Marketing Sherpa just posted a new report that stirred up the old RSS vs Email debate again. The report starts out with the statements here:

It chills our blood when we hear email marketers and publishers blithely state, “I’m thinking about switching over to RSS entirely!” Oh no. Please don’t. RSS is worthy of testing, but it’s not an email replacement and it never will be.

I (and many others, I’m sure) think this stupid thing has been going on for long enough. RSS is NOT a replacement for email. It does not (and may never) rival the marketing reach and immediacy of an email message.

See my blog post: Email marketing is alive and well

I know for a fact that my blogs get read more when I send out an email with a “blog post roundup.” I personally prefer email and tend to read those blogs more frequently that use email notification.

Adrants noted that the Marketing Sherpa report, while right in principle, turned out to contain several inaccuracies, such as

* HTML graphics can’t be served through RSS (Of course they can. I use them in my own feeds)

* RSS feeds have no table of contents (Adrants: RSS feed headlines serve as the table of contents)

* There’s little space to work with in RSS newsreaders (Obviously the writer never used browser-based readers, like Bloglines)

The Marketing Sherpa report also notes that 91% of US Internet users use email on a regular basis, while roughly 4% use RSS feeds on any sort of basis at all.

Other disadvantages that it notes for RSS publishers is the challenge of metrics:

No deliverability, open rates, hard vs soft bounces. No a/b tests, no usability tests, no offer tests, no recency/frequency tests, and multivariable testing…

The kind of data that marketers and publishers rely on to make business, content, and marketing decisions for email campaigns is almost entirely lacking for RSS at this time.

All this is very true. In fact, I would love to see web analytics providers like Webtrends start a service for tracking RSS metrics. I mentioned it to Steve Pardue of Webtrends when he last visited Mumbai and he did take my suggestions seriously.

The Marketing Sherpa report also has the advice here for RSS publishers:

Test RSS certainly. It may prove a winner for your niche. But only promote it to your visitors and prospects if you intend to watch metrics.

Just as we warned marketers five years ago that they should not ’shovel’ their brochure content onto their Web sites, you shouldn’t treat RSS as shovelware for email content. This is a new medium.

RSS has not yet reached the tipping point, but I believe that a smart publisher must use both - Email and RSS. Its not an either/or question.

If you’re wondering what you should publish, a blog or an email newsletter, I say do both! Or at least publish a blog with email notification functionality built in. Your list is still your most valuable asset online.

Keep either Email or RSS out of your marketing toolbox and you’re losing out on a significant portion of your audience.

RSS has other advantages that email does not have - like being able to syndicate your content across the web. It can be a very useful tool for building link popularity - if you do it right.

Read more about the Business Case for RSS in Rok Hrastnik’s excellent report.

Update: I wrote up this post and an earlier one into an article that you can read here
RSS vs Email: Its Not An Either-Or Question