RSS The Future of Internet Marketing ? Part 4 of 4
How to Use RSS for Direct Marketing RSS can have an astounding
performance in the field of direct marketing. It can outshine
e-mail marketing if understood properly by the marketer.
Scheduled and Auto responder messages You can develop the
relationship with your customers through scheduled and auto
responder messages, which can be delivered through RSS feeds.
When your visitor subscribes to your special RSS feed, he can
receive a pre-determined set of messages for better
communication with your subscribers. Use the messages to welcome
him, to thank your new customer for purchasing the product, send
him additional information about the ordered product. You can
also provide him with the opportunity to buy an additional
product at a lower price tag by giving him some special
discounts after a couple of days and so on.
Tracking through RSS feeds A tremendous amount of information
useful to your business can be fetched using RSS feeds. You can
keep a track of the number of subscribers, their reading habits,
and their reading frequency to your click-through rates and
activities after clicking-through from your feed. Spot the RSS
feeds which perform better and get the feel about the taste of
your subscribers, the topics they are more interested in etc.
Getting these feedbacks via RSS feeds helps you to drive more
sales. The same thing applies for individual content items as
well.
Targeting customized messages Apart from the collective feedback
about subscribers' response on a particular RSS feed, spotting
the interests of your individual subscribers can also be done
since these feeds are dynamically generated on a per-user basis.
To increase your sales success, target tailor-made marketing
messages directly to them, depending on the individual needs and
interests about your products.
Message personalization When you generate tailor-made messages
for each individual user, you can also personalize these feeds.
You can include personal data elements such as the subscriber's
first name, his postal address etc. You can still go further for
more advanced personalization with respect to your products like
product recommendations and so on.
Collection of Data You can provide a simple or complex opt-in
form to the visitors asking them to fill in the details like his
name, interests, the current products they are using, his
current position in the purchase cycle, whether they are going
for purchase of new brands and so on. You can allow them to
access your RSS feeds only when these details are given. Thus
extraction of data is achieved easily. This can work with e-zine
subscriptions, as well as forms you require your visitors to
fill in to either register on your website or download your
report or white paper. All these features are already available
in many RSS publishing/marketing solutions, at very acceptable
prices affordable even by the small budget companies. While we
have covered a lot in this series there is much more to know
about RSS and how it can enhance you're the marketing of your
website and product. You can get detailed information on all of
it in my book The A to Z of RSS.
About the author:
James McIntosh is the publisher of The Concept Development
Newsletter http://www.conceptdevelopmentllc.com James has been a
home based business development consultant for 23 years help his
clients start and grow their businesses. This article may be
reprinted with this resource box unchanged.
Written By: James McIntosh