Your message is not being delivered!
If you send emails to your customers, I have some bad news for you. Not all of
your emails are making it to your intended recipients. Between
ISP spam filters, spam-blocking email servers, spam-killing email software, and
email content filtering everywhere in between, the chances are high that your
messages just aren't making it past all of these roadblocks.
Recent studies show that opt-in subscriptions are erroneously spam blocked at
rates of 17% (according to Return Path) to 38% (according to Mail.com). So, 17%
to 38% of the e-mail you send to people who want it or even pay for it
in many cases, does not reach them. Just by choosing the wrong words or
phrases, or sending the wrong type of attachment, your email can become a
"false positive", and end up filed into some garbage bin where it gets mixed up
with various offers to increase the size of some random body part -- never
again to be seen.
These false positives can occur even if the intended recipient is very
interested in receiving your message, even if their life (or livelihood)
depends upon receiving that message. Even if automated spam filters don't
destroy your message, as in-boxes fill up with more and more garbage, it's
becoming common for people to simply overlook wanted mail and inadvertently
delete it.
Spam-fighting Resources
It's only going to get worse.
When the new federal law dubbed "The
CAN-SPAM Act of 2003" (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited
Pornography and Marketing) was passed in December, many were startled and
confused by the apparent legalization of spam. Now, as long as an emailer
complies with the law regarding header falsification, misleading titles, and
opt-out procedures, it would seem that marketing through spam has become
legitimate!
The CAN-SPAM law only restricts the legality and processes involved in sending
Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE). There is no implied responsibility on
behalf of any provider to guarantee delivery of all messages. In fact, ISPs are
given the right to filter and block email any way they deem necessary according
to their policies. The law doesn't burden ISPs to discriminate whether the
email was permission-based or unsolicited. They can block incoming bulk email
simply on the basis of a single complaint.
And if that wasn't bad enough, the CAN-SPAM Act suggests a bounty of 20% or more
of fines collected go to the people who turn in spammers. As more "offenders"
are reported, more ISPs are blacklisted, and the more likely your message will
end up vaporized long before it hits home.
So now, with more and more marketing efforts involving purchased and shared
opt-in lists, more and more companies able to legally spam, and more and more
Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail floating around on the internet, there is bound
to be a reaction, and that reaction is sure to be quite strong. Following the
Red Queen Principle, as spammers continue to find a means to push out
spam -- ISPs, hosts, and email packages will continue to improve their
defenses, as well, blocking more mail than ever before.
Has E-mail Come to an End?
 No one
could have imagined that things would get this bad. Spammers and virus authors
are rapidly crippling email. Even though e-mail was once dubbed the "killer
app" of the Internet, some doomsayers are going so far that viruses, spam, and
spam filters are joining forces to bring about the death of email. The theory
is that, eventually, inboxes will become so full of unwanted garbage emails,
and so many desired messages will be deleted along the way, that email will
become useless.
Some e-mail publishers are considering giving up on e-mail altogether and
finding other ways to deliver their message. While this may sound pretty
extreme, the spam wars are an extreme situation. And extreme situations call
for drastic measures...
RSS to the Rescue
One such alternative is RSS, which stands for either Really Simple Syndication,
or Rich Site Summary, depending upon with whom you're speaking. A primary
reason that RSS is a viable alternative is that since readers select their RSS
Feeds, spam is no longer an issue. This is because RSS works a little bit
differently than email, using pull, instead of push, technology.
By notifying people interested in your content, as well as web sites that
collect and package content announcements (called aggregators), you "feed" them
your content. From this process we get the term "RSS feed." By providing an RSS
feed, another site may pick up your "news" through your feed and syndicate it.
Only the feed publisher can designate what information gets into the feed, and
the only information the subscriber pulls down is what the publisher puts
there.
If email continues on its self-destruct course, RSS could very well become the
new standard, either replacing email subscriptions or, more likely, as an email
supplement.
Additional Spam-fighting Resources
What are RSS Feeds?
