Easy as Pie
Of course, many early adopters in the fundraising industry already are onboard with RSS communications, including organizations such as Neighbors for Neighbors; the Multiple Sclerosis Trust; Team Nuts; and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Why RSS?
The reason so many mailers hip to RSS are so excited about the pending boon in its usage is the medium’s clear superiority over e-mail when it comes to spam: No one can send someone an RSS message — which arrives in the RSS reader in the form of a hot-linked headline — unless the recipient subscribes to the feed by adding its URL to his reader.
Plus, RSS actually is a snap to use. Anyone who knows how to work an e-mail reader will be able to make the jump to an RSS reader without breaking a sweat. Both display messages in similar ways. The primary operation difference is that an RSS reader offers many more options for organizing messages.
Indeed, long-time RSS converts believe many users might never realize they’re using RSS or understand how it works. Instead, they’ll simply click on IE 7’s little, orange icon, add a few RSS feeds to see what all the fuss is about, and — presto, chango — they’re transformed into card-carrying members of the RSS revolution.
Besides giving control over the flow of information back to the recipient, RSS has in-the-know e-mailers jazzed because it eliminates the nagging worry of seeing a marketing message getting unfairly snagged in a spam filter. So far, there are no spam filters for RSS messages, and e-mailers hope there never will be.
It’s really that simple
Even if you’ve been hanging back on implementing RSS for your fundraising, advocacy and education messages, the good news is you can RSS-enable any page on your Web site in about five minutes. Your Web designer most likely will know how — or, if not, you or your designer can visit any number of services on the Web that will RSS-enable your Web page for free.
