Add RSS Feeds to Your Web Strategy Toolbox

By on September 14, 2007 in RSS Feeds with 2 Comments

Rss(This article originally written for IowaBiz, July ’07)

Is email marketing dead?  Not entirely, but it’s changing. And RSS might be taking its place in the batting order.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever deleted an email newsletter that you subscribed to. Everyone (that’s honest) has their hand raised.  Sometimes we delete pieces we still want to subscribe to, we just don’t have time this issue, right?

Raise your hand if you’ve ever tried to unsubscribe to an email newsletter (how frustrating is that process?), and after unsuccessful attempts, just decided it would be easier to keep deleting the darned thing.

One company I work with shared these numbers with me:

1) Subscriber List: 3,348; Open-Rate: 326 (9.7%)

2) Subscriber List: 620; Reach: 198 (22.3%)

The top numbers are from their email list. They confessed the list isn’t 100% opt-in, they’ve added roughly half the addresses from various other sources (shame on them).  I’m sure the numbers would be higher had they not dilluted the process.

The bottom numbers are from their blog’s RSS feed. 100% opt-in. (Note: Open-Rate and Reach are pretty much the same thing. How many users actually opened the item)

Here’s one thing not told above. They send an email blast once or twice each month (total of 652 opened email each month). They update their blog an average of 3 times each week (total of 594 opened feed items each week).

The email service charges a small monthly fee. The RSS feed service is free.

An email newsletter can still be effective. However, RSS is proving to be at least as effective – maybe more so. With the recent addition of Feedburner to the Google family of tools, the measurement of RSS will become an integral part of your company’s web strategy.

Related Articles Elsewhere:
- What the Heck is RSS? by Brian Clark
– Email Open Rates Guide by Mark Brownlow
– And There Was Much Rejoicing… by FeedBurner

Related Books
- Web Analytics by Avinash Kaushik
- Email Marketing by the Numbers by Chris Baggott

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  • http://www.douglaskarr.com Douglas Karr

    Unfortunately, open rates are an inaccurate means of measuring engagement since the majority of email clients will block images on email.
    One should not be a replacement for the other, though. Email provides a medium where YOU can decide the timeliness of a message. RSS is a medium where the READER decides the timeliness.
    RSS is starting to catch up with email on technology, though. Personalized feeds with 1:1 content have been built by some major Email Service Providers. I’m just not sure what the adoption rate will be.
    Another major problem with RSS is analysis of your turnover. Unless you’re tracking every individual, you can’t tell whether your 1000 readers before are the 1000 readers today. Perhaps 500 left and 500 new readers signed up. In which case your churn would be 50%!

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