RSS bypasses the standard email delivery protocol (SMTP), resulting in both 100-percent deliverability and a recipient-friendly environment free of messages from unwelcome senders.

Ask people what annoys them most about the Internet and you will almost always hear a certain four-letter word: spam. Despite efforts by governments and ISPs to combat these unsolicited commercial email messages, Internet users today continue to be bombarded with spam, and legitimate email senders continue to contend with the deliverability challenges that arise as a result.

As ISPs ratchet up their spam filters in an effort to stop unwanted messages from getting through to customers, they also are nabbing an increasing proportion of legitimate, anticipated email, such as newsletters, service notices and invoices. A 2004 Return Path study found that ISPs were blocking nearly one-out-of-four permission-based messages.

Imagine being able to offer your customers a way to escape the flurry of unwanted messages while increasing your own message deliverability.

Welcome to Really Simple Syndication
That way is RSS, the technology that delivers blogs and news headlines to consumers' desktops. RSS enables companies to distribute content through digital "feeds" that cannot be accessed by spammers. Think of RSS as a private line between the sender and the receiver. The line exists only as long as the receiver keeps his or her side open, and no one but the sender can transmit a message over that line. Spammers can't "send" feeds that aren't wanted, nor can feeds be stolen or sold to unscrupulous senders the same way email addresses sometimes are. RSS users only receive feeds to which they have subscribed.

Clearly, a spam-proof medium offers huge advantages to companies and their online customers. Subscribers can receive a company's messages without having to divulge their email addresses, and marketers can spend less time diagnosing why messages aren't getting through and more time optimizing campaign effectiveness.

But traditional RSS has its limitations. Because subscribers all pull information from the same feed, marketers are unable to offer truly individualized content.

Now Discover the Next Evolution in RSS
The newest generation of RSS, which JupiterResearch calls "individualized RSS" (IRSS), eliminates this drawback and more. With the latest solutions, companies can give each subscriber his or her own feed. Consequently, marketers no longer have to sacrifice personalization, targeting and tracking to gain all the benefits of RSS.
 
And, best of all, the newest RSS solutions are easy to implement. Message recipients use the same RSS reader they use to get their blogs and news feeds, and marketers use technology that works seamlessly alongside existing Internet marketing and email programs.

Spam makes up 75 percent of all email messages sent over the Internet. But it's no longer an inescapable fact of online life. Now with the next generation of RSS, companies and their customers can finally say goodbye forever to deliverability headaches and spam.

The RSSDirect(SM) Spam Solution

Offer your customers:

• A choice between email and RSS.
• An escape from unwanted messages.
• Identity protection — spammers cannot access user information.

While you:

• Increase the number of people opting to receive your communications.
• Bypass spam filters to ensure delivery of critical updates, receipts and time-sensitive documents.
• Improve response rates through improved deliverability.
• Reduce costs to call centers from customers inquiring about missing messages.
• Personalize and target messages to individual subscribers, increasing relevance.

What is Spam?

Technically, spam is unsolicited bulk email.

Most marketers consider spam to be any messages sent without permission, whereas the majority of consumers have a much broader, less tolerant definition. They define spam as any message irrelevant enough to waste their time, whether or not they opted to receive it.