Steve Outing’s column today in Editor & Publisher, “With E-mail Dying, RSS Offers Alternative,” covers well-trodden ground on the death of email as a publishing medium, with one really nice addition:
“Of the subscribers (62% to 83%) who do successfully receive e-mail from ethical publishers, there’s another big chunk who don’t open it. The typical opt-in commercial/marketing message is opened only about 40% of the time, according to the most recent Doubleclick E-mail Trend Report. E-mail newsletters typically fare better, but nevertheless a lot of them sit unopened. As users’ in-boxes fill up with more and more junk, it’s common for people to simply miss asked-for mail and inadvertently delete it—or because of information overload, simply not have time to read it.”
That’s the first solid numbers I’ve seen on the open-rate of email publications, although it’s about what I suspected.
Outing goes on to briefly explore the beginnings of a couple approaches to an RSS business model, noting that some publishers are beginning to embed advertising in their feeds. While I want to see a sustainable business model for RSS as quickly as possible, I don’t think embedded ads are going to be it. At least I hope not.
Oh, and hey…. Utne‘s RSS feeds went live yesterday:
- Utne magazine: http://www.utne.com/pub/index.xml (published bi-monthly; articles that require payment to read are indicated with the ($$) notation)
- Utne Web Watch: http://www.utne.com/webwatch/index.xml (published every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
- Utne Web Specials: http://www.utne.com/web_special/index.xml (published every weekday)
We haven’t publicly announced anything yet, so whatever you do don’t tell anyone.
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