-by Sid Hale

The War on Spam has created a proliferation of individual spam filters, ISP filtering of email, and blacklisting - that make it much more difficult to get your email delivered.  

EVERY email newsletter faces ever-increasing challenges in trying to get their publication delivered to their readers.  People who have actually requested their information may never be seeing it!  Even if your mailings are totally ethical, your Email Service Provider (i.e. auto-responder service) may get blacklisted by some ISPs because of the spamming practices of someone else who uses their service.  You get penalized by the actions of others.

For the foreseeable future, the delivery of newsletters and direct mailings will become less reliable.  So far, the technology-based solutions to the problem of ever increasing spam have all had their own set of problems, and we have yet to really see any results from the legislative attempts to solve the problem.  In fact, the volume of spam has increased from 60% of all email in December of last year, to 71% today.

In all fairness, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is making honest attempts to clarify the CAN-SPAM Act, and Federal agencies appear to be aggresively pursuing the worst offenders.  It's just a HUGE job, and will (at best) take years to bring under control.  In the interim, it may get better - but it is affecting your business TODAY!  You just can't afford to sit back and wait for it to get better.

In my new blog, I recently discussed a couple of ways you could supplement your current email marketing.  Let's look at those in more detail, and discuss a few more options:

1. Online HTML newsletters - 
   These were avoided by many marketers for a very long time.  Their reasoning was that too many of their readers did not have HTML-enabled email software. 
   
   That just isn't a problem today, and using HTML email allows you to also include audio and even video, and to  post your newsletter to your web site, with no need to reformat it.  It gives each issue of your newsletter a longer life.  Instead of your reader having only a single chance to read your articles, they are posted to your website and can be archived for as long as you like. 
   
   Your articles are great content on your website for your visitors, and for the search engines as well.  Your new website visitors can be exposed to your articles and they (along with your archived back issues) serve as ads to help you get even more new subscribers.
   
2. Blogging -
   Since a Blog is a web-based journal, with archived posts, they share all of the same benefits as an online HTML newsletter.  But there are a few additional benefits to blogging, as well. 
   
   First, it's generally accepted for a blog to adopt a less structured, more informal style - with mosts posts being shorter diary-like entries, registering personal opinion and experiences, and published sporadically rather than dealing with self-imposed deadlines.  Most people will find this more relaxed style easier than publishing a more formal newsletter.  In fact, as I write this, personal blogs far outnumber blogs that have been created for commercial purposes.  So, if you've wanted to find a way to be more pro-active in building relationships in your target market - starting your own blog might just be the easiest way to do it.
   
   A second major benefit of blogs is that they are easy and you can get started for next to nothing (my blog is provided free with my membership in Affiliate Showcase).  Typically, all you have to do is select a template, configure your blogging site by setting a few options, and post directly to the site through web-based forms.  That makes it a great way for someone who has been timid about publishing a formal newsletter to get started in just minutes and begin developing relationships in their target market.
   
   As with anything you publish on the web, your blogging efforts are all wasted without getting exposure to your blog.  The good part is that it's easier to get exposure for your blog than probably anything you've ever published online.  I've made it easy for others to incorporate the contents of my Blog on their website by providing standard HTML code that can be inserted on any web page.
   
   Not only are blogs on the rise, but new directories are sprouting up every day that are focused on helping website visitors find blogs on various topics.  These online directories allow you to submit your blog very much like subitting a website to the search engines, or submitting articles to an article directory.  The difference is that getting listed often occurs within hours of submission - and rarely takes more than a couple of days.  I've built a partial list of these directories (those that I've found to be particularly easy to submit to), and will update this list over time.
   
   A second important method of getting exposure for your blog is the RSS feed.  Since RSS feeds can also be used for normal HTML newsletters, or any other website content, I'll discuss them separately...
   
3. RSS feeds -
   RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication, and for what it does - it is simple, but still a challenge for many. 
   
   Syndication is just the practice of making content available to multiple channels/networks/publishers/websites/etc.  It has been used for years in radio, television, and newsprint, usually in conjunction with a paid license to re-use the content.  While paid licenses for syndication also exist on the internet, free syndication is more common. 
   
   RSS is simply a protocol that allows one web site to “pull“ updated content from another so that the receiving website doesn't have to be manually updated every time the syndicator publishes new content.  The publisher simply updates their RSS feed, and the next time the web page containing the feed is opened by any viewer, they see the updated content. 
   
   That's the attraction for the receiving website.  They not only get free content for their website, but it is dynamic content - offering their visitors constantly updated material without the headache of updating their web pages every time one of their syndicated sources publishes an update.  This makes them an ideal way to share time-sensitive information, new developments, etc.  While entire articles can be pulled into a website via an RSS feed, it is more common to include only headlines and a short description of the article.  This feed would then include a link to the source to allow the visitor to view the entire content.
   
   As long as you understand the standards required by the protocol, an RSS feed can be created manually with any text editor.  Or... you can purchase software that will create the RSS feed file for you.  A feed can contain links to any content on the web, so besides breaking news or blog entries, they are an ideal way to distribute things like resource lists. 
   
   While RSS was originally developed for syndication of content to other websites, there are also desktop applications that allow individuals to “subscribe“ to your content.  These RSS readers are also aggregators so anyone installing an RSS reader can collect any RSS feeds that interest them into a single application on their own desktop.  Since these readers “pull“ the feed information just like another web site that is publishing your syndicated content, the application can alert the reader anytime one of their selected feeds is updated.  If you supply an RSS feed of your newsletter content, or your blogging activity, individuals can be notified anytime you update your content - totally bypassing the need to send the information via email.  Of course, if your readers don't have an RSS reader installed, you may have to educate them a little and even “sell“ them on the idea of installing one to their desktop.  You will want to make the decision as easy as possible, so it would probably be prudent to point them to a free RSS reader that installs easily and that runs in the background so that they can get automatic notifications of updates.
   
   While you will have to manually update your RSS feed when you publish a new issue of your online newsletter, or add content to your website - blogging software typically creates and updates your RSS feed automatically.  All you do is update the content by creating a new post, your RSS feed is updated automatically, and your “subscriber“ is alerted to the update any time they have an online connection.
   
4. Browser Toolbars -
   While the use of RSS feeds is on the rise, browser toolbars are already in widespread use and create less apprehension for your readers than the installation of a desktop application.  Of course, the typical newsletter publisher doesn't have the technical skills required to create a piece of browser plug-in software. 
   
   The answer is a toolbar generator.  A piece of software that provides the skeleton toolbar functionality, yet allows total customization so that you can generate your own totally unique toolbar.  I found such a generator (Sidekick Salesman) to generate my own toolbar.  It is so flexible that I was able to set up an entire service around the toolbar that syndicates my own newsletter with a number of other quality publications.  Now my readers can get notification everytime I publish a new issue of my own newsletter, and anytime any of the other members of Info Syndicate publish their newsletters as well. 
   
   By aggregating these other publications into the Info Syndicate toolbar, I'm able to share those publications with my readers, and perhaps pick up a few new readers from the other members as well.