A Good Reminder That You Don’t Always Pick Engagement Channels

While yesterday’s article examined the highlights from the 2019 reader survey, there was one particular item that warranted a separate post: RSS feeds.

Among the new questions in the 2019 survey was one asking readers their primary point of contact with articles. For those indicating a daily or weekly email subscription, the survey included a conditional question asking if they preferred using their email client or visited the browser version from the email.

I expected most would click through to the browser version.

I was so very wrong.

Turns out that isn’t what happens at all. More than half of the respondents using email notifications as their primary point of contact with new content indicated they only use their email app to read articles.

Those of you who know the pain of getting your RSS sourced content to render as designed inside the wild west of a mess that is email apps are aware of how much trouble it produces.

Having said that, the survey results reinforce just how important it is to stay on top of these old tasks, regardless how much effort it takes.

It’s important to note that these formatting headaches exist even with content that RSS feeds were designed to deliver: traditional blog posts. For content that wasn’t designed for RSS feeds, such as event content, the challenge can be exponentially greater.

All of this is to say if you haven’t done so in a while, set aside some time to check your RSS sourced campaigns in as many email apps as possible. Sure, there are some great emulators out there but given how problematic email clients are, there’s no real substitute for the real thing.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go wrestle some unruly blockquote styling inside of MailChimp.