Permission Marketing And Why It Applies To Just About Everything Today

Have you ever signed up to receive special offers or emails from a brand you like? Say you open your email to see a new promotion from Starbucks. Maybe for your birthday, you're offered a free drink or a coupon for 15% off.

In his book, Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends into Customers, Seth Godin, famous marketer, author, and former dot com business executive explains that consumers should have the power to choose how they’re marketed to. When consumers agree to receive marketing emails, for example, marketers are better able to understand and cater to their interests.

Unfortunately, permission marketing is a lost art. And it’s the pushy brands that are suffering the most.

Respect earns customer loyalty.

The concept recognizes the new power of the best consumers to ignore marketing. It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to get them to pay attention.

Pay attention is a key phrase here because permission marketers understand that when someone chooses to pay attention they are actually paying you with something precious. And there’s no way they can get their attention back if they change their mind. Attention becomes an important asset, something to be valued, not wasted. When wasted, customer loyalty plummets.

In today’s digital era, consumers are bombarded with more media, advertisements, purchasing options, and convenience than ever. This means that their time becomes more valuable, and obtrusive marketing becomes more costly.

Permission is like dating. You don’t start by asking for the sale at a first impression.

Take in the following excerpt from Seth’s article.

I got a note from a Daily Candy reader the other day. He was upset because, for three days in a row, his Daily Candy newsletter hadn’t come. That’s permission.

Permission is like dating. You don’t start by asking for the sale at a first impression. You earn the right, over time, bit by bit.

One of the key drivers of permission marketing, in addition to the scarcity of attention, is the extraordinarily low cost of dripping to people who want to hear from you. RSS and email and other techniques mean you don’t have to worry about stamps or network ad buys every time you have something to say. Home delivery is the milkman’s revenge… it’s the essence of permission.

Permission doesn’t have to be formal, but it has to be obvious.

My friend has permission to call me and ask for a ride, but a street vendor has no such permission to demand eye contact as they shove a brochure in my face. Consider the following scenarios.

Scenario 1 (wrong): “Happy Friday Bob. Cheers to the weekend! Following up on my last email. Is it safe to assume you don’t have a need to drive more business? Please advise.” As if Bob should advise the salesman that the reason he’s not answering isn’t that he’s not interested in his 4th unanswered email, it’s because he doesn’t want to drive business. Yeah that’s it.

Scenario 2 (wrong): Just today, I’m on the phone with an account manager for a free “consultation” (or sales pitch). As I’m on the call, I get an automated sales pitch from the same account manager, (as if my agreeing to hear his sales pitch for this specific meeting opted me in for his every sales pitch ever going forward).

Scenario 3 (right): When Seth launched his book that coined this phrase in 1999, he offered people a third of the book for free in exchange for an email address. After many copies were given away for free, the book became an international bestseller. Putting his own idea into practice, the rest was history.

“And I never, ever did anything with those addresses again. That wasn’t part of the deal. No follow ups, no new products. A deal’s a deal. If it sounds like you need humility and patience to do permission marketing, you’re right. That’s why so few companies do it properly. The best shortcut, in this case, is no shortcut at all.” – Seth Godin.