3. Subscription Services (RSS, Twitter, Facebook)

 

Subscription Services RSS Twitter Facebook
 

Subscription services allow you to spread a message to all your subscribers This is a form of opt-in, as your prospect or customer decides if he or she wants subscribe to your channel Subscription services are useful for news and generalised offers, but not customised offers as you don’t know who is reading the message


RSS 

RSS is the acronym for Really Simply Syndication
Is a XML format obtained via an HTTP address
 
 
There are several mobile apps that can receive news and messages from RSS services
  • Pulse
  • Feedly
  • Flipboard 
  • Digg 
  • Etc...
(google reader is gone...)
 
 
If you have a blog for your business, then you probably have an RSS server
  • Wordpress based blogs have their own RSS server embedded 
  • Joomla, Drupal and many other CMS systems have RSS server capabilities too
  • All the news or articles that you publish into your blog or CMS system, will be received by all your subscribers automatically
  • Any kind of content can be delivered via RSS - text, images, links, video links, etc...


Twitter 

 
Twitter is predominantly used on mobile devices, and represents a direct channel to your customer’s mobile 
Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, but you can include in your tweet a url to a (mobile friendly) web page containing the message. The link itself in a tweet takes 22 chars for HTTP links and 23 for HTTPS links. Your prospect or client has to follow your twitter account to receive your messages
  • Include a “follow us” twitter widget to allow your website and app visitors to follow you 
  • A follower of your twitter account can retweet your message to their followers to make it viral
 

Twitter direct messages • Limited to 250 messages per day 
  • If you have a direct relationship between your client data and their twitter account, then you can send one2one personalised messages with twitter 
  • Ask your customer for their twitter account and store it in your customer database 
  • The recipient of the message can block your messages by un-following you, so avoid spam-like messages 
  • If a message is not a personalised one or a message addressed to a segment of your customer base, use the normal tweet publication instead 
  • Direct messages can only be sent to your existing followers, so your customer has to opt-in by following you


Facebook 

 
Facebook for mobile
  • Facebook is one of the most downloaded apps in the world
  • The follower (not a like) works more or less the same as twitter does - he or she will receive your news, deals, etc., like a subscription service