RSS is the New Direct Marketing
RSS feeds have become fairly ubiquitous in the social media space and across the blogosphere. But for all the ubiquity, my research shows that overall popularity of content syndication is down as it has become stuck in the monetization phase of its New Media Life Cycle.
As a platform, RSS is struggling to move beyond the monetization phase; ad-based feeds have yet to yield big revenues.
Please allow me a Ron Popeil reference: I think that when it comes to their RSS feed, a lot of site owners simply set it and forget it. While monetization of the platform has been nothing more than a failure, RSS has so much potential that I’m, frankly, rather surprised it’s losing popularity. Reaching your audience at an inbox level is the new direct marketing. If you haven’t built an RSS strategy into your overall content marketing efforts, start. Now. Otherwise, you’re missing out on one of the most effective mediums of direct communication the web has to offer.
The power of personal choice
RSS feeds rely on the simple notion that subscribers are so interested in what you have to say, they want to be notified every single time you say something. This is the holy grail of content marketing and why RSS is such a strong indicator of success. An RSS audience is, in a way, inviting you into their “home,” their inbox. You’re reaching an audience in their personal space. In this space, you are guaranteed an eager audience ready to consume and engage, as they’ve chosen the experience they wanted to create.
In addition, the barriers to subscription are incredibly low. The barrier is usually a mere one or two clicks before your umbilical is connected to a user’s own personally shaped web portal.
Despite a recent downward trend, RSS is searched about 10 times as often as direct or email marketing.
Monetize your content, not the medium
A few of the feeds I subscribe to incorporate ads into them, hoping for a few clicks and referrals. Others offer a few lines of an article, hoping to entice a click to their site and maybe a few impressions on their banners. This is the wrong way to monetize your content and seems very counter-intuitive to me. Here you are, connecting with someone ready to deeply engage with your content, and you insist on sending them away from their comfort zone or distracting them with an ad?
I suggest offering your subscribers more, not less. Start offering them a premium for granting you the privilege of appearing in their readers and email clients. A contest? Free product? Additional commentary on whatever it is you’re writing about? I’m not sure what, but treat your best customers well and they will 1) keep coming back and 2) tell their friends.
The takeaway
As opposed to a newsletter, which requires a user to input their own personal information and then requires the site owner to manage that information on top of putting together relevant content, why not offer a prominent link to your RSS feed? No personal information has to change hands, it’s quicker for the subscriber, it’s lighter lifting for the producer, and the content is going to the same or a similar destination. It’s not too difficult to imagine a future where some content producers distribute only via RSS.
My question to you
Do you have an RSS strategy or are you just setting it and forgetting it?
About the author
Andrew Davis -
In 2002, Andrew founded Tippingpoint Labs with journalist James Cosco. Since then, he's spent countless hours exploring the online universe and building a methodological approach to developing digital strategies that drive revenue or reduce costs.
Andrew's always asking big questions and analyzing data to understand markets, online forces and even business models. Andrew's research has resulted in the creation of innovative online metrics including Online Brand Value and Category Brand Value, eye-opening graphical representations of website evolution through the New Media Life Cycle and even using online data to predict offline revenue.
When he's not surfing the web, Andrew's traveling the globe speaking to a wide-variety of audiences about everything from social media to the future of print. Andrew is a frequent contributor to the Tippingpoint Labs website and has been creating valuable content since the early 1990s for The Jim Henson Company, CNN, The Today Show and MTV.
He's contributed to a book of short stories, called The Way Things Were and produced and co-wrote Roadside Ambition a documentary film about one small town with two huge balls.
"In a world where content is consumed as rapidly as it's created, companies need to develop a sound strategy to creating valuable online experiences that can, and should, be leveraged enterprise-wide. There is a content solution to every business challenge."Popular Posts
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OK, so how do I set an RSS Strategey?
As yet, I don’t think we particularly have a strategy for our RSS, it’s just there…
Amelia,
Great question! It’s so nice to see you engaging again and again on our blog and we really do appreciate the dialogue.
So, I think a good RSS strategy actually starts with a very well-defined content strategy. We are in the early stages of executing our content strategy and as a result our RSS strategy will follow.
