JG etc.

Rebecca Lieb of Clickz wrote an article today entitled, “RSS Means Change Your E-Mail Opt-In Model”

In the article Rebecca describes some positives of RSS…..

Now, thanks to the miracle of RSS, a bunch of early adopters (myself included) are migrating their e-mail subscriptions to their RSS readers

But then she goes on to talk about how RSS needs to allow for RSS subscriptions to have an opt-in model for email subscriptions for her company’s “ethical” service to work.

One of the most popular RSS services is Web-based Bloglines. It enables users to create a unique e-mail address for each subscription (e.g. username.27531127@bloglines.com). This helps keep your inbox clear and is a pretty good way to nail mailers who start spamming you or selling their lists to third parties, too.

Yet under this system, I’m unable to subscribe to ClickZ and other publications as my Bloglines address is receive-only. I can’t confirm a subscription via e-mail under the subscriber address.

So we’re going to look into modifying our double confirmed opt-in model — without compromising its integrity. Perhaps we should give new subscribers the option of “reply to this e-mail” or “click this link to confirm your subscription.”

The whole point of RSS is that it is your account, you grab the feed, and login to your account and subscribe. If you don’t like the content you are getting you unsubscribe. No longer to you have to deal with double opt-ins and other tricks because some marketers have been blatant spammers in the past.

One benefit of RSS is that it is about the consumer and marketers adhering to their requirements. If you don’t give me your content in a way that is easy for me to consume, well you have lost out on a set of eyeballs. And in the long run a bunch of eyeballs.

Any other newsletter publishers out there grappling with this issue yet? My bet is you will be in six months to a year. What changes are your making to your own double opt-in systems?
We’d love to hear input on this issue.

Input…. Opt out of your email newsletters and turn them into feeds. Educate your readers on the benefit of RSS, don’t send them back in time. And for the marketing 0.5 people they can still spam, and eventually email marketing will fade away.

My RSS address is recieve only and I will only recieve it if I want your content. No more worries about garbage-in, but can’t get garbage-out because I opted-in.

The real power of choice. Technology once again routes around bad marketing practices.