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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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