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Currently there are 3 main types of broadcast Internet
messaging systems that you can use to deliver newsletters,
e-zines and other informational materials to your customers.
I'm not going to cover here internal or intranet messaging
systems, the main focus of this article is on the virtual
world outside your local/corporate network.
The main Internet Broadcasting Systems are:
- Email broadcasts that are sent through sender's ISP
and received with the email client of your customer
(such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Web Mail
systems, etc.)
- RSS Feeds delivered through web-based RSS Aggregators.
- Completely customizable and personalized multi-media
messages that are sent through RSS Channels and received
with branded RSS Readers (such as Private Mail Reader
and Feed Demon).
E-mail communications used to be a very efficient way
to deliver information to your prospects and customers.
This was working well until we got spammers - thousands
of unethical people trashing your inboxes with annoying
junk offers without any permission on your part. Nobody
really wanted these products, ISP customers were irritated
with email-boxes full of irrelevant content, to say
the least.
Big and small ISP companies (Internet Service Providers)
responded by developing anti-spam filters and society
at large was forced to work out a set of anti-spam laws
regulating the use of e-mails.
So legitimate internet marketers had to accommodate
themselves to these unpleasant changes by implementing
various forms of opt-in verifications. In other words,
now the customers have to confirm in some way that they
give you permission to send them e-mails.
And you inevitably loose a percentage of your customers
who for some reasons doesn't want to go through the
opt-in process.
Unfortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Anti-spam filters are now so tight, that they easily
throw in the bulk folder even legitimate e-mails. How
it could happen? Well, you may accidentally use some
of the "bad words" - such as "free",
"buy", "purchase", etc (there are
hundreds of "spam words" and the list grows
every day). You know very well what happen to the bulk
folder emails - they are as good as trash. Chances that
recipient will ever read bulk emails are slim to none.
You also loose some of your readers when you try to
enhance their experience by sending emails in html format
(which would allow you to add colors, and pictures to
your email, use different fonts, etc).
You might want to go even further and insert audio
or video streams into your emails to give your readers
the opportunity to better comprehend the featured topic.
You might want to do other neat things....
Well, don't bother. Sorry to disappoint you, but your
efforts will be in vain. Major ISPs consider html to
be the format for commercial emails and as such it triggers
spam filters almost automatically.
Some analytic companies estimate that you can easily
fail to reach as much as 70% of your customers in the
nearest future. According to Doubleclick, one of the
e-mail delivery leaders, the average rate of opened
e-mails in 4th Quarter of 2004 declined 11.4% from Q4
2003, and is now only 32.6%.
Very bright picture, isn't it?
Luckily, there is a solution, and it comes in a form
of RSS technology (Really Simple Syndication).
To put it simply, RSS Feeds are the streams of information
presented in xml format. This syndication allows webmasters
to find the feeds of interest written by other authors
and easily place them on their own web sites (with authors
permission, of course). The Big Benefit is that this
information is automatically updated every time when
the particular RSS feed is updated.
In case of RSS aggregators, readers simply subscribe
to the feeds and read them through web-based user interfaces
(one of the popular RSS aggregators, for example, is
My Yahoo - find the RSS Feeds of your choices, add them
to your My Yahoo page - and you will receive the update
on what is new on these feeds and will be able to read
it in user-friendly format (you don't have to learn
xml). Each time you go to MY Yahoo you will be informed
which of these feeds were updated in the last 3 days.
And finally, there is a third option - RSS Readers.
It gives readers the ability not to worry about the
information of their choice being blocked by ISP anti-spam
filters. They can simply download RSS Feed Reader and
enjoy the benefits of private media-rich environment
from your computer!
You don't have to go to any websites to get these data
and you're not forced to receive this information, you
decide where and when to receive it. (Whereas with e-mails
you're facing the fact that anybody could send them
to your mailing address).
There are a many good RSS readers out there. Some are
free, other offer free trial. The most well-known is
FeedDemon (has free trial), then goes SharpReader, NewsCrawler,
Awasu, PMR etc.
Now it's your turn to explore the benefits of RSS technology.
Use RSS messaging system of your choice and stay ahead
of your competitors!
About the author:
Oleg Ilin, the president of 1EzHost L.L.C.- custom web
design and development company, invites you to visit
http://www.1ezhost.biz
and get your unique and result-driven website done by
professionals. Free gift for you: 2 valuable internet
marketing e-books: http://www.1ezhost.biz/onoff1.php
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