Should I be surprised that “Big Marketers” choose to ignore the power of RSS and thereby the power of blogs? In most respects, I’m not. It’s a sad fact that the most innovative, and most effective, “marketing” (I would prefer the term communication) is done by the smaller marketing firms and companies. We are the early adopters. The ones who lead. The ones whose results will eventually force the “Big Guys” to wake up, smell the coffee, and jump in so fast they end up really messing things up. Trust me, it will happen.

We’ve seen it with the McBlog - the blog set up by the McD’s guys, complete with fake posts and commentary. So sad. And so bashed by the online community. Why did they do it? Someone probably said “we need a blog” and then it was passed off to the guys in marketing. Guys who have never done anything but expensive tv campaigns. So we get an online campaign. No knowledge of what a blog is. Nor what a true blog could have done for the McBusiness. Their loss.

Anyway, back to the point at hand. A report from JupiterResearch found that “RSS will not have a significant effect as a supplemental alternative to e-mail marketing.” Great study. Since when did we believe that RSS was only a supplement to email campaigns? When phrased like that, I wouldn’t be surprised that most people disagreed. Although it is a great complement to online marketing in general, the point of RSS and blogs is not nearly as narrow as that question would phrase it. Blogs are a new communication tool for creating relationships with customers. The study was talking to a group of businesses who likely haven’t used the word relationship in quite some time.

Back to the survey. 17% of those who use RSS for marketing (this is 17% of the 5% who do), use it to publish newsletter content. Still one way. Still carefully crafted prose. More problems. Unlike the claim of JupiterResearch, RSS is not an “alternative for newsletter content distribution” - that is not the type of content that cuts it on a blog. Very interesting.

RSS is not well suited to promotional-offer-oriented content because it does not offer the targeting and personalization capabilities of e-mail, the report said.

Can we think of more reasons why blogs are not good for promotional content? :)

And check out this lovely tidbit:

Marketers publishing newsletter content through RSS should treat it not just as a low-cost delivery mechanism, but also as a revenue opportunity. Only 19 percent of marketers told JupiterResearch they were exploring RSS for extra ad unit revenue opportunities.

I’m not the only one happy that the Big Guys don’t get it (see Seth’s post and this post on threadwatch). Let’s just wait until the Big Guys understand what a relationship is and why customers want two-way communication. Then, maybe, they will understand the full value that blogging offers.

News via Threadwatch.org