Digitalwall: The Fourth Generation of Internet Marketing (1) RSS Marketing

Is there still any reliable way to distribute information in the disordered world of Internet?

[+] Emails are not reliable

In a busy office, Chen is confirming with the client on the phone whether the price list has been received which is just sent by fax. Fax as an outdated technology is not so reliable. Loss of documents happens from time to time. Telephone follow-up is therefore necessary.

Meanwhile, Li, who sits next to Chen, is apologizing on the phone to the client, because he had thought the client had received the email he sent out, but obviously the client does not. The client is outraged. Li ensures that the email has already been sent out. Although feeling aggrieved, Li has to make apology.

Ms. Zheng, who sits behind, has just purchased a purse from the net. The browser shows the transaction is successfully completed, but she still has not received the confirmation email from the online shopping site. She calls the customer service, they send the email again, but she still fails to receive it.

Secretary Tao wants to subscribe to several newsletters to learn more industry knowledge. The website indicates that the registration won't be successful until she clicks the link in the confirmation email. But she does not receive it even after waiting for the entire afternoon. So, she wants to change the email address, but is not allowed to login to do so because she has not obtained the membership yet.

The company's IT manager has just sent out an email, stating that the anti-spam mail system he recently brought in performs extremely well, and saves a lot of money for the company to process spam mails. The others are going to an uproar at that, because bunches of their emails have been filtered by the system.

[+] Worries of website operators

Ironically, people who purchase anti-spam software to get rid of the increasing spam mails often find friends' emails in the spam mail box. The software is useless if the user reduces its sensitivity, because by doing so, he has to filter hundreds of spam mails by hand every day.

From the perspective of the website operator, the traditional website design is based on the principle of 'emails are going to be received'. However, now they have to reconsider the website design and additional service costs under the assumption that emails could not be received.

I used to see an shopping website teaching users how to set up the white list function in their Yahoo! email box to receive member newsletters and marketing messages from the website. The power and effect of marketing has been largely reduced by doing so, because few people will bother to set up that function.

Realizing that email as a way of Internet marketing is doomed to fade away, I have studied the ranking methodology of search engines since early 2005, and wrote three articles entitled "The Third Generation of Internet marketing: Search Engine Marketing" in April of the same year, and used the skills in those articles till now.

Improving the ranking on search engines will help websites to constantly attract visits. But that is only helpful to obtain new clients. For the old ones, email is still an important tool, but becoming increasingly ineffective. It is really worrying to see the reach rate of the newsletter keeps going down.

[+] Microsoft IE 7.0 paves the way for the prevalence of RSS

The first generation of Internet marketing is the purchase of the website banner advertisement starting from 1998. The second generation refers to the email marketing coming afterward, while the third generation is called search engine marketing. Then what else to do after all of the three approaches have been used up?

Or I should ask in this way: in such a disordered Internet, is there still any reliable way to distribute information? I used to count on the newly emerging dissemination method - RSS. My website - Digital Wall - started to provide RSS subscription in 2004. Currently, the pageview of RSS almost accounts for half of that of the website.

In spite of that, RSS is still a subscription method difficult to explain, and needs to install special reader software. It sounds difficult to expect ordinary readers or consumers to download and install certain software in order to subscribe to newsletter.

In addition, I think that the user interface of RSS is a big issue. In the instant when the visitor clicks the 'RSS' or 'XML' icon, the XML markup language pops up, and that is too overwhelming to make the subscription intuitive.

The good news is that Microsoft IE 7.0 has embedded RSS subscription function and provides more user-friendly interface and gets rid of the long strings of XML. With the gradual update of the browser version, users will no longer need to download and learn how to use additional readers.

[+] Those who can analyze RSS users will grasp business opportunities

Although the subscription procedure of RSS is not so intuitive, website operators at least do not need to write user instructions for different RSS readers, instead they can only provide the illustration for IE 7.0. Therefore, operators should be prepared with the advent of IE 7.0 as soon as possible.

It can be seen that, for website operators, RSS subscription will gradually replace email. While for users, RSS is a way to regain the right of use, because they can receive the latest messages without leaving any information on the website.

However, that brings a new problem for website operators. Before, receivers' activities could be traced by the hyperlinks embedded in the email, such as whether they kept shopping on the website, whether they were male or female, how old they were, etc.

Since RSS is based on open subscription, registered members do not need to leave any information. Therefore, operators are not able to know who the subscribers are, not mention to analyze their activities after receiving new messages. Operators are nearly uninformed, because they can only measure the result of the marketing on the basis of RSS pageview.

If any website operator could solve the issue of RSS subscriber behavior analysis regarding to Internet marketing and website operation, they will grasp huge business opportunities, because the email marketing has faded away. In a user-as-king era prompted by browsers, RSS will become the new mainstream. (
2006/12/17 - By Digitalwall.com - Way to
China Internet/Telecom )