So, let's say you have a list of 1000 customer emails - which you have worked hard and paid real money to acquire. When you send a message, 400 of them (on average) don't get it. It either automatically lands in their Spam Folder or gets deleted even before it reaches them.

Even companies like Aweber who make a living sending emails for other people and have intimate agreements with email providers like Gmail, AOL and Yahoo, only get a 90% deliverabilty rate - on a good day (they claim %99.4 but I use Aweber and when I factor in the whole opt-in and email management process, at least 10% of my emails are undelivered).

RSS is quite different. If someone has opted-in to your RSS "feed", they will get 100% of your messages. No doubt about it.

This is obviously good for the company but how is this also an advantage for the customer?

Well, have you ever had the frustration of opting-in to something that you were interested in only to find (after searching for a few minutes) that it was buried in your spam box.

Have you ever had to "whitelist" an email address so that each email that was sent wasn't immediately deleted?

Doing this takes TIME... the most expensive commodity any one of us owns.

Once consumers realize there is a simpler way to get 100% of what they want, 100% of the time, and 0% of what they don't want, RSS will start to look like a (pardon the old expression) "no brainer".

RSS = SPAM-FREE

This may be the "tipping point" that triggers the general masses toward RSS.

Yes, spam is annoying... it takes time to delete... it contains inappropriate messages which make parents steaming mad... and it is the constant burden of corporations and email providers.

Especially due to the last reason, email will not be free forever. You may not have to pay if you send just a few emails to your friends and family each month but if your sending out a significant number of messages... you will pay.

This will be the email manager's final attempt at curbing the clever spammer.

In fact, email providers are already debating and tweaking a platform similar to cell phone companies where you will have a sending quota.

This will only push spamming into a "higher" art form and challenge the suprisingly intelligent geeks behind this modern phenomenon to new technical heights.

All of this will only serve to highlight the value of RSS even more and compel the average folks into opening up a Google Reader account or using the one they goofed around with more often.

However, before RSS eliminates email as we know it, a few things have to happen...

We will cover this in Part 2 of "Why RSS May Be The Email Killer".

Copyright (c) 2008 Web2Center.com

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