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The Surprising Marketing Benefit Now that Google Reader is Going Away

by Tim on March 24, 2013

Last week, Google announced it’s shutting down the much-loved Google Reader. As often occurs in these cases, the Internet—including me—lost its collective mind.

Why?

Well, without going into an overly detailed explanation of what RSS is, (you can check out Common Craft’s great introduction if you need it), RSS often brings “significant” traffic volumes to many blogs and other websites. And it’s an enormously helpful tool for knowledge management.

Except, you’ll notice I put “significant” in quotes up above.

Again, why?

Well, near as I can tell, Reader actually isn’t bringing me all that much traffic. Nor much to other sites I monitor regularly. And MG Siegler at TechCrunch notes that Reader is the #4 or #5 referrer to the site, accounting “…for a little over three percent of all visits.”

Um… what? 3%? That’s “significant”?

Now, as Siegler rightly notes, the folks using Reader may in fact represent a particularly influential category of users, far more likely to tweet and share and like and link. His “honeybee” metaphor underscores that the loss of this traffic may cause declines far out of proportion to the actual number of visits or visitors.

But, if your site’s traffic depends so heavily on only 3% of your total audience, I suspect you’ve got a much bigger problem.

I often talk about the value of developing an overall web presence, one that leverages your website, email marketing, and social channels to connect and communicate with your customers. In fact, I just dedicated a recent episode of Thinks Out Loud (our podcast), to building your web presence in detail and during that episode I noted the following three types of media:

Owned media
Paid media
Earned media

Owned media, of course, represents channels you actually own, such as your website or your email list. Paid media covers those channels you trade one thing for (usually money) in exchange for exposure. It includes such items as print and broadcast media, search engine marketing, banner ads, and similar efforts. And earned represents the likes and links and shares and tweets we all covet and work to build through our content marketing efforts.

Now, it’s common to think of RSS subscribers (and Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Google+ friends and the like), as “owned.” But they’re not. They’re “borrowed” or “rented” or “leased.” If any RSS reader decides to shut down (as Google’s doing with Reader), those subscribers, theoretically, go away. Forever. (The same is true for the folks following you on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, which is why I often argue against using these tools as the primary component of your web presence).

Your job in Internet marketing isn’t just to build your audience, but to build an audience you can keep over the long haul. Google shutting down Reader is a bummer, but it’s also an opportunity: to convert “borrowed” traffic to “owned.”

Over the next few months between now and July 1 (Google’s official shutdown date for Reader), create a few posts encouraging your Reader subscribers to subscribe to your email newsletter and to bookmark your site.

Additionally, now might be a good time to de-emphasize the importance of RSS subscriptions on your site and instead highlight your email newsletter (I’ve been doing the same for the last few months and will ramp up those efforts in the coming weeks).

In my experience, not only do these “owned” channels grant you more control, but visitors delivered via these media spend more time on site, view more pages, and convert at higher rates.

So, yes, Google Reader shutting down kind of sucks. Personally, I’m going to miss the value it provided me. And, yes, it’s possible that the potential loss of traffic from Reader could have downstream, “honeybee” implications. But you can take action to mitigate these risks by moving your customers from “borrowed” media channels to “owned” and by ensuring your web presence actively works to grow your email list. In the long run, a successful web presence cannot rely on channels it doesn’t control. Take this opportunity to improve the value of those “owned” channels to your business—and to your customers.

Interested in more? Sign up for our free newsletter and get more information on how to build your social, local, mobile marketing strategy. And, if you’ve got a minute, you might enjoy some past coverage on building a successful web presence:

Tagged as: E-commerce, e-commerce strategy, email marketing, email subscription, future of e-commerce, google reader, marketing strategy, rss, Strategy, website strategy

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The forgotten social network

by Tim on May 26, 2010

in E-commerce,Marketing

For all the talk about the importance of social media marketing – and social is important – there’s one social medium that connects you directly with your customers, produces above average results, is easily measured and gets all-around love from its practitioners: email.

Email is still one of the most productive forms of media around. According to the Datran Media Annual Marketing and Media Survey, 39% of marketing executives named email their strongest performing advertising channel last year, ahead of search, offline, affiliates, social and so on. Why is it so popular?

According the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 89% of internet users go online to send or read email. It’s also the most common online activity regardless of age (search is typically either tied for first or is #2). So you’re likely to be able to connect with your customers regardless of their demographic. Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo! claim to have over 360 million and 275 million active accounts, respectively.

In my own experience, email marketing frequently outperforms other media in terms of conversion and revenue per sale. It’s even inspiring innovative thinking in terms of meaningful metrics, such as Loren McDonald’s recent “EmailGeekonomics” column.

(On a side note, I loved McDonald’s mention of “Moneyball” in talking about developing your metrics. That’s exactly the kind of creative thinking you can use in improving your business, too. You can read my review of “Moneyball” here.)

The only downside of email marketing is getting your customers to sign up for it. In fact, many businesses I know fail to measure email signup as a conversion action on their site. Lucky for you that you’re not one of them, right?

I know I don’t talk about email all that often. Yes, we’ve talked about how to increase your opt-in list. But I think I’ve taken it for granted all these years, this little channel that keeps on giving. So, as you move forward with your social media marketing and with search, make sure you’re not treating your email list as your “forgotten social network.”

Thanks and acknowledgements: Hat tip to Mark Brownlow for links to the Hotmail and Yahoo! email account numbers.

Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.

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And while you’re at it, don’t forget to follow Tim on Twitter.

Image credit: Fletcher Prince via Flickr using Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Tagged as: email, email marketing, email subscription, social, social marketing, Social Media, social media marketing, social network, social networking, social networks, social strategy

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Should you increase email frequency?

by Tim on August 4, 2009

in E-commerce

I subscribe to email lists for many of the top converting sites, just to keep an eye on what they’re up to. And I’ve noticed an increasing trend towards more frequent email communications.

For instance, this is what I’ve gotten lately from ProFlowers:

And Office Depot:

And Victoria’s Secret:

Now apart from the fact that ProFlowers calls me “Timothy” – something I only used to hear from the priests at my high school and my dear Irish mother – this is a heavy increase from a year ago. MediaPost backs up my observation, noting an overall increase in email frequency across the industry.

The questions I have are:

Is this a good thing? Are these retailers seeing a boost in conversion from the increased frequency?
Is this a defensive tactic? Are retailers just trying to steal share from competitors in a down economy?
Are these retailers risking customer attrition due to “spammy” behavior?

Obviously, these are some pretty smart folks. I assume they’re testing to see what works best. If you’re increasing your frequency, don’t forget to do the same.

What do you think? Are you testing frequency of communication? And how’s it working out for you? Tell us in the comments.

Hat tip: The more alert among you may notice the “ad-swipe-file” label attached to my Gmail messages. See Linda Bustos’ email swipe file post and do the same for your business.