RSS seems unlikely to stage a takeover anytime soon, according to panelists at a MarketingProfs Thought Leaders Summit on email marketing held earlier this year.

Rok Hrastnik, owner of MarketingStudies.net and author of the seminal e-book on RSS, "Unleashing the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS had this to say:

Given the relative maturity of email marketing compared to RSS, you would be hard pressed to find the same level of marketing functionality, targeting, personalization, and metrics capabilities that "come standard" with most email marketing packages in RSS.

"RSS technology is progressing rapidly, but email technology is not standing still either," said Neil Squillante, president of Landing Page Interactive. "Much is being done to eliminate the spam problem. Mainstream media continues to report that the amount of spam being sent is increasing, but what they are failing to report is the amount getting through is decreasing. What the recipient is experiencing matters, and a lot of recipients are experiencing less spam than they used to."

Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk added that in the end, it is all about user choice. "Just as we have seen with email, some consumers simply won’t want to embrace RSS. But as Yahoo! rolls out RSS and MSN makes it available, consumers will have more exposure to RSS, and marketers will be looking for an additional tool to distribute the marketing messages they couldn’t maneuver past spam filters."

I agree with all these guys on this. Email marketing isn't on its way out, not by a long shot. I'm not unhappy about that either, since my company (Netconcepts) owns the email marketing service provider GravityMail. With that said, however, I think it would be foolish to ignore RSS as a marketing channel. It's about to enter a huge adoption phase.

NOTE: Don't miss Rok's webinar on marketing through RSS, this Thursday at 12pm Eastern, on MarketingProfs.com. Sign up HERE.

My 2-part article summarizing the recent Thought Leaders Summit on Email Marketing has now been published on MarketingProfs.com (part 1 and part 2).

It is for MarketingProfs premium subscribers only unfortunately, so if you have been thinking about subscribing , now is the time to do it.

MarketingProfs has kindly allowed me to make available the audio recording of the Summit, which is available here. It's over an hour and a half long; lots of meaty stuff in there.

The Summit panelists included renowned author Jim Sterne, Forrester Research analyst Shar VanBoskirk, and RSS guru Rok Hrastnik, among others.

We covered a lot of ground during the summit, including:

• whether email marketing as we know it is doomed
• the role of RSS - to replace or to augment email
• reliability of email tracking
• navigating past spam filters
• CAN-SPAM legislation
• extraordinary versus ordinary email campaigns
• top most effective email marketing tactics
• objectively selecting an email marketing vendor, and
• what the future has to hold.

This was the third Thought Leaders Summit that I’ve had the pleasure of conducting for MarketingProfs, the first two being on search engine optimization and business blogging. Another on Buzz Marketing is due out soon, so watch this space for details!

Listen to the audio recording of the Email Marketing Summit

(File size is 26 M (Show length 1 hour 46 minutes)

Forrester Research makes some exciting predictions about future uptake of podcasting by media consumers:

"Podcasting, which is the newest entrant into the digital audio mix, will see significant growth by 2010 - reaching 12.3 million households - as MP3 adoption climbs and broadband reaches 62 percent of households."

If you want to learn more about what podcasting is and how to use it in your own company's marketing, check out my recent MarketingProfs article.

As a follow-on to yesterday's post about getting your blog noticed by influentials, i.e. A-List bloggers, I thought I would describe a scenario just recently presented to me.

I have been asked by analyst Shar VanBoskirk of Forrester Research if I would be willing to blog about their upcoming boot camp on integrated marketing on May 5. It's a full-day intensive workshop being held at their offices in Cambridge. I said "Sure, I'd be happy to mention it, but I don't think it will get picked up by other bloggers and thus it won't spread through the blogosphere." So the effectiveness of such a promotion strategy is limited.

A-List bloggers, like everyone else, are forever tuned in to the station "WII-FM" — What's In It For Me. As such, Forrester's message would be much more contagious, if there was a "free prize inside," so to speak, for the bloggers who read my boot camp "plug." In other words, the way to spread the word about the Forrester boot camp is for Forrester to make an irresistible, exclusive offer to bloggers who blog about the boot camp.

For example, what if Forrester gave away some exclusive piece of research that normally only their clients have access to? It doesn't have to be an entire report, just something exclusive and something bloggable. Like a "scoop" on an upcoming report. Or a synop0sis of key points or perhaps a mini report. Now what if the bloggers who blog about this integrated marketing boot camp get access to this exclusive information as part of the deal? In fact, what if Forrester Research turn this into an ongoing program, kind of like how Microsoft is wooing influential bloggers with their "Search Champs" program (where they hand-pick influencers and fly them to Redmond to wine-and-dine them and to discuss how Microsoft might improve their MSN search engine).

Hmm... "Forester Research Champs." Sure, they'd be buying off bloggers. But everybody would win, including blog readers. Bloggers get access to exclusive research early and often — as long as they agree to blog about Forrester. It is an interesting proposition. Forrester, what do you think?