Today, online marketers share some of the same concerns as the consumers they want to reach. Both groups want better control over the communications process. RSS delivers for both of them.

Although it is most often associated with blogs, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is morphing into an individually targeted marketing channel capable of offsetting many of the downsides of other mediums. Forrester Research, in its "RSS 101 for Marketers" report, said, "RSS is a powerful tool – albeit for the technologically advanced today – that marketers should test and deploy to proactively maintain relationships with their customers."

RSS is simply a technology used to distribute new content added to a Web site. RSS uses technology referred to as readers or aggregators to "pull" new postings from the sites and organize them into folders for users to review at their leisure. The technology is based on eXtensible Markup Language, or XML. The orange icons increasingly appearing on Web pages indicate that a site supports RSS.

Consumers can pick up RSS messages in a variety of ways – on their computers, from popular Web portals like Yahoo! and even from cell phones. RSS is also at the heart of the exciting new phenomenon called "pod casting," which lets consumers automatically download audio files and play them on portable devices like Apple’s iPod.

RSS usage is growing rapidly from its current estimated base of six million Americans and becoming a standard tool in cyberspace. Major Web browsers have RSS functionality built-in. The popular Firefox browser provides RSS reading capability to nearly 50 million users worldwide.  Microsoft has made RSS a part of its next upgrade to Internet Explorer.  FeedBurner, a provider of Web-based RSS tools, has projected use of RSS will be well into double digits in 2006.

RSS user demographics are certainly worthy of marketers' attention. According to Forrester, users frequent the Internet and, at about 39, are younger than non-RSS users by about six years. Forty-six percent are college educated and in the three months before Forrester's survey in February spent, on average, $465 online compared with $333 for non-RSS users.

The advantages RSS offers make it easy to see why 57 percent of marketers told Forrester they are interested in adding RSS to their marketing mix. For example, although email has been a prime driver of online sales and is expected to continue to hold a significant presence in marketing programs, spam makes consumers leery of signing up for email messages. Those who do opt-in for emails are often frustrated when spam filters keep desired content from reaching them. 

RSS, on the other hand, delivers every message to recipients’ desktops, assuring 100-percent deliverability. Consumers like RSS feeds because they are self-organizing, with each feed arriving in its own folder. Most important, however, RSS offers consumers control. RSS feeds do not require consumers to provide an email address. Instead, the consumer’s RSS reader checks for new messages from the sender’s Web site until the consumer says stop. And once opted-out, the consumer can no longer be contacted or bothered. With no email address involved, RSS makes unwanted messages all but impossible.

RSS is also a secure channel for sensitive communication. Because RSS messages reside on the sender’s Web site until a consumer’s RSS reader reaches out for them, RSS makes spoofing a sender or “phishing” nearly impossible.

Savvy companies around the world are adopting RSS and putting it to a wide range of uses. Whether it is a media site distributing news or a retailer publishing promotions and specials, RSS is quickly becoming a common way for businesses to communicate with consumers.

RSS has the power to substantially increase a company's subscriber base. FeedBurner reports its RSS subscriber reach has been growing by 40 percent per month for the past six months. Additionally, the presence of RSS feeds can directly improve a site's ranking on most popular search engines. Innovative marketers are quickly finding that adding RSS into their marketing mix is one of the highest impact and quickest ways to improve every aspect of their online presence.