The RSS Imperative

The RSS Imperative
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Reader Comments (8)

  1. Who is going to police “Goodmail” to make sure recipients have indeed completed an opt-in process before receiving the email.

    We have all kinds of laws trying to enforce this at the moment, and I don’t see the spam I receive decreasing any. So I have trouble believing Yahoo/AOL are going to do any better.

  2. Well, that’s a good point. But again, in an RSS content delivery world (and it will get here) this problem is solved. The arguments in favor of RSS are too compelling for the subscriber — they’ll never have to opt-in via email again. Then ISPs can simply ban ALL bulk email and be done with SPAM.

    And yes, I know the spammers will get around even that… but that doesn’t refute the main point of this post.

  3. I totally agree on the point that I’d like to see it all get shifted to RSS, because of exactly what you say regarding the fact it’s totally opt-in.

    But it seems in your post that you think GoodMail will work, at least for awhile, which … I have to say I totally disagree with. But you already know that since you linked to me regarding it 😉

  4. Just to clarify… It’s not that I think Goodmail will “work.â€? For the short term, I don’t *care* if Goodmail works.

    I think Goodmail will eventually help spell the end of email marketing. It’ll take a bit, but it will happen. Steve Rubel pronouncing email marketing dead was premature, not wrong.

    My only issue with the many reasons given “against” Goodmail is that the arguments debate the merits of the program itself, without realizing that consumers will someday find no reason at all to divulge their email addresses for marketing, or even to receive order confirmations or other one-way communications that marketers rely on to keep “selling to the list.”

    The “list� – which is the Holy Grail of direct marketing – will be at the other end of a feed. So you had better treat it right.

    In that regard, Goodmail is one of the best things that could happen to speed things along to RSS, together with the coming IE and Outlook RSS capabilities. Why, because Goodmail alienates *publishers* and smaller *marketers*, the very people who are holding on to email tighter than any consumer will ever want to, once understanding the choice.

    I like to sell stuff as much or more than anyone. But for me, I’m embracing this, rather than fighting it, because it WILL happen.

  5. Or maybe to say it better (as I perhaps should have in the post):

    “Corporate thinks they can save email marketing by throwing money at it, but they are only speeding its demise.”

  6. Brian, I don’t know what anyone else has to say, but I’ve already noticed problems with my free Yahoo account. Even those addresses whose email I’ve tagged as being “not spam” are still ending up in my bulk mail folder on a daily basis. This started happening about 2-3 weeks ago and it’s frustrating and time consuming.

    The Internet has made it difficult for businesses to decide what they should charge for and what they should give away for free. While I do not like this idea of charging for email delivery, I suppose I wouldn’t expect the Post Office to deliver my snail mail free of charge.

    However, as you quoted me saying, the “little guy” [who doesn’t have much of a budget] can create an RSS feed. I recommend that new businesses learn all they can about the benefits of RSS, and bootstrap their way to an RSS subscriber base by educating their site visitors as well. This is absolutely essential, since the technology is still in the early-adopter stage.

    No doubt, there’ll be companies offering RSS-based marketing services – even as early as Q2-Q3 this year. (My prediction.) In fact, I’m setting up some free services (supplemented by paid services). I think that now is the time for every one who has some sort of stake or interest in RSS/ Atom to become as much of an evangelist as time and resources will allow.

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