Lately I’ve been thinking of whether & how RSS could be a supplement and possible replacement for email marketing, which is getting killed by spam. Right now most RSS aggregators are either independent applications or integrated into the web browser. However, NewsGator integrates with Microsoft Outlook, which IMO makes a lot more sense.
RSS headlines are pretty similar to email in that there is a “from” field (the channel name), and a subject (the item name). Beyond that, the analogy breaks down somewhat because RSS feeds don’t have much of a body, just a description and a link back to the source content. But in the context of Outlook (and probably other email clients), the model can still work because the RSS client could just suck down the content from the link and pass it to the preview pane (which is just an instance of Internet Explorer).
Anyone else ever get this spam? I used to get it all the time and finally created a rule deleting anything with trafficmagnet.com in the header.
Every now and then I get to thinking I might want to take flying lessons and get a pilot’s license. (My father was a commercial airline pilot for 31 years, so maybe it’s genetic.) Then something like the JFK Jr. crash happens and I, um, defer that thinking for a while.
This explication of the intricacies of landing an airplane makes me think, “who the heck figured that out, and how many planes crashed before s/he did it?”
Wow. This is me, so don’t expect a lot from me in the way of small talk. Sorry.
Just stumbled accross Jon Udell’s column about RSS and public relations, linked from Dave Winer’s Scripting News. Jon and Dave (and I) are excited about the continued growth of RSS. But I think the real potential lies in using RSS as a replacement for bulk email. By itself, RSS is just a cool web syndication tool. But in conjunction with tools like NewsGator, RSS “feels like” email. BUT. Since it doesn’t require the user to give out an email address, you don’t have the spam problem, which means publishers don’t have to worry about being blocked by overzealous black lists.
It would be awesome to see the PR industry get behind RSS, because marketing won’t be far behind. Now we just need for Microsoft, Eudora et al to incorporate RSS newsfeeds directly into their email clients.
Crap. My Colorado Avalanche just lost the first game of the playoffs to the friggin’ Minnesota Wild. Fortunately, the evil Detroit Red Wings lost to the even more friggin’ Mighty Ducks and the most evil Dallas Stars lost to the frigginest Edmonton Oilers.
Ugh. I got a notice for jury duty today. Coming as it did on the same day that Saddam’s statue was torn down in Baghdad, it hit me. After 30 years of tyranny, the people of Iraq can now experience the tradition of avoiding jury duty.
Seven Questions for an E-Mail-Specific Creative Brief – Good advice on how to draft an email creative brief. Too many companies don’t think this through. They just have a vague idea they want to “do email.” Me? I want to “do TV!”
Busted! I’ve always thought IT analysts were waaaay overrated, if for no other reason than it’s pretty much impossible to hold them to their predictions. At least stock market analysts can be compared to prices on Wall Street. But who really knows whether some IT analyst was correct when he predicted that a particular market would grow to X billion dollars today from three years ago? This article points out a particularly egregious example – a highly specious estimate of the value of lost productivity due to spam.
I just purchased Postcard Marketing Secrets and love it. Even though I’m a big backer of online marketing tools such as email and search engines, there’s still a place for the smart use of offline tools. (Note: I’m an affiliate and that’s an affiliate link, but I paid full boat for the product myself.)