I’m with a purchasing cooperative and we need to get product updates to our members in a timely manner. I’m wondering if we could some how take advantage of RSS (real simple syndication) technologies to get this information out. Not all our members carry all of our lines. No one in our organization has experience with RSS.

• Does this sound feasible?
• Would this be more time consuming than sending blanket emails to all our Members?

###

Jay’s Answer: It’s easy to do. The problem is that your members need to subscribe to your feed to see the updates. While you can see who has subscribed to your feed, you don’t know if they’ve seen it. Using email contact manager software you can see if they’ve opened it, clicked though, etc.

As for which is more time consuming – it’s a toss-up. With RSS you’ll need to update your web page. With an email, you’ll need to compose it, and send it out.