E-mail Postage and the Rise of RSS Marketing ... Or the Death of E-mail Marketing and What You Can Do

There has been alot of talk lately about proposed e-mail postage, where e-mailers would have to pay AOL and Yahoo! $2.5-$10 per thousand emails sent to guarantee delivery.

Our own RSS Cases Blog has more on the story, as well as possible solutions to the problem, using RSS of course.

Anne Holand offers a great perspective on the actual story and how this might change the world for e-mail marketers, as well as poise RSS to become a much stronger direct marketing channel. ClickZ talks about the story from the e-mail marketer persepctive and gives some great insights into what is actually happening.

And "new media people", such as Steve Rubel, are officially proclaiming the end of e-mail marketing. If only John Botscharow were still doing his own blog - he'd have a field day with this, going back to his archives from 2002 and 2003, where he was saying this exact thing.

And finally, my own e-mail postage e-mail marketing problem prediction, which I outlined in Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS, is getting much closer than it seemed a year ago.

But what does all of this really mean for you?

a] I'm still not quite sure AOL and Yahoo! will follow-through with this. So don't count e-mail marketing for dead yet.

b] Getting a strong RSS marketing program in action is now becoming more important than ever. Just as all of us predicted, those that have been in the game longer now certainly have an upper hand.

If you haven't started yet, here are the must-read articles you need to read and act on as soon as possible:

The 7-Step RSS Marketing Plan

RSS and E-mail #1: How They Can Work Together?

RSS and E-mail #2: Delivering Your E-zine via RSS

c] And finally, don't even consider dropping your e-mail program yet.

Even if AOL and Yahoo! do follow through, e-mail marketing will still continue working, although under different rules and different economics. We'll need to adapt, but it's not the end.

d] There's a chance this might actually make e-mail marketing stronger. Improved delivery rates might in fact constitute a greater ROI, even considering the increased costs.

e] Doing ONLY something, such as ONLY RSS or ONLY e-mail, is about the worst strategy of them all. There's a reason why multi-channel marketers are doing best ...

BTW - for all of you that have been wondering where MarketingStudies "went" for these past few weeks ... well, we're still here, but getting ready to launch the new site, which will bring you so much more content and useful information that I'm sure you'll agree it was worth waiting for.