Retailers and other online marketers are among the companies experimenting with RSS to supplement to email, according to a report from Jupiter Research, "Feed Marketing: Use of RSS as an Alternative Messaging Medium," writes Internet Retailer. Some 11 percent of email marketers surveyed said they publish email marketing content in RSS feeds, and 25 percent said they planned to do so within a year.

Some 30 percent mentioned "responding to customers' requests" as the reason for initiating an RSS feed; 25 percent cited "increasing the subscriber base"; and 10 percent cited "competitive pressure."

Overall, RSS is being seen as a way to augment email marketing, which must contend with spam and security issues, such as phishing.