RSS Vs. Email

There is definitely a "shift" going on. For instance, my 27yo and 17yo both hardly use email at all; even with their close friends. With the advent of mobile instant messaging systems; they simply communicate via their mobile device. I find it interesting, however, that both of them still maintain email accounts.

When I ask them "why" they still have an email account when they hardly use it, (again) BOTH of them told me, "that's for the stuff I wanna read later or the stuff I know I'm not gonna pay attention to or for Family or for business contacts; like sending out my resume or some way for them to contact me."

So, with the new and up-and-coming Internet consumer email is taking on a whole new form. What that form is..?.. who knows "today".

RSS (as you might already know) has been around since the mid 90's, yet has only recently become "less geekish" for mass appeal. Still there is a barrier of entry with the fact that a lot of readers require downloading something; which opens the door to security risks -- and consumers are becoming more aware of those, as well.

Another barrier are heavy duty (old school) email marketers reluctant to embrace RSS; as it takes a good amount of 'control' out of their hands due to the consumer's ability to opt-out without the marketer even knowing unless they are monitoring their feed subscribers with a microscope. Feedburner and other services are constantly updating their services to compensate for these needs of the marketer, yet its still a major challenge.

Google, MSN and Yahoo entered the "online reader" market and this makes it a little easier for the marriage (between RSS provider and subscriber) a little more harmonious, however these services are still a little "geekish" and not too easy to understand for the average Joe/Jane. Firefox also allows you to "bookmark a feed" with its "Live Bookmarks" feature; I use it a lot. Still the "geek factor" prevails.

All of this (and more but beyond the scope of this post) being understood; my take on it is to just ride ALL the waves like most are already doing. Try to marry your email list to your rss subscriber list through your blog without pissin' your email readers off with too many email notifications.

Personally, I think the majority of communications will take on different "levels" of importance to the consumer; as with my children. The proverbial email box (IMHO) will become more of an "elite status" medium and if you're good enough to get in there, you're doing things "right". Otherwise, you'll be 'minimized' to one of the other varied communication models.

Instant gratification (again IMHO) mechanisms; which is where we marketers should really want to be; will be the mobile device and/or instant message medium. I see more and more services offering SMS capabilities, these days.

Interesting journey, most definitely... thanks for bringing it up
PLP,
tecHead

What a detailed - and intelligent - response - thanks tecHead. Should be interesting to see how long it is before people start listing a Twitter account on their resume as a source of contact ;-)

One other point I forgot to mention was that people are using social networking sites more than email in a number of cases. I have friends who *have* email addresses but rarely check them. But send them something on Facebook and you will have a reply within *minutes*!

It seems that the "lack of control" you mention that pertains to email is slowly driving people to "safer" methods of communicating where they have more control about what they receive and from whom. After all, isn't that a key reason for Gmail being so popular - that they are great at stopping spam from entering your inbox?

All the best,
Richard

P.S. Great avatar ;-)

I don't subscribe to newsletters a lot, I just get emailed personally by people And I email them.