RSS: 'The Awful Truth' from MarketingSherpa.com

MarketingSherpa are usually correct in their internet marketing reports and advice, especially because they base all their findings on hard metrics and work hard to present only the facts.

How about their latest report on RSS, titled 'RSS in Reality: Not a Replacement for Email - Metrics & Best Practices'?
[BTW - don't delay in reading the article, as it's open-access only until May 23rd]

"Just as we warned marketers five years ago that they should not 'shovel' their brochure content onto their Web sites, you shouldn't treat RSS as shovelware for email content. This is a new medium."

While their conclusion is spot on, they fall in almost the same trap as Jupiter Research before them, failing to see the entire big picture of RSS.

a] They are certainly correct that RSS lacks hard numbers of almost any kind, simply because most RSS publishers aren't really tracking anything in terms of RSS.

"A few track how many clicks the links sent through RSS get. Another few (often a separate group) track how many site visitors click on the RSS button to start getting the feed. Practically no one tracks anything else... and there's zero sophisticated tracking we know of at all.

No deliverability, open rates, hard vs soft bounces. No a/b tests, no usability tests, no offer tests, no recency/frequency tests, and multivariable testing is not even on the map."

But in fact, RSS is trackable and measurable (as they state as well), even more so than e-mail, since there's a direct link between the RSS feed and the website, making advanced log analysis a snap. And then there's specific RSS metrics, already under development by many RSS vendors out there.

While MarketingSherpa cites tracking and measurement as RSS's biggest challenge, we must not forget that this challenge doesn't have as much to do with RSS as a technology, but more with the current state of metrics with publishers.

If almost no RSS publisher is tracking anything, that doesn't mean that this is a problem of RSS. If you want to track it, it's trackable. But only if you take the time to do it.

Just like with e-mail, we'll have to wait for the usage of RSS metrics to evolve through time.

b] Yes, RSS penetration certainly is a problem right now, but RSS usage is growing and will especially explode once RSS becomes integrated within IE.

Furthermore, those that implement RSS early will achieve an upper hand over their competitors, especially if you consider RSS not only as an end-user content delivery channel, but an online visibility generation tool as well.

c] The key trap MarketingSherpa fall in is that they fail to acknowledge the power of RSS beyond end-user content delivery, such as using it to increase search engine rankings and get your syndicated content published through other online media.

For those still wondering about how RSS can be used, I urge you to read The Business Case for RSS report [free].

Even if you don't think RSS penetration is high enough yet for you to start using it as an end-user content delivery vehicle, you should not forget about many of the other advantages it provides.

d] And finally, they are most correct that the "RSS versus email" really is "the great non-debate".

For marketers and publishers, e-mail is still the key marketing and content delivery channel.

Using RSS exclusively is just the same as shooting yourself in the foot.

However, not using RSS and relying only on e-mail doesn't fall far behind ...

BTW - the article also mentions "Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS", citing it as the best comprehensive report on RSS:)