An RSS feed is a Web-accessible XML file containing a listing of web pages with
related news or information. RSS is basically a stream of raw data: content
completely separated from presentation. The XML-based RSS feed contains content
information, such as the headline, description, an excerpt, and the URL where
the subscriber can find the content in its entirety. Once uploaded to a
website, the RSS feed should be validated for completeness and accuracy. Once
it is validated, the feed can then be submitted to engines.
A sample feed can be seen at:
http://www.EnvisionSoftware.com/Management/Index.xml
Consuming the Syndicated RSS Feed
Individual subscribers can view RSS feeds in special feed reader software,
called a news reader. Additionally, webmasters can syndicate your news feeds to
their website using an aggregator. Both aggregators and news readers consume
RSS feeds, presenting them in a format for use by humans in pretty much the
same way Web browsers work with web pages.
To subscribe to a newsfeed, the subscriber tells their feed reader to
periodically poll a certain site's RSS feed file, pasting the URL for the RSS
feed into their feed reader, much like bookmarking a page in your Web browser.
Then, to read the news, the feed reader visits the subscribed feeds, grabs the
latest information, and displays a sorted list of the latest headlines from
each source. Sometimes the reader will show brief descriptions of the content,
but it always links to the full content on the publisher's site.
Not quite ready for prime time
Even though it's been around for a decade, RSS technology is still in its
infancy. This immaturity presents a few challenges.
-
The biggest issue today is that mainstream web and e-mail clients do not yet
support RSS feeds. Expect to see some movement in this direction as the RSS
movement swells.
-
There are lots of freestanding news readers out there, and they each have their
unique shortcomings. Over the next year or two, RSS software should improve
significantly and RSS will become a more robust publishing platform.
-
RSS usage and news aggregator adoption is still very limited. So, RSS will not
be a complete solution without greater subscriber participation.
-
RSS is text-only. Attractive layout and graphics cannot make up for poor
quality content in the world of news feeds.
The RSS Business Model
Content publishers need to determine how to make RSS content distribution
profitable. Just as there are paid e-mail newsletters, there can be paid RSS
news feeds. It's just another file that resides on a web server, so it can be
served from a password protected web site. However, with a paid RSS newsfeed,
readership is reduced, as subscribers are limited to using RSS aggregators or
news readers which support authentication.
While content publishers may be afraid of RSS, the business model of e-mail
publishing doesn't really change using RSS. Readers still see the same content,
with the same design, layout, and ads in an HTML newsletter. The trick is to
have content which strikes the reader's fancy -- headlines and descriptions
have to be worthy of clicking on, before the readers will see the full content.
 What
Does The Future Hold for RSS?
RSS has gained quick acceptance in certain circles such as small technology
companies, innovative consulting organizations, and self-publishers. Even
Microsoft has started publishing RSS feeds without attempting to strong-arm
themselves into a dominant position, thus far.
AOL's upcoming AOL 10 software will support RSS technology. Microsoft will most
likely support RSS in Outlook and Outlook Express, similar to its current
support for newsgroups. Additionally, web hosting tools like Geocities offer
tools to syndicate RSS feeds.
It may take some time, however, for RSS to gain momentum in the IT departments
of midsize-to-large companies, which are typically slower to adopt nascent
technologies like RSS.
Should you consider RSS for your publication?
While RSS may not be an immediate replacement for the email newsletter, it will
become a powerful choice in corporate and personal communication in the very
near future. Once the big guys adopt RSS as a content sharing and distribution
medium, it will gain greater acceptance. The benefits of RSS will be
widespread, and full-featured RSS news readers will be prevalent.
Moving your subscriber base from e-mail newsletters to RSS feeds might be a tall
order at this juncture. For now, it's up to publishers to sell readers on the
RSS concept, and explain how it alleviates the pain of spam.
Whether you decide to convert to RSS full force or simply offer RSS as an
alternative for your subscribers, it's important to realize that e-mail is
starting to lose its luster, and now is a very good time to include RSS
in your publishing repertoire.
|
