SimpleFeed Inc., a maker of marketing RSS feed technology, on Monday released an update with simplified personalization, new statistics reports, a new Web-based management tool and more.
SimpleFeed is used in marketing departments as a means of communicating with customers about recent news, events, research updates, customer forums, support updates, blogs, sales promotions and the like.
One such customer is Bookspan, a partnership of Bertelsmann A.G. and Time Warner Inc. Bookspan is the parent company for more than 40 book clubs and sells books directly to members through the mail and online.
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Bookspan uses SimpleFeed to build online communities of common interest with Weblogs and RSS feeds. Customers can also subscribe to special offers via the RSS feed.
"By adding blogs and the RSS functionality from SimpleFeed, we have found another way to give customers more convenience and personalization, without burdening employees with the need to learn complex technology," Christian Busch, business development manager at Bookspan, said in a release.
SimpleFeed 2.0 now lets users subscribe to content categories using simple checkboxes—a simpler way to personalize the service than having a set of complex menus and XML code to wade through.
The update also comes with more than 48 customizable reports for insight into RSS statistics such as number of subscribers or content views, click-throughs and trends.
A new Web-based tool accessible from any browser allows feeds to be created and managed online. In addition, new privilege settings give organizations granular control of users and workflow, allowing them to more easily comply with corporate communication policies.
SimpleFeed 2.0 also comes with new branded templates that allow corporate fonts, colors, logos and images to be included in feeds.
This allows for cross-promotion of products and news, or for embedding of advertisements and graphics. The templates also maintain consistent presentation regardless of which RSS readers or browsers customers use.
SimpleFeed, based in Palo Alto, Calif., also offers consulting services.
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