When you are creating a content strategy for the Web it must be based on the delivery of frequent content. You might have noticed that we have a series of stories that are delivered consistently on the same day as. These stories are part of a feature (for example this story is part of the new media lifecycle feature and comes out every Friday).
Our plan is to offer RSS feeds for each feature. That means that if you are only interested in receiving the new media lifecycle analyses every Friday you can actually subscribe just to that RSS feed. This allows us to hyper target our audience and make sure that we are delivering high quality relevant content based on exactly what they are looking for.
I hope that makes sense. I’m happy to flesh it out more if you need to.
Thanks again Amelia!
Andrew~
What types of tools exist that track RSS feeds- from subscribers to, actual readership, etc?
Thanks,
Sal
Sal,
Good question. The only reliable – decent one I know of is Feedburner. That’s what we use. It was acquired by Google: http://feedburner.google.com/
Anyone else have any ideas for Sal and I?
Thanks,
Drew
So on the subject of RSS for direct marketing, who is educating the consumer about how-to-use-RSS. And why they need to use RSS?
I know the value and you know the value. And marketers mostly know the value. But if the consumer is not using this new technology then how do we utilize it?
Steve,
This is a great point and a tremendous opportunity. I think ‘RSS’ as a brand has a huge challenge ahead of it. It’s not a very consumer friendly brand and I just read today (somewhere) that RSS readers – as stand alone apps- are having real problems these days.
I don’t have the answer to your question, but I’m hoping someone will be able to re-brand the term RSS in a more friendly consumer-centric way. Google Reader has helped a lot in championing adoption.
Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks for participating in the discussion.
we are using Mailchimp as the email newsletter/direct marketing tool for our site. Not in the conventional way but for its RSS generated campaign feature.
Simply put, it generates an html formatted e-mail ‘newsletter’ from our RSS feed to subscribers whenever we have new content posted and gives us full tracking and follow-up capability.
Steve,
This is a great idea. We actually use Feedburner, but perhaps mailchimp’s integration is tighter and more flexible and user-friendly.
I love this idea. Has it been successful for you?
Thanks so much for participating here. It’s nice to see you comment.
What I like about the RSS campaign feature of Mailchimp is the automation. We have a pre-designed html template, then whenever we add new content, this “newsletter” goes out (at a user determined interval) automatically.
I also use it on what I call “project sites”. Whenever I’m producing a large, ongoing project with a bunch of people in different locations, I create essentially a project blog for posting files, discussions etc. Apart from centralizing the project discussion, the Mailchimp RSS newsletter feature is used to automatically notify project members of new content -storyboards/designs etc. And (big brother) it lets me through its tracking and statistics see who opened it, click throughs etc. For me its like having a virtual project manager keeping everyone informed (and hopefully inline).
You haven’t looked at that storyboard yet? Well I can see you got the notification 10am last Wednesday etc…..not that I phrase it that way, but knowing whats happening is half the battle.
Its a very simple but very powerful feature.
WOW! That’s awesome. Steve Thanks so much for this explanation of your use of MailChimp.
Can I ask a question about your project sites? Do you set them up as private posts so that the blog is not available to the rest of the world?
We’ve been looking for a way to easily do this for our clients and I like your approach.
Thanks again for your insight. I’m going to feature this advice in our weekly Comments post – where we hightlight the best content from our audience!
Love this! Thanks so much!
Exactly -private posts so nothing gets indexed. What I’m building as an extension of this method is the following. On one particularly large long term project we’ve incorporated a full PunBB discussion forum into the site. This way the regular commenting feature of the blog is item specific -I post a storyboard, you are commenting on that storyboard.
The full discussion forum is for “umbrella topics” subject matter, project and schedule discussions etc. By taking the RSS feed from the PunBB forum, feeding it into Mailchimp, project members get a daily update on forum discussions as well. Of course this could be done with just the straight RSS but it (Mailchimp) gives me one stop shopping in terms of managing and monitoring the info. The deal maker is that up to 500 subscribers the service is free. As I’m using it as a “notifier conduit” for groups of maybe 10 people, its great. One of those tools that once you start using it, you think of 10 other ways to use it.