SimpleFeed Moves Forward With Secure RSS, Automatic Content Import and a Self-Service Offering SimpleFeed, with their ability to publish customizable RSS feeds, content targeting and advanced metrics, has been one of the top 5 RSS publishing vendors since they started-up their business.
In fact, they were one of the first RSS vendors to come up with unique URL RSS feeds, which allow marketers to deliver customized RSS feeds to individual subscribers and then further track them individually.
They just released an upgrade to their service, allowing their clients to create secure RSS feeds, which require a username and password to access ... a service that has until recently been provided only by MyST Technology Partners.
Certainly a feature that's ideal for publishers looking to deliver paid content via RSS, and even for marketers and internal communicators delivering sensitive information using RSS feeds.
Along with this upgrade SimpleFeed now also allows companies to easily import content form their websites by simply pointing their solution at a webpage URL. Should make things easier for publishers that don't have the capability of creating an XML output from their Content Management Systems, which a third-party RSS publishing service could then process to get the latest content from the website and then repackage it through advanced RSS features.
It's also great to see that SimpleFeed is now finally also providing a self-service offering, making their solution more accessible to small businesses that otherwhise could not afford their on-demand services.
FeedBurner Introduces New RSS Metrics: Great News for Marketers Not really that much of the RSS publishing and marketing population seems to be interested in RSS metrics ... well, not many of the marketing population seems to be interested in any kind of advanced online metrics either, for that matter.
For those that do care what's happening with their RSS subscribers and actually want to use those insights to optimize their RSS marketing results, FeedBurner just made a major upgrade to their RSS metrics services introducing some cool new tracking features.
a] "Total" Reach: Reach will tell you what percentage of your total subscriber base is actually actively clicking individual content items within your feed.
The benefit for marketers is that they can now finally watch their readership trends (in percentages) and see how their changes in their content approaches are resonating with their audiences.
All FeedBurner needs to do now is break this down to new subscribers and loyal subscribers to give you a feeling of whether the changes in trends are the result of actual content changes or in new subscribers from less relevant sources for your business.
b] Podcasts: FeedBurner now allows you to track the number of downloads of rich media enclosures in your RSS feeds.
This will tell you how many people are actually downloading your podcasts and videocasts after reading about them in your feed.
What this unfortunatelly won't tell you is how long people are paying attention (listening, viewing) your rich media content.
How about if FeedBurner were able to extrapolate how your rich media content is resonating with your audiences by combining their podcasting and reach data, actually seeing how the behavior of your subscribers with your rich media content changes after they've downloaded a few times?
c] Uncommon uses: This will tell you how your feeds are being syndicated in addition to your content being delivered to your subscribers.
"This is a new concept we're introducing that really begins to leverage the critical mass of feed readers, bots, search engines, news filters, and other common feed sources that we observe. Uncommon Uses identifies and highlights places where your feed content is referenced or clicked that FeedBurner does not recognize as a common feed service. Uncommon uses includes contact with your feed by non-subscribers."
d] Item popularity: This last metric will give you more insight in to how popular your individual content feed items are. Not that much new, but still a good improvement.
But what's still missing?
Well, a bunch of stuff that would be useful to marketers and isn't available right now.
For small business marketers that don't have comprehensive web analytics tools it would certainly be welcome to track the actual conversions generated from your RSS feeds.
Use Rasasa.com to Receive Critical RSS Updates to Your Mobile Phone or IM RSS is great for getting latest content updates as soon as they become available to your computer or even to your mobile phone, if you're using a mobile RSS Reader. The only problem is that this is usually done softly, without really pushing you with new content (and you actually want some content to be pushed to you, depending on how important it is), and without giving you access to that content depending on what you're currently doing.
But the free online service Rasasa.com takes this concept somewhat further, using an innovative approach to getting your most important content to you depending on your current location.
a] If you're online Rasasa will deliver your most important RSS feed content to your instant messenger, such as MSN.
b] If you're offline, Rasasa will deliver this content via SMS to your mobile phone. This one unfortunatelly doesn't come for free.
c] If you're in "quiet" mode Rasasa will deliver these updates to your e-mail.
The whole point is in pushing your most important RSS content to you as soon as it becomes available using the most appropriate method depending on your current activity.
You can of course decide which feeds are important enough to receive to your mobile phone, what times you want to receive this content (for example only in your "office hours") and even filter out only the most important content from your feeds.
For example, if you're subscribed to an RSS feed that brings you the latest job ads you could add that feed into Rasasa and then have it push new job ads to you as soon as they become available, regardless of where you are.
Excellent RSS Advertising Overview and The Dangers of the Orange Button ClickZ has a great overview of RSS advertising, presenting this new online ad channel as an up- and rising perhaps-soon-to-be-star.
Nothing really new, but a good overview all the same, especially the 'don't expect to reach the masses' warning.
They do make an important point that it seems that publishers have been quicker to adopt RSS than end-users.
