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.