Dropping eNewsletters in Favor of RSS?

At a conference where I spoke recently, someone mentioned an organization who decided to drop their enewsletter in favor of RSS. I was really surprised by this and am not sure I understand (or would recommend) this strategy.

From my point of view, marketing in nonprofits (and business in general) today is about managing multiple platforms. I think that matching your message and its delivery to various channels is one of the most important skills for nonprofits to have. Using the same message across all media is not as effective as matching it to the audience. Your youth program participants may be on MySpace and your donors on Facebook, so modifying your message to these different audiences and the medium they prefer is essential. Although much of my work is around online fundraising and communications, I still believe in print. I think there is something about a print piece that people can pick up and peruse. If I am visiting someone's office I can't peruse the enewsletter you send them unless I snoop in their email. 

I appreciate the story about how when broadcast radio began, the prediction was that since people could now get news for free, newspapers would soon go out of business. Almost a century later, at least some are still in business. Different people prefer to consume information through different channels.

While having an RSS feed of your website/blog is important for those who wish to use RSS, that likely is not 100% of your audience. I understand wanting to consolidate communications for efficiency, but I think it is important to use the various channels favored by your stakeholders.

A great way to understand this is to ask. If you are going from a print to an online newsletter, ask your current subscribers to sign up for the enews and see what they do. Do 70% of your print subscribers sing up or only 20%? That give you an indication what they prefer. Be sure to do a good job explaining and enticing people to sign up, citing why it is more cost effective for the organization and what great things they will hear about in a timely fashion.

With some planning even small organizations can handle messaging across the platforms and to the audiences they determine are most important. 

Comments

[Laurie Cirivello]

I agree that offering options is important. Simply choosing one content distribution method over another can mean abandoning an existing constituent group. One size does not fit all and that's the great thing about having options.
Thanks for the blog.

[John Kenyon]

Thanks for the comment Laurie, well put. It is about putting the needs of the audience first and knowing what they want.

[Timo Luege]

I'm working the International Red Cross Red Crescent (IFRC) - and this wouldn't work for us at all. I'd say that many of the thousands of people who are receiving our enewsletters don't know what an RSS reader is. Email on the other hand is something that everyone knows and uses on a regular basis.

[Tom Troughton]

Good reminders for us not to use a "one size fits all" approach when marketing. Fascinating statistic about the appearance of radio ... I wonder what predictions made today people will laugh at 100 years from now?