RSS Won't Effect E-mail Marketing?

David Daniels, in a recent ClickZ article, states that "RSS won't be immediately effective as an alternative to e-mail marketing".

David does give some valid points, although I can't quite agree with him.

How About Integration?

"RSS provides opportunity, particularly for newsletter publishers, but let's not kid ourselves. As it's repurposed for more direct marketing initiatives, it won't be a smooth, clutter-free ride. As e-mail marketers, we can relax. This technology won't seriously compete with our channel, so we can focus on what we need to: making e-mail marketing more relevant!

After speaking to bloggers about the need to use e-mail as part of their content delivery mix, I see that the situation is not much different in the realm of e-mail marketers.

David, RSS and e-mail is not about competition, but about integration and cooperation. E-mail marketers need to think of ways of using RSS and e-mail together, and not worry about whether e-mail will endanger RSS.

RSS Spam

"As legitimate marketing feeds will be picked up (i.e., delivered), so will clutter that resembles legitimate feeds. Unfettered, this could significantly undermine the channel for direct marketing. It's very probable the RSS horizon will mirror the e-mail channel. Reaction to bogus clutter could create a category of RSS spam filtering companies and weaken consumer confidence in the medium."

I do agree that we are going to see large increases in "clutter feeds" in the upcoming months and years, but I'm not sure this will have much effect on end-users consuming RSS via personal RSS aggregators. Let's not forget that:

a] Once users become more selective, they will subscribe only to RSS feeds from companies / sites they find credible. But it is however true that RSS directories might have to evolve in the future to try and eliminate the clutter from their results.

b] Unsubscribing from RSS feeds takes only a few seconds, while unsubscribing from e-mail is a tiresome affair that sometimes just takes too much time to be bothered with.

c] Pro-active subscription is key. No spammer or marketer can send you content without your prior subscription.

Of course, there are also other possible spam dangers, but I don't think that this can evolve anywhere near the e-mail spam levels.

However, RSS spam will hurt RSS aggregation sites and search engines, and consequently legitimate RSS publishers and end-users as well.

RSS Personalization

"RSS is sort of inherently personalized. The end user chooses what to subscribe to, and publishers broadcast their content. Personalizing those feeds further doesn't strike me as something that will catch on."

This depends on how you view personalization, either as an act conducted solely by the marketer based on stored customer data, or as a "self-inflicted" consequence as well.

If David is also thinking in terms of "self-infliction", then RSS is already highly personalized through RSS feed filtering & search, already provided by some publishers. Users not only have the ability to subscribe to pre-made feeds, but can determine what keywords they want/don't want to receive. But, I do feel that this is more in the realm of customization.