lesson 6: Why do the existing technologies suck

 We are aware of different current key elements of marketing over the net like Advertisements through Internet, E-mail marketing and publishing, search engine marketing and optimization, e-commerce, business blogging, branding and many others. But these can be considered as separate entities being driven by different corporate roles and having its own proprietary set of Internet tools.

 Of course, there are some tools that are multi-purpose. But, there has never been a powerful tool like RSS that is trust-worthy, Spam-free flexible and most of all enhances the power of the different key elements of Internet marketing.

 It is sure to produce incredible business and marketing results in the future.

Loopholes of the existing marketing technology:

It is needless to say that SPAMS, enabled by the "democratic" nature of e-mail, has ended up driving the mere purpose of this once-upon-a-time best method to peril.

·         The companies have to fight their way to acquire the recipient’s email id, seek permission lest to be assured of their content being delivered. Many internet users prefer a big ‘NO’ in signing up to avoid wasting time deleting the unwanted mails from their inboxes. Why not nip the trouble in the bud itself?

·         Talking about the companies, who have at last succeeded in their objective, they have still a long way to go for their content to reach the target mailboxes. They are faced with various Spam barricades from the recipient’s Internet Service Provider.

·         After getting through the ISP barricades the message needs to "combat" the various filters in place on the user-side, such as third-party spam filters, usually partnered with an e-mail client Spam filter. All this to make sure that nothing that even looks like Spam gets through.

Then, again the user quickly scans the messages, eliminating the most obvious Spam, and on top of that often also performs an in-depth scan to finally decide what messages he can delete, what to be moved to the dreaded "to read" folder (which never gets read) or what to be actually read. 

Any proof whether the messages will be read after having got through so many barriers is truly uncertain.

• This obviously means more than 50% of lost sales and relationship opportunities. How much does that amount to in losses in a few years?
• Important messages and updates for your existing customers are getting lost as well. This in turn will affect your follow-up sales and after purchase relationship building activities.
• Some rules which are currently implemented by the US CAN-SPAM legislation are putting legitimate e-mail publishers at risk. Instead of putting check on the real spammers, they threaten legitimate senders.

Can you believe? Many people end up calling their subscribers to check on their receipt of their message. Is it not obvious that the very purpose of e-mails is smashed down here?

The Search Engines:

The e-mail content delivery problem is joined with the ever-growing number of websites, all competing for the attention of the same visitors and the same search engines. Though Search engines are still the No.1 traffic generator for most websites, getting high rankings for our website is getting more difficult with each passing day. Unless we are able to reach out to our prospects and customers, chances of us selling the products and building relationships with them is very meager.

Of course, we could use Pay-Per-Click advertising (sponsored keywords), but Pay-Per-Click prices are getting completely out of control. Many marketers can no longer keep up with high prices and can no longer generate a positive response with their campaigns. The demand is just too high.

Will E-mails last long?

• The companies mainly dependent on e-mails for their Internet content to reach the target audience. This serves as the sole medium existing between the senders and the receivers.
• On the other hand, consumers depend on e-mails again to receive the contents from the companies as per their requirements.
• We better put it that while the marketers and the publishers struggle to deliver their contents through e-mails, the internet users fight to control the content consumption through e-mails.

With such existing pressures whether e-mails can continue to serve as the channel for content delivery and content consumption is arguable.

 The world is fast changing from a push-based information delivery where you send information via e-mails to pull-based information delivery where the subscriber accesses your information as and when he wants.

 Checking on SPAM:

 To bring down the hazards caused by Spam, there are some solutions, which are in the development stages but, yet not put into operation:

• The Sender Id (intended to verify an e-mail sender’s identity), being developed by Microsoft.
• Next comes the Bonded Sender Program in which the e-mail senders have to pay certain fee to get their e-mail messages delivered, just like traditional mail postage. Again, this may not be useful for small companies who have midget budgets! We are looking for some solution, which would benefit all the users of Internet alike.

 Though we cannot deny that most of the marketers and publishers still depend on e-mails, we must surely admit that e-mail is no longer the content delivery vehicle it once was and we have to devise methods to compliment it with other new fruitful channels.

The multi-purpose tool RSS has many feathers on its cap and has every probability of emerging as the tool for this Internet era.

RSS as a marketing tool 

RSS is a technology that has the potential to overcome the Internet marketing challenges we are facing today. From the marketing point of view, not only is it simple to use publishing tool for marketers and publishers, but also has the versatility allowing contents to be delivered to the target users and other “content consumers”. These criteria enhance the marketers and publishers to achieve their business goals.

• Its ability to influence the entire key internet marketing elements, especially content delivery to end-users and improving search engine rankings is unprecedented.

• It is unique in the way it forces marketers to become more relevant and sensitive to the needs of their target audiences.

Its reach does not stop just with marginal penetration, but exploring many fields and the usage is growing with exhilarating speed.  RSS is already used by the majority of the reputable media sites, by a satisfactory number of corporations and by almost “all” bloggers.

RSS is fast becoming the de-facto standard for pull-based information delivery because the user can anonymously subscribe to your feed, judge your content and stay subscribed as long as he wants to. He can unsubscribe at will, without any problems and delays.

And what’s more?  It also eliminates a large part of the external noise and shortcomings of other delivery channels .In addition, RSS content can be delivered to other websites; such as search engines, specialized RSS directories, special content aggregation sites and other site types.