RSS is slowly but surely getting on its own feet. Future software products and operating system are going to integrate web syndication as part of their integral features.

Rebecca Lieb has an article on ClickZ where she shares some examples of how RSS is being used as a marketing tool in real life and real time:

• Coupon feeds - Syndicate coupon, deal of the day and other types of offers.
• Affiliate marketing - Help bring new affiliates into the network and keep in touch with them.
• Press releases - PRNewswire and Business Wire now provide journalists with feeds.
• Deal and product feeds - Get the most current products via feed. End-users might not know they are using RSS even if they are taking advantage of it. Example: Apple widgets.
• Classified - Probably the most obvious and popular example is Craiglist.
• Podcasts - This new audio and video content syndication taps into RSS too.
• Branded content - From newsletter to white papers, marketers are using RSS to keep their brands top and establish thought leadership.

Integrating advanced RSS might involve some kind of programming but in order to start using it to syndicate content, coupons/deals and podcasts, anyone can start immediately with a simple RSS feed generation software or a blog.

One of America’s major direct marketers has a new value proposition “Get Information How You Want, When You Want.” Yes, Amex has adopted RSS as part of their online direct marketing efforts.

Rebecca Lieb of ClickZ opined that such an adoption is a big win for syndication fans. American Express is a big influencer, so others are sure to follow.

Amex will start offering cardhlders four feeds: Travel Deals, Membership Reward Program, Gold Card Events and IN:NYC Card Events and Promotions. Each of the topic has been segmented into subtopics and according to the user geographic locations to offer very targeted messages.

Because users can choose from different content topics, Amex has to offer a special page where users are allowed to choose the feed and proceed with the RSS reader of their choice.

Unfortunately, users have to repeat through the steps to select each and every feed. The topic selection is available as radio buttons instead of checkboxes. The latter, I’d imagine, should allow customers to aggregate content from more than one feeds.

With this move, Amex has removed the spam filtering issue that most likely will take into place with this kind of offer via email. Users who subscribe to RSS feeds are free from phishing attack frequently posed to them via email.

ClickZ.

If I look back how e-commerce has progressed for just a decade or so, I could do nothing but simply amazed on how technologies have gone so far to improve the way people sell and shop online.

People used to think that the Internet is not a medium for business transactions.

A little bit after that, buyers could sell virtually anything and people will notice. That’s where the phrase “build it and they will come” came from.

Back then, people shop through insecure connections.

Fast forward to now, we have many different technologies for all aspects of online marketing; from getting attention from a random but targeted individual to moving her into the sales process, convert the prospect into sales, and finally increase customer retention.

Each marketing tool can only do what it is good at.

A website, for most of us, serves as a storefront for the entire online business. It is also a tool that should work for the owner 24/7, 365 days a year to not only showcase products or services but also capture leads — which is one of the very first step to move the stranger into prospects.

Email marketing helps automate the lead nurturing process. It makes the tasks very simple. The time and human resources needed to communicate with one or a hundred leads suddenly become almost the same. It is also a great way to increase and maintain customer retention.

Search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, business blogging, and others are just a few examples of the tools every Internet marketer should pay attention to increase marketing effectiveness.

Each of them takes an entire book to cover.

But, RSS has one thing that stands out of all, although still it is not the end-all of internet marketing evolution.

What makes it different is its uniquess in content delivering features.

It is better than email in some ways — but not all — and more efficient than website. Heck, it is even the “engine” that contributes a lot to turn a blog into such a useful publishing tool. It is also the technology behind podcasting and all its buzz.

While saving Internet marketing is probably an exaggeration, RSS really has a solid substance that none of us should overlook.

There are much more to cover. Please subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you don’t miss a bit.

Topic clustered RSS reader from Yahoo!

Yahoo! has released the experimental topic clustered RSS reader that has the capability to group a collection of feeds in relevant groups. This application only works with Yahoo Widget Engine.

The Get Humanized team have come up with a new breed of RSS aggregator. They provide a cool and Ajaxy search interface to currently a handful of feeds. The search research looks much like a blog.

FeedCrier: News alerts to your AOL instant messenger

Adam Kasey, former CTO of RSS vendor Pheedo has released a new service — FeedCrier. This service is an instant news reader that allows you to subscribe to any RSS feed using your AOL Instant Messenger account. You can monitor in real-time when there is a job listing updates in Craiglist, Simply Hired and others.

For bloggers, it could be getting notifications of breaking news from thousands of sources. Pro service lets you receive alerts when you are offline for $4 per month.

FeedBurner has added more features to the free FeedBurner Email Service. This feature gives publishers more options to publicize content other than through RSS and Atom feed.

FeedBurner Email is strictly a publisher service. There is no subscriber landing page at FeedBurner, no dashboard for subscribers to login to and manage their emails, and so on. Just easy-to-read, plain text or HTML email containing the latest posts. The messages that go out are largely “brandless,” by which we mean that a) the emails are delivered as “from” the publisher, not FeedBurner and b) there is no FeedBurner header and only a very light “delivered by” footer. Publishers have access to the email addresses that subscribe to their feed, and they can export these addresses and move from FeedBurner to another service at any time.

The following were added to the service:

Subscription management

• Activate, deactivate, and (now) delete individual email addresses
• Receive an optional email when people subscribe or unsubscribe

Communication preferences

• Customize the subject line and body text of the confirmation email sent to subscribers after they opt-in to receive your feed by email. (Handy for using hundreds of languages other than FeedBurnerese.)

Email Branding

• Customize the subject line and title of the email that is sent to your subscribers
• Add an image or logo to appear at the top of HTML email messages
• Change body and headline text fonts, sizes and colors, as well as text link colors

Delivery Options

• Choose your timezone
• Select a two-hour delivery window within which your daily digest will be sent

FeedBurner Email Service is available under the Publicize tab.

This feature is neat. I mean if you are currently offering no email newsletter subscription, you definitely want to consider FeedBurner Email Subscriptions. I find more than one forms on a page confusing though.

So, if you are to offer both email newsletter and blog post update, you may want to move one of them to a separate page and another one displayed on every page of the blog/ site.

Test to see what works best though.

Source: FeedBurner blog.