last name is not apparent on the site; what’s up with that?) gives these seven reasons to back up his thesis:
- Sender ID
- CAN SPAM ACT
- Blacklists
- Known Sender
- Email Filters
- Bonded Sender Program
- Cost of Sending Email
(Bill’s orignal post on Pheedo has links on all of those reasons for more context.)
I don’t get this. Aside from Blacklists, those all seem to me like reasons to stick with email marketing, signs that legit marketers are going to triumph over spammers in the end, or at least competitive advantages they have now to distinguish themselves from spam. Frankly, I’m happy to go on record predicting that spam is on the retreat. I firmly believe in 2-3 years, spam will be much less of a problem for email users and legit marketers compared to today.
But, more to the point, switching from email to RSS? Don’t be a fool. By all means, introduce RSS. Despite my personal lack of fascination with RSS, I do believe it has a role to play and a more promising future, even if that may not be in the near future. Note that the post I linked to above (on MarketingVox) where I had given into dreaming of a time when RSS may present an alternative to email, I was writing in the context of Microsoft saying it will introduce an RSS reader into its Longhorn operating system. When Microsoft comes out with a free RSS reader, particularly one built into the OS, then I think RSS will go mainstream. What they should really do, in my opinion, is buy NewsGator or just rip off the idea. But Longhorn isn’t due out till 2006, so let’s not hold our breath.
But here’s the kicker, the reason why I hope you made it all the way to the bottom of this rambling post. Why not kill your email program in favor of RSS today? Because virtually 100% of Internet users use email and virtually 0% of Internet users use RSS today. Sure, we all assume it’s not a lot of folks who use RSS, but I’ve got the actual number. This July, I conducted a survey for my client Quris, an email marketing services provider, of 2543 Internet users from Harris Interactive’s panel. I am still writing up the report for this research, so this is an unreported scoop, but I trust Quris won’t mind. One of the questions we asked was about various digital communications media and devices they use, including this choice:
I use a “news aggregator” to subscribe to websites (using “RSS” or another “XML” syndication language).
The response? Thirty-five people out of 2543 checked that option. That is 1.4% of the total, that five years after RSS has been available to the world.
Sure, go ahead and dump your email programs in favor of RSS. But don’t come crying to me when you realize how dumb of a choice that was.
Why (Not) to Switch From Email to RSS
I disagree with this post of Rick Bruner’s, but I am too tired to really rant. At the moment, Rick’s key argument against the use of RSS in business is that such a small percentage of people are using it. It’s hard to argue on numbers alone… RSS…
Trackback by atmaspheric | endeavors — August 28, 2004 @ 7:23 pm
Great points. When RSS finally gets REALLY SIMPLE it might replace email. My experience is “paste this HTML code in your page”…
That said…it will be quicker than we think.
Comment by David — August 28, 2004 @ 9:05 pm
I’d agree with the key point in your piece, Rick – don’t switch from email marketing to RSS. As you say, introduce it, use it but don’t just switch to it. From a marketing point of view, RSS is a complementary tool, just another communication channel (as blogs are).
Re Newsgator, this is a great way to manage and manipulate your RSS info, but only if you use Outlook. I’ve just started playing with Newsgator (I’ve commented on what I think of it on my blog).
On RSS generally, I’m sure this is about to move mainstream, lots of media comment in the past few weeks that support this view (e.g., Wired News piece Aug 26 on RSS attracting serious money).
Good point re Microsoft incorporating an RSS reader. Maybe not into the OS but into Office. Acquiring Newsgator or developing something similar look like feasible concepts.
Comment by Neville Hobson — August 29, 2004 @ 12:47 am
At a 1.4% usage rate, yes, RSS for marketing purposes is not happening anytime soon. However, I do see a very good reason to use a blog/RSS technique within a corporate environment.
Within my global B$BAC (billion $ big ass company), a ton of corporate info ( IT warnings, HR postings, communication messages ) is sent out via email. Now, most people within this B$BAC get 50 to 100 emails per day and getting another set of corporate emails to read is not exactly welcome.
To me, using RSS tied to a corporate communication blog would be a vast improvement over getting 10 emails. Simply mass subscibe all employees to the blog, set their notification schemes to their pager, Blackberry, phone or IM and allow them to come to the blog to gather the information normally clogging email.
As opposed to email, the blog then allows for commentary on the communication ( pretty important in a global setting )and the archive function of the blog allows for people to easily find old communication as opposed to the “where the hell did I put that email” system.
So, yes from a “marketing” perspective RSS is not quite ready, but in a corporate environment, there is some very fertile ground that could be tilled.
Comment by jbr — August 29, 2004 @ 10:04 am
Off topic: Dude, Outlook, Eudora? If you’re still using Outlook then boy do I have an email to send you. Don’t worry, that attachment will open itself.
