For the majority of my professional life I’ve been signing up for email lists. Whether it be when I make a purchase, or become a fan of a new band…. These email lists were once the “lifeblood” of a brand’s online marketing strategy. The more email addresses you had, the more people you could push to react to your news.

A great deal of brands are still utilizing a push technology to reach their fans/customers. Someone must have failed to mention the bottom dropped out on email open rates in 2007. Globally email open rates are now somewhere in the 10-15% range. However, the technology is still pushed by many major digital marketing companies as the lone way to get your message to the masses.

I may be in a small majority, but I’ve never liked the “email update”. It’s intrusive, I can’t distinguish “I have something to say” with “here’s another lame J-Crew coupon”…. and I’ve certainly gotten to the point where I open and incredibly slim percentage of what is sent my way (around 30 per day).

My question at this stage in the game is why continue to use the same method when that method is proving ineffective? One of my favorite quotes from Gerd Leonhard is “I program my media, my media does not program me”. We don’t need to use a giant email gun to broadcast our message any longer. We need our brand and our content to be “sticky”, meaning that they want to come back for more. Thus, creating a funnel to get them to our information, they have to be willing to come back to your brand.  (Check out Gerd on this one)

Should you not begin to consider a PULL methodology? Should you not wish for your content to be so good that people are compelled to come back? If you’re still wanting some form of push, utilize Syndication via RSS feeds – it will still deliver the same message, but to those who WANT the information. It will also allow users to find your information and learn about the history of your content.

In contrast, pushing emails puts a limit on those that can read your message. It’s going to only be the number that are signed up for the list. Pulling, in contrast, opens your message up to everyone, and (by utilizing RSS) allows them to subscribe.

Most importantly the subscription is their choice, not because they forgot to click a checked box on a form.

If your message is worth reading, they will come…. if you build it (and build it right)… they will come!