I’m using this post to gather everybody’s opinions on which is better: RSS Feeds or Email Subscription.
Over the last couple years we have seen a huge trend arising called Really Simple Syndication. At first most people believed that this was just a fad and it would go away quickly, boy where they wrong.
RSS feeds have grown in dominance over the heavenly favored email subscriptions. Email has been around from quite sometime now, but is starting to fade away due to the arrival of RSS feeds. Many people that bloggers that use blogs prefer to use RSS over email because it is easier for their subscribers to get access to their information.
A lot of the top bloggers in the blogosphere are starting to turn the effects back to email subscription by adding a light box pop subscription box when somebody visits their blogs. Some of the bloggers that have recently added this feature to their blogs are: John Chow, Darren Rowse, Shoe Money, and Yaro Starak. They know the value of auto responder messages and the residual profits that they can make by having an email list. Most auto responders companies have started to make the transition to enable the RSS feed to coincide with email newsletter, giving the publishers in all-inclusive form of subscriber communication.
Which one is more effective
Below I have outlined the pros and cons of using RSS feeds and email subscriptions.
RSS FEEDS
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Pros |
Cons |
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RSS feeds are cost effective because distribution and delivery costs are very low |
RSS feeds provide no history, which means that although you always get the newest information, you can easily miss an article of interest to you if you don’t check the feeds for a few days (when your on vacation, for example) |
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RSS feeds are timely because subscribers get updates and breaking news as soon as they are available |
RSS feeds are a bandwidth waster because they automatically download RSS files (usually hourly) to check for updates and changes |
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RSS works well with e-mail. An e-mail client is not required to view RSS feeds but they can also be received, viewed, and managed in your e-mail client |
RSS feeds are complicated to set up. As people hear about RSS and understand its value, they also become disappointed by the fact that it is not as easy as surfing the Web |
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RSS helps you manage and organize content. Messages and articles can easily be archived, sorted, and categorized automatically |
RSS content doesn’t lend itself to search. Many search engines include RSS feeds but they struggle to identify which information is new and, hence, greatly limit the value of search operations on this type of content |
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RSS maintains privacy and anonymity. You fully control the subscription to and removal from RSS feeds. You don’t have to provide your e-mail address or any other personal information when selecting the feeds you want to syndicate |
RSS feeds usually only show an abridged version of the content, which can be cryptic and may require you to open your Web browser to see the full article |
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RSS feeds help you save time by scoping the content that you receive to your specific interests and ensuring that the information is always up to date |
Customer does not expect to provide any data in exchange for ability to subscribe to RSS (this will change – early websites were free-to-view, many are now require registration) |
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RSS is able to deliver designed / branded / rich content |
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RSS does not get blocked / filtered out so that important/critical content is sure to be ‘delivered |
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RSS content (through topic channels) has the potential to deliver highly relevant content to subscribers |
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EMAIL SUBSCRIPTIONS
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Pros |
Cons |
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Email is intrusive |
Once opted out, contact is suppressed / not contactable |
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Email is trackable (open rates, CTR, etc) down to individual level – ROI is easily understood, mature channel with industry standard metric |
Opt out rates are on the up (normally due to irrelevant communications) |
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Email content can be highly targeted |
Response rates are falling |
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Email can be highly designed / branded / rich content (if HTML version) |
Regulation tightening up on opt out / opt in – governance and compliance is becoming harder – risk of legal action by customers |
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Widespread use and knowledge of email (products) |
Important/critical content / messages can get lost/blocked in fog of spam |
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Increased power to customers to report spammers though increased regulation of opt out / opt in laws |
Spoof emails creating environment of confusion / distrust about email |
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Email can be highly designed / branded / rich content (if HTML version) |
Total number of emails being sent is not sustainable (i.e. number of emails sent out per year as a ratio to the number of recipients and numbers of emails received) |
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Email can be highly cost effective |
Email is trackable (open rates, CTR, etc) down to individual level – potential privacy concerns |
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Email drives sales |
Number of emails is increasing – not enough time (nor inclination) to open and read all |
There you have it, the pros and cons of the two. Now tell me what your thoughts and opinions are!
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Informative post , both subscription feature provides the same information but uses a different technology to deliver the content. RSS has increased in popularity but despite that a large portion of users still prefer to receive feeds through their email
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Good post — really hits the pros and cons of RSS.
I prefer to read blogs through RSS because it’s all there for me when I have time to read it. I don’t check the blogs in my RSS reader every day, but I check them every few days. I can see at a glance what posts I’ve read already, which I haven’t and scan the headlines of dozens of blogs relatively quickly.
I do subscribe to a few blogs by e-mail, mainly ones I set up before I latched onto RSS. I find that if I receive the e-mail at a moment where I don’t have time to read it, that I just delete. (I hate my inbox filling up.) Then if I want to go back later, I have to dig through my trash. Of course, I could just let these e-mails pile up, but I find that annoying — sort of like the Sunday New York Times piling up on the floor.
On my blog, I offer people both — so they can pick. There are still many people who don’t know what an RSS feed is or don’t realize how simple it is to set up.
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Incorporating a pop up box hovering box with Adweber is one of the best decisions I have ever made with my blog. Great post, definately made the differences easy to understand for a newby like myself
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Interesting post but i would denefinty prefer RSS….below are the reasons:
1. Managable
2.Inbox doesnt gets overcrowded…
3.with readers like Google…you can even good notes….
RSS for me
I’d still choose RSS. I don’t read that much so it’s more likely that i’d just delete most of the emails i get when i know they came from same source and would likely contain the same stuff.
I choose… BOTH! hehe…. Why? I subscribe to rss feeds if the blog interests me and subscribe to email if I want to get more than the blog posts (ex. discounts for email subscribers and such…)
I would use both too. I guess if I HAD to pick one, I would still take the email. I don’t need to be updated every hour and RSS is a bandwidth killer.
I will choose RSS. I completely agree with chrisile.
well I prefer RSS feeds because they are easy to access and easy to read (directly on inbox), rather than having this email subscription. You have to go to the site to read the article, click those links, there are lots of links appearing which is very annoying sometimes.
And yes, RSS is very manageable.