Bye Bye Email Marketing, Hello RSS
Saul Hansell at the New York Times reports that America Online and Yahoo are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. AOL and Yahoo will still accept e-mail from others, but the paid messages will be given special treatment. (Update: Rebecca Leib notes in comments that ClickZ broke this earlier in the week.)
That's all folks. The door has officially closed on email marketing. Maybe this will drive more companies to start up opt-in RSS feeds and blogs that facilitate dialogue.
Begging your pardon, but ClickZ's Kevin Newcomb broke this one over a week ago, Steve.
Kevin's story was also Slashdotted yesterday.
Posted by: Rebecca Lieb | Saturday, February 04, 2006 at 03:18 PM
Steve, how is this the end of email marketing? Most junk mail comes 4th class anyway.
I'm all in favor of opt-in RSS feeds for marketing, but I don't see how this news spells the end of email marketing (either the legitimate kind or spam).
Posted by: Kent Newsome | Saturday, February 04, 2006 at 04:23 PM
Oh great... Just when we thought spam sucked!
Posted by: Alex Morganis | Saturday, February 04, 2006 at 05:27 PM
And, well, how is this the end of email marketing? Has the adoption of RSS hit that sweet spot where companies can abandon emails? Or is a dual strategy the best way to go right now?
Posted by: Jeremy Pepper | Saturday, February 04, 2006 at 05:53 PM
I really hope there's some serious sarcasm going on in your post ...
Posted by: matt | Saturday, February 04, 2006 at 07:37 PM
Steve,
How can an RSS feed be not "opt-in"?
Posted by: PG | Sunday, February 05, 2006 at 11:12 AM
As marketeers, should we not embrace change and look to see how something as impactful as charged-for email marketing forces us into new and cheaper (read "free"!) and ultimately more effective methods of commuincating with customers?
Are you telling me that a customer can read more into the human side of a business via a static, scripted email than a customer-centric blog which is by definition, written by a human and therefore develops the relationship better than being pushed to order from an email?
I'm all for change if it means my customers spend more by me being ahead of the pack!
Great Post Steve
Posted by: Paul FAbretti | Sunday, February 05, 2006 at 03:40 PM
Paul, your argument makes the assumption that people actually want to interact with the companies they purchase from.
They really don't, they just want to buy something fast and cheap and be done with it.
Maybe that changes down the road... I hope so too, but for not, we simply cannot make that assumption.
As for the end of email marketing. It's going to die just like desktop publishing did in the 80's.
Wait... it's still around.
Posted by: Jim Kukral | Sunday, February 05, 2006 at 11:10 PM
Steve, the threat of RSS has been misinterpreted for some time now. What RSS advocates are consistently failing to understand is that successful online communication requires both push and pull efforts (akin to speaking and listening). It will be years before marketers stop initiating proactive dialog with customers and prospects. RSS will never replace email. It's merely another channel for us, as information consumers, to retrieve relevant content.
If anything, RSS might take a chunk out of the Search pie!
Best Regards
Tom O'Leary
Editor, The Messaging Times
Posted by: Tom O'Leary | Monday, February 06, 2006 at 06:18 AM
What I'm surprised by is that people are still using AOL at all. When everyone else seems to be moving forward, enhancing online communication on a global scale - they seem to be going backwards.
AOL is creating an isolationist community - whether their members know it or not. Their choice of an email validation service that doesn't accept membership from communicators outside of the US and Canada demonstrates how isolated they are. To be validated by GoodMail, emailers have to have an HQ in the US or Canada. I thought that the Internet was a global tool without geographic restrictions. I might understand if a majority of spam sent didn't originate from the US.
Good luck to AOL and, more importantly, to their users.
Posted by: Tom O'Leary | Monday, February 06, 2006 at 07:44 AM
Well, this is "supposed" to fight spam, and as a result, Steve declares the end of a legitimate business (when done right, of course), but not the end of spam. How's that for hitting on target, eh Yahoo & AOL?
On the other hand, Microsoft (Hotmail/MSN) has been using BondedSender for quite a while. That's not just the same thing as AOL/Yahoo's Goodmail, but even a more severe approach, considering it is quite more expensive to become a "bonded sender" than a "good mailer".
In the end, leaving up to your provider to decide what email you should/should not get doesn't sound like a good thing to me.
So Yahoo/AOL/Goodmail will make some extra revenue, large (legitimate) companies will spend more on their email communications, smalles companies will suffer, end users will miss more valuable emails, and spammers will continue doing what they're doing. Exactly what was the problem this thing was supposed to solve?
Posted by: RBA | Tuesday, February 07, 2006 at 11:07 AM
Lots of good points both in Steve's original entry and in the resultant posts.
Push marketing isn't dead, but I agree that both new anti-spam laws in Michigan and Utah, along with the AOL/Yahoo! Special Treatment Tariff mean that email marketing is going to get a lot tougher.
I also believe that the average consumer is sick to death of push marketing and its effectiveness will wane...soon, God, please, soon. I'm going to do everything I can to move away from Push and work mostly on Pull. Can I get a witnesssssss?
Posted by: Eric Weaver | Wednesday, February 08, 2006 at 03:21 AM
Steve, I'm also in favor of opt-in RSS feeds for marketing, but I don't see how this news spells the end of e-mail marketing. To be honest I wish it would but I cant see that happening any time soon. I think we will be stuck with it for many years to come. I hope I am wrong but..
Posted by: Jim Rockingham | Wednesday, March 15, 2006 at 04:27 PM
You know the sooner you have to pay for commercial email the better.
As an online copywriter it's just plain annoying to compete with spam when you're sending highly valuable information to opt-in lists.
Paying even 1 or 2 cents and email to send a good offer to a good list is well worth it if your email copy and your website copy is good.
I've had two emails to a list of 10,000 produce sales in excess of $20,000.
Do you think my client would have thought twice about paying $200 to send those emails?
Not on your Nellie!
It is sad that something that was a fantastic free tool will probably end up being charged for but then we do actually pay for it
Internet access is NOT free.
Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh
Posted by: Andrew Cavanagh | Tuesday, June 06, 2006 at 10:36 PM