Have you tried Thunderbird? The nightly builds have an RSS reader built in.
Comment by Will Pate — August 29, 2004 @ 3:25 pm
But, as I say, I don’t use Outlook for email, in part exactly because of browsers, so, no, please keep your magical attachment to yourself.
Comment by Rick Bruner — August 29, 2004 @ 7:43 pm
But what about the approach http://www.messagecast.net is using with their LiveMessage tool? It delivers RSS feeds as Microsoft Messanger alerts.
Comment by Michelle Manafy — August 30, 2004 @ 10:47 am
Rick,
What do you think of Yahoo’s new RSS reader? I’ve tried it out and I like it. It’ll be interesting to see what Yahoo has in store for it in the future.
Comment by Hock Ng — August 30, 2004 @ 12:09 pm
Great post Rick, but I feel that you are coming off a bit harsh.
Sure only 1.4% of your respondents are using RSS at this time, or whenever the survey was taken. The nice thing is that you have immediately pinpointed what so many are referring to as the ‘influencers’. These are technically astute users, who probably have at least one of their own blogs, and get everyone to listen to what they have to say.
I dont think email should be abandoned, I still get a lot of great email letters everyday. But your peice here makes it seem like Marketers can go ahead and keep ignoring RSS for at least another 6 months or so.
Oh and as far as a news reader goes you dont need to look at anything other than Bloglines.com. It stores up to 200 posts per feed(if thats not enough then you dont really need to be subscribed), you can either save posts at a ‘Clipping’ or post it to your own Bloglines Blog, you can email a post to anyone, create a blogroll of your feeds and put it on your site, subscribe to email newsletters, search your feeds or any others on the site, check out the feeds that are getting the most comments, and there is more I just havent had time to explore it all. Oh and its FREE!
Comment by Roger — August 30, 2004 @ 12:53 pm
Roger,
The survey was done this July, so it’s a pretty current number. As for warning marketers off RSS, I did write above “By all means, introduce RSS. Despite my personal lack of fascination with RSS, I do believe it has a role to play and a more promising future…”
Mainly, I just want to put an end to the persistent idea that RSS should replace email. That’s what I think would be foolish. But yes, I do think RSS is cool and eventually I’ll even find my way back to it personally. I’m kind of suffering from info-overload at the moment, so resubscribing to 50 feeds just seems like too much for me to keep up with lately. I’ve got my routine of dipping into a handful of blogs, but when I sign up for so many feeds I feel like I need to look at them every day, and I really don’t have that extra hour right now.
Comment by Rick Bruner — August 30, 2004 @ 2:20 pm
Rick, first thanks for commenting on my post. I just want to clear a few misconceptions.
1. My suggestion was, “These are seven strong reasons for any marketer to at least consider testing RSS advertising” As you know, testing in our biz is important.
2. I agree with you, small numbers today. However, many of the feeds we advertise in are seeing double-digit growth rates. We published a case study a few months ago that shows the success we are having. This is not an exception but the norm – http://www.pheedo.info/archives/cat_case_study.html
3. How long did it take email to become popular? Well after the 5 year mark. Ray Tomlinson developed the first email application in 1971. Large scale adoption didn’t happen until around 1993.
4. The survey results you suggest are from the general Internet population. Conduct that same survery to the technology industry and I think that number would be much higher. That is what we are seeing anyway. Here are numbers that support the growth rate of feeds: http://www.syndic8.com/stats.php?section=overview
5. With the recent funding in the RSS space, people holding the purse strings see something.
http://www.gigaom.com/2004/08/technorati_gets.php
6. The last name is Flitter. Thanks for the suggestion. That was an oversight on my part.
Comment by Bill Flitter — August 30, 2004 @ 11:16 pm
Bill,
Yes, you did write “These are seven strong reasons for any marketer to at least consider testing RSS advertising” halfway down the post. And, as I wrote, I agree that markters should test RSS. But the title of your post is “Seven Reasons to Switch from EMail Marketing to RSS Advertising,” which is a bit more definitive.
Also, as for the comparison between the adoption rate of email and RSS, sure, the Internet just turned 35 and email was one of its first apps, but the comparison isn’t entirely apt, as there were no ISPs or otherwise general access to email or any other Internet app before the early 1990s. Today, more than half of all Americans use the Internet. RSS has been around since 1999. In that same time period, use of instant messaging has grown to more than 50% of that same survey sample. Even mobile phone text messaging is more widely used than RSS according to our findings. So what’s holding RSS back? Nothing to do with availability of access, unlike email in the early days.
As to your point about technologists and RSS, I don’t buy it either. In the same survey, we asked what topics people spent a significant amount of money on and gave them a long list of choices that included, among other things, computers, electronics and computer games. Putting those three choices together as a single segment we called “technology users,” we cross tabulated all the other survey questions. For RSS use, only 3% of these technology users used RSS or other XML syndication.
