I thought I’d take a few minutes to share a lesser-known web marketing tactic revolving around using RSS to automatically dump content into e-mails.  This is particularly useful if your business operation has limited time and resources.

A respected and very popular (but expensive) e-mail broadcast program called Lyris ListManager has this capability built-in, as does an alternative service at MailChimp.  Lyris ListManager can run as a hosted software solution on your own server or you can subscribe to have access to the software on a SaaS (software as a service) model with Lyris.  MailChimp functions as a powerful web-based software solution running off of mailchimp.com.

The power of RSS to e-mail technology really comes into play when you want to issue multiple e-newsletters in a limited time window.  For instance, you might be used to only sending out a weekly newsletter when now you have the option to distribute multiple newsletters out in the same week period, perhaps focusing on specific niche topics, or in the event you have a niche publication, focus on ‘super niche’ topics.  You may wish to consider creating multiple RSS feeds from categorized articles and it might be a good idea to start doing this if you don’t already do so to leverage the automation capabilities available to you (through your CMS or at least updating individal feeds manually at the initial stage).

The process may be tedious at first but in theory, this should not require any additional resources after you become acquainted with how your mail distribution program sets up the e-mail blasts.  I would recommend that whoever you choose as a vendor that they include X amount of time to properly train you in the contract you sign to help alleviate upfront costs.  If you select a popular software package such as Lyris, you may also find useful information on the web to help you get started and there is always the possibility someone in a trade organization you may belong to can help you along as well (a non competitor of course).

From a revenue standpoint, the more playing fields you create (new advertising space in newly developed e-newsletters), an increasing amount of ads will trickle in converting to increased cash flow — perhaps faster than you think.  This will be particularly true if you create very niche-focused newsletter content as it elevates targeting opportunities for your advertiser base and still allows you to position/reuse ads from your more generalized weekly newsletter if desired.

With respect to giving due credit, this concept was introduced to me by a colleague, Matt Goodwin.  You may wish to check out his blog over at www.ttamniwdoog.com for some great tutorials and information on various Information Technology topics.

E-newsletters tend to be either heavily bogged down with marketing/advertisements, swamped with articles and other non-marketing content or somewhere in the middle.  You’ll need to find the happy medium through A/V and multivariate testing and definitely want to make sure you don’t deter potential prospects by littering your content with too many ads and marketing ‘junk’ — emphasis on the later because no matter how well designed your campaign might be from a marketing content perspective, if it looks like spam/junk mail, no one will read it and/or no one will enable images to be viewed if applicable, disallowing accurate open rates from being tracked, etc.

Using the stealth fighter analogy pointed out above, the newsletter itself should really be used as a clever marketing piece — transparently marketing a product, service or trade conference.  The more transparent the message is (without completely invisible), the more effective your campaign will be in collecting revenue.  You’ll need to keep in mind your readership audience will be receiving the same e-newsletter every week (or other pattern) so you’ll want to switch the marketing pitch around as well so they don’t become completely oblivious.  In other words, if someone sees the same thing over and over again, they won’t be as susceptible to noticing.

Rule of thumb: don’t be lazy!  Be clever with your e-mail marketing balancing content with advertising while at the same time switching the marketing placement around.  You just have to be careful not to change your e-mail template too much during a campaign because it does create brand identity.

If you can deliver quality, original content to your audience, they will continue to follow as a subscriber and look forward to receiving future issues, likewise allowing you to continuously convey marketing messages in a very forward-facing format that arrives in someone’s inbox.