RSS not replacing email yet

October 22, 2008

For web designers and developers, email can seem a dreadfully old fashioned way to spread information. I've spoken to plenty of people who tell me that RSS is going to take over and email will be dead soon.

There is no doubt that for some types of information, an RSS feed is a much better way to keep up to date. It's also obvious that lots of people are struggling with too much email.

However, outside of the techy world, RSS has a very long way to go. Via Steve Rubel we came across this recent Forrester research paper on the state of RSS.

Nearly half of interactive marketers use RSS, but consumer adoption has only reached 11%. Of the consumers who haven't adopted RSS, most don't understand how RSS is relevant to their lives and the way they seek information. If marketers expect to reach a critical mass of consumers by using content syndication, then they must take on the burden of education.

Why does this matter to you?

This really is important to remember. While you and your immediate circle keep up with your favourite topics, products and companies via RSS, the great mass of people are not doing that.

In fact, even most Campaign Monitor customers do not subscribe to the RSS feed, and we always see a huge boost in traffic to the blog after our newsletters go out.

So when you next design a blog for a client, take some time to explain this to them. Clients are rightfully concerned about how to keep people coming back to their site.

An RSS feed is simple and useful, but it won't reach most of their audience. Email newsletters, on the other hand, appeal to a much greater potential audience. You can offer a well designed newsletter layout to your clients, and help them get that attention.

It's a nice additional source of income for your business as well as for your client's business. Email may be old, but it's got plenty of years left in it still!

Posted in: Tips & Resources

6 Comments

Kel
October 22, 2008 3:37pm

All excellent points - Of course, I’m only replying to this because the feed came in via RSS ;-) Count me as one of the few.

Our next email blast will feature a section devoted to RSS - why not use both to get the word out with as much overlap as possible.
Mathew Patterson
October 22, 2008 3:58pm

Right on Kel, use all the methods available to you. Don’t lose sight of effective methods when the new hotness comes along!
Dean
October 22, 2008 8:20pm

I just can’t ever see RSS achieving a high level of awareness with the general public - a lot of my customers can just about cope with the basic operation of an email program and a browser and a significant number can only use a browser even for email! I think most non-techy people want something that “just works” and have little inclination to learn something new or experiment.

Personally I’m still looking for a cure for my addiction to RSS feeds!! I use the Sage-Too addon for Firefox and review the feeds every morning - most days I only get about halfway through the list. The key problem is that so many sites have interesting things to read.
Nick Cowie
October 22, 2008 9:41pm

The other problem is early adopters are beginning to abandon straight RSS feeds for information prefiltered through social networks.

For example, I rarely subscribe to or read email newsletters (2 or 3 a month), if it is important I already know. RSS feeds, I have culled my feeds by 50% and need to cull them further, no longer do I open my feed reader 3 or more times a day. I open feedly (RSS tool for Firefox that works with Google reader subscriptions) a couple times a day, somes only reading a few recommended articles. Most of my info comes prefiltered through FriendFeed, SocialMedian or Twitter.

Point is by the time the general public are aware and using RSS, a lot of people would of moved beyond RSS. You need to write good content and deliver it in as many channels as possible, email, RSS and social media.
Todd
October 24, 2008 8:19am

We wrote a blog post about RSS and sent it out as one of the main features of our latest newsletters. We’re trying to move more and more of our communication to the blog, but a majority of our clients just aren’t comfortable with that world yet and we don’t want to leave them behind.

By the way, I’m first time visitor to your site and I can’t wait to get started with Campaign Monitor. It’s EXACTLY what we’re looking for, for both our internal newsletter and for our clients.
Dana Whittle
December 6, 2008 12:02pm

While this service is really well done, I think you’re missing the boat by not having RSS to email as an option. While you’re 100% correct about people not understanding how to use RSS, they don’t NEED to! The reason : for those of us maintaining tons of websites, it is SO much easier to maintain a “newsletter” page in, for example, Wordpress, and then manage subscribers via apps like Nour.ish or MailChimp to send that page AS email. I can’t believe that Campaign Monitor doesn’t offer this! It seems like a must to me… I’m trying this out now but hesitate to go back in time to doing HTML email newsletters; I can just use free open source apps like Pommo or PHPList if I want to do that, and customize them to look like my branding…

If you decide to add the RSS to email you’ll have me!

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