Is there a Solution for Direct Communication with Your Clients?

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.

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,
etc.

One of the most advanced is Private Mail Reader. You can
download PMR free and play with it:


BTW, If you run an e-zine or newsletter or are planning to
do it, then there is a one List Management System that
might be of interest to you - ByPass System:


It allows you not only to manage your subscribers
effectively, but also to send them information both the old
- fashioned and the new way.

You can still email your subscribers (see above all the
pitfalls that come with emailing) or you can send your RSS
feed and your subscribers can read it with Private readers
or RSS Readers (such as PMR).

And now it's your turn to explore the benefits of RSS
technology. Use Bypass or any other RSS messaging system of
your choice and stay ahead of your competitors!

Oleg Ilin - Web Tester from http://www.web-feed.com

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