Will RSS Finally Come Into It’s Own?

In October of 2004, SearchCRM contributor Barney Beal asked: “Are RSS feeds the next great marketing tool?” Marketing Charts reported last month that 70% of B2B technology marketers are not incorporating RSS into their company’s online marketing strategy.  It causes me to question if technology marketers aren’t using RSS technology why would non-technology companies feel comfortable doing so?

 

RSS is a fascinating technology.  It delivers information as it happens directly to the user who has opted in to receive it.  I dare say RSS could be better than email marketing.   There are definite benefits to using RSS instead of email:

 

Your communication is not lost in a sea of spam.

RSS are links to a website so there is no fear of downloading suspicious content.

Users determine if they want to subscribe to the feed or not.

 

But there are drawbacks as well:

 

RSS lacks the personalization of an e-mail newsletter.

It provides only a small amount of information.

RSS has no images or sound.

However, for the B2B segment, RSS feeds could be highly useful.  Important changes in pricing, inventory, and other time sensitive information can be communicated instantly.  Marcom Ink’s research included visits to 300 US B2B technology-company websites.   They found that seven out of 10 are not using RSS at all.  And the 30% of companies that do provide RSS, only 10% have multiple targeted feeds which means customers are given less choice and less personalization.

Marcom Ink also reports that only 16% of the general public use RSS feeds.  Perhaps there just aren’t enough relevant RSS feeds available for consumers.  Or maybe they simply don’t know where to find them or understand how RSS can be useful to them.    A search on rss-feeds-directory.com revealed pages of consumer-based feeds from blogs as well as retail sites.  There is good news, however.  According to a PressFeed PR release:

 

“Google’s Zeitgeist list for 2008 released this week shows that many Americans are now searching by asking a question –”Who is” … and “What is” … are the most common questions. At number five on the top ten list of “What is” questions is What is RSS?”

 

With more consumers aware of it and wanting to know more about RSS, perhaps we will see Beal’s prediction from 2004 finally come true in 2009.