RaboDirect sharing financial advice via RSS & Podcasts

Online bank RaboBank, has launched a new RSS & Podcast service for sharing financial advice such as investment tips and money management at RaboDirect.ie. According to SiliconRepublic.com, they are the first Irish bank to provide podcasts to customers. Early signs are that this scheme is proving popular, as it is the #1 business podcast on iTunes Ireland today (30/08/2007)

To start, they have setup a library of Podcasts by financial experts with titles including:

• The Basics of Investing.
• Secrets to becoming a successful investor.
• Factors to consider when choosing investment funds.
• How to learn from the mistakes of others?

The RSS channel has small summary type posts with the post titles linking to press releases and relevant pages of the RaboDirect site. Examples include:

• Product Announcements
• Events (Investment Seminar)
• Web Links (Notifying Customers of Information on RadoDirect Site)

This is a great example of business adopting the power of web 2.0 tools to capture customer attention and promote content on their site. RSS and Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular and this method of marketing will surely grow as more and more people move to Feed Readers for information consumption.

RaboBank said the scheme "empowers customers to maximize their savings and investment opportunities through immediate access to a bank of knowledge from independent financial experts".

Customer facing sites are often powerful on design at the home page, but often lack the content to support this. With RSS, organisations can target customers with topical and timely alerts to new content on their site. Coupled with the links to the product pages they can "pull" customers to the product rather than "push" an advertisement to them.