>> The
recent Forrester Research study, which claims that only
2% of online households in North America use RSS, took
the internet marketing world by storm. Does this data
really mean that marketers can still afford to ignore
this channel?
Soon after the Forrrester study became public, I
received a press enquiery asking whether marketers
should be interested in RSS now that so few online
adults use it.
Is this the correct question to ask? Let’s take a look
at the bigger picture …
1. THE FORRESTER STUDY VALIDITY
The Forrester study is just one of those available and
cannot be considered as the only relevant study,
although it was conducted on a sample of 68,000
households.
Jupiter Research estimates RSS penetration at 12% of the
American online population, while the latest report from
PEW shows that 9% of the American online population has
a good idea of what RSS is. An October 2004 PEW study
actually estimated RSS penetration at 5%.
It is also important to understand that Forrester data
does not include those that might not even be aware they
are using RSS, especially through services such as
My.Yahoo, which is actually the most popular RSS reader.
Also, at the same time, Forrester Vice President Henry
Harteveldt says that »RSS is critical for any
organization that wants to reach out to people under the
age of 30«.
2. THE FUTURE GROWTH OF RSS
Regardless of the numbers we put our faith in, the
future growth of RSS is without question. Microsoft just
recently announced full RSS support in the next edition
of their Internet Explorer browser and full RSS
integration in the next edition of their operating
system, the Windows Vista.
Once RSS becomes easily available to most internet users
out-of-the-box and becomes as widely spread as bookmarks,
its adoption will grow at an incredible rate. Microsoft
has now made sure this in fact will happen.
Consequently, the time for marketers to not only become
interested in RSS but also master it is now. Those that
test and discover the best possible ways of using RSS
for marketing will be ahead of their competition once
everyone starts using RSS.
Furthermore, since RSS implementation can actually be
free of any charge, there’s no reason not to start
providing your content in RSS feeds now.
3. GOOGLE SHOWS THE WAY
Microsoft and Yahoo! aren’t the only big players to show
support for RSS. Google recently launched RSS
advertising as part of their Google AdSense program,
giving publishers reason to start their own RSS feeds to
generate direct revenues.
Those that depend on Google AdSense for part or all of
their online revenues actually need to provide RSS feeds,
or stand to lose some of those revenues due to their
visitors switching to sites and feeds from their
competitors.
Face it, today many users are already starting to
request publishers provide them with RSS to subscribe to
their content. This trend will only continue, with many
users selecting RSS as their primary channel of
receiving and reading online content.
4. THE QUESTIONABLE RELIABILITY OF E-MAIL
All marketers today are experiencing e-mail delivery
problems, constantly wondering whether their messages
are getting through or not. Simply put, e-mail can no
longer be relied on.
For one, offering your content via RSS as a supplement
to e-mail will help you make certain that at least a
portion of your visitors, those that decide for the RSS
option, will be receiving all of your content without
any doubt.
Lockergnome.com decided to start pushing RSS instead of
e-mail some time ago, and as a result saw that their RSS
feeds are outperforming e-mail when it comes to
clickthrough rates for about 500%. Also an interesting
fact, they today have 5 times more RSS subscribers than
e-mail subscribers.
And two, for your most important content updates, RSS
really is becoming a must, especially if you need to be
in contact with your existing customers, partners and
other key audiences. If you want to be 100% certain that
your messages reach your audience, RSS is the way to go.
5. OTHER BENEFITS OF RSS
But all of the above don’t even touch all the reasons
why marketers should start using RSS today …
a) RSS will help you generate additional traffic and
reach new audiences. Considering the low cost of RSS
implementation, this is reason enough to get started
with RSS today.
b) RSS helps you to easily get your content published on
other sites, thus generating you more credibility and
visitors.
c) As a publisher you can use RSS to display content
from other sources, thus making your site more relevant
and interesting to your existing visitors.
And the list goes on and on.
RSS may not be mainstream yet, but it provides enough
advantages even today to make it a must-choice for
marketers. << |