Well, no wonder people aren't subscribing to RSS feeds if all they usually get is the infamous orange RSS button with hell to follow if clicked on.
Not really a shock, is it? But let me clarify: If you're marketing your content to the masses don't just use the orange button, but also incorporate Add to MyYahoo and others. It would also help to quickly and effectively (on the actual content pages, not hidden where no one can see it) invite people to subscribe to your RSS feeds and tell them why it's good for them.
And don't get me started with the new RSS icon that everyone's starting to use these days. Sorry folks, but if people don't get the orange RSS button, why do you think they'll get the new icon until it's been made a standard by the next IE?
BTW - also take a look at the recent DM News article about RSS advertising and its future.
Are Goodmail and AOL Trying to Limit E-mail Marketing to Corporations and US Business? While AOL and Yahoo! charging for e-mail postage via Goodmail might not really be a huge blow for savvy e-mail marketers, certain issues with Goodmail itself are looking like the company is trying to limit e-mail marketing only to corporations and US businesses.
Before I go on just a brief disclaimer: This article is based on information available directly from the Goodmail Systems website and has not been personally confirmed or researched with Goodmail. If their website is in fact misrepresenting the actual state of affairs, I'm hoping they will take the time to clarify this in the comments section or publicly on their website.
In theory a good bonded e-mail sender program should provide all permission based e-mail marketers with the ability to easily deliver all of their e-mail content, in fact increasing their campaign ROI, even with the increased cost of sending e-mail. And of course make the service accessible to every persmission based business in the world.
But in the case of Goodmail things are looking grimmer ... and much more elitist. Let's take a look at their accreditation criteria, which you have to meet to become part of their program (and consequently, if their plans follow through, keep reliably sending e-mail to AOL and Yahoo! users) ...
a] "Have at least 1 year of business history, as verified by a commercial identity verification service"
So if I'm a startup I can't even do responsible e-mail marketing? Are we really seeing a restriction that will in essence ban young companies from developing their business?
b] "Have business headquarters located in the United States or Canada"
This seems even worse. Is Goodmail really in the business of protecting US companies from foreign competition, instead of in the business of asuring reliable delivery of responsible e-mail? Because this certainly looks the part.
If this really is the case, then AOL, Yahoo! and Goomail will participate in about the largest national-limitation program ever.
Or perhaps they just feel that AOL and Yahoo! users don't want to do any business with foreign companies?
Also, what does this mean for European Yahoo! users? Will they now limit us from sending e-mail from Europe to their Italian customers?
As it seems, the situation on this front isn't as grim yet, but might become so quite soon.
c] "Transmit messages from dedicated IP addresses, even if sending email through an email service provider (ESP), and must have at least a 6 month mailing history from that IP"
And what happens if I want to switch my ESP (and I'm using their IP to transmit my messages), because I'm not satisfied with the service?
Will this simple business decision mean that I now won't be able to send e-mail to AOL and Yahoo! users for 6 months?
d] "The Charter Program will be limited to brands that are well regarded by most consumers or small businesses."
Well, they don't exactly specify what the Charter Program is and if there's another program ... or at least that information cannot be easily found on their website.
But does this mean that only established brands are now able to deliver e-mail? How about low-visibility brands and new brands?
Come on guys, if you're doing a relevant bonded sender program, how can you limit it only to established companies, to one nation and to "well regarded" brands?
There's another important point, which the "A VC" blog already made: How about transactional e-mail?
AOL, if I'm not participating in the Goodmail program, will you block my order confirmation to one of your customers that just placed an order on my site? Isn't this just a bad service to your own customers?
Microsoft's Ultracompact AKA Origami So Microsoft finally unveiled their widely leaked Origami product. To no one's surprise, it's an ultracompact touchscreen PC running Windows. Oh, and there's wireless functionality built in, as there is with just about everything you can buy today. Hmmm...sounds like...
RSS E-commerce From Burpee.com, Ice.com and Ebags.com Reveries.com strongly underestimates RSS readership and quotes some old stats, but otherwise provides some great new e-commerce RSS examples.
a] Burpee.com
Burpee.com is an online vegetables, flowers, herbs and garden gear retailer, who now has more than 10,000 RSS subscribers getting their new product info via RSS. A good RSS presentation page. And oh, it's the W. Atlee Burpee & Co. example we've already written about.
They're even planning on educating their catalog readers about RSS. Great idea!
b] Ice.com
Ice.com sells jewerly. They haven't implemented RSS feeds yet, but plan to, and are counting on an integrated strategy combining RSS, catalogs, videos, blogs and e-mail. Good ideas, especially the one on using RSS to not only deliver product info but also wedding ideas and simillar. You now just need to do it ...
c] Ebags.com
These guys, selling bags and accesories online, get the point. Their CEO likes RSS because it allows them to constantly deliver new product information that customers actually want, as opposed to e-mail where you'd be kicked for sending a new product mailing every day. I just wish I could find their feeds on their site. An opportunity lost?
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