Regarding VC funding, where were you during the 1990s? People saw something in TheGlobe.com, Pets.com and a lot of other ideas that went nowhere.
Again, I’m not condemning RSS. I do like the idea. It’s so damned easy to implement, by all means I think marketers should do so. Experiment, as you say. But for a five-year-old technology, I just think the boosters have things out of proportion. The user demand so far doesn’t validate the rampant enthusiasm that many express, certainly on the point of abandoning email in favor of it.
Comment by Rick Bruner — August 31, 2004 @ 6:15 am
Rick,
I think we are saying the same thing – almost. I think we both agree RSS is a great tool but the number of readers is small – today.
You asked what’s holding us back from the growth in RSS. My answer is the right people (sneezers as Seth calls them) promoting RSS and its benefits. Secondly, technology that makes it easy. It’s coming.
Additionally, I am not disputing your survey results. All I can speak to is the actual results we have been experieincing. The results are not someones opinion, these are hard numbers.
Regarding VC funding. You point to the failurs. My glass is half full – Yahoo, EBay, Microsoft.
We’ll see what happens.
Comment by Bill Flitter — August 31, 2004 @ 9:45 am
I don’t mean to keep arguing about this, but I don’t think what’s holding it back is evangelists. I think there are loads of evangelists. I do think it’s the technology to an extent. Also, I would be willing to bet that next year that number might be 3-5% and the year after closer to 10% and so on (or even suddenly 50%, if MS Longhorn has a good RSS reader baked into the OS or other essential tools). It’s just the swapping out email for RSS thing that trips my trigger, as it’s been a popular suggestion for a year or more, thoughly premature, to say the least.
Comment by Rick Bruner — August 31, 2004 @ 10:14 am
RSS doesn’t need more reach to be effective if you know what to expect from it. It’s a great way to reach influencers who will provide an echo chamber to your content if they think it’s worth it. Here’s a test I’ve run: add an ID to links to your content embedded in your feeds to differentiate them from direct links. What I’ve found out is that those RSS links are disproportionately used by people posting on their blogs (quoting or “re-blogging”). So if nothing else, feeds are a great tool to seed ideas/messages to people who will spread the word and who, without a feed, would probably not bother checking out your site on a daily basis.
Now I concur that it would be silly to drop email for RSS now and until its reach is much bigger (if that ever happens). I never agreed with people like Chris Pirillo who press this issue as if the switch was an emergency. You can’t rush the readers. Publishers and marketers, within their budget and technical constraints, should try to be medium-agnostic and leave the choice to their customers. The same content can live on the web, in email, and in RSS.
Comment by Olivier Travers — September 2, 2004 @ 3:59 am
RSS not ubiquitous, yet.
Trackback by Alex Barnett blog — September 2, 2004 @ 6:34 pm
RSS Advertising, Hot or Not?
One day Rick Bruner from Business Blog Consulting is critizing my post – “Seven Reasons to Switch from Email Marketing to RSS Advertising” and the next day Paul Chaney from The Radiant Marketing Group is singing the praises of Pheedo….
Trackback by Pheedo — September 2, 2004 @ 8:27 pm
RSS Advertising, Hot or Not?
One day Rick Bruner from Business Blog Consulting is critizing my post – “Seven Reasons to Switch from Email Marketing to RSS Advertising” and the next day Paul Chaney from The Radiant Marketing Group is singing the praises of Pheedo….
Trackback by Pheedo — September 2, 2004 @ 9:20 pm
One problem with RSS right now, from a site owner’s perspective, is that it’s still too passive. The user has to make a conscious choice to call up a feed and read it.
That’s like assuming that if you build a website people will come, and we all know that’s not true.
With email you, the site owner, can go out and take action to reach your audience.
Comment by Anita Campbell — September 4, 2004 @ 9:04 pm
Rick Bruner on Why Not to Switch From Email to RSS
A few days ago, I wrote a short riff on why email marketing should not be dropped in favor of RSS for content syndication and marketing purposes. . .for the time being anyway. I proposed a “best of both worlds”
Trackback by Radiant Marketing Group — September 7, 2004 @ 6:31 am
RSS complements email marketing
There’s been quite a bit of discussion recently on RSS taking over the job that email traditionally has done in marketing. Rick Bruner made a good case last month for why you shouldn’t just switch to RSS with One (Percent)
Trackback by NevOn — September 15, 2004 @ 10:48 pm
Rick – great article. More data though…
>>> keep in mind that RSS adoption rates remain pretty low.
Comment by Bill French — September 25, 2004 @ 4:20 pm
[…] original post prompted Barnett’s, […]
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