Wednesday, 25 March 2009

Your Permission Marketing just got Harder to Execute, a lot Harder!

For the last decade you’ve probably heard about how the best way to market was via the concept of permission marketing developed by Seth Godin. “Marketing centred around obtaining customer consent to receive information from a company.”

The important thing is that it’s not you who defines what is and isn’t permission; it’s your customer or client. And half of them don’t think that you have that much. The slide shows that at least 20% don’t believe that they have given you any permission to speak or even market to them. Which means you are shouting at them like some tacky 2nd hand mortgage sales man.

You spammer -- You’re just as low as a banker!
OK, maybe not that low.


But if you believe that permission is a good idea to have in marketing then you need to think about asking for it more and more often. Do you? Because clients don’t think that you do.

Keep asking for permission.

2 comments:

David Winch said...

But why wouldn't you continually re-affirm you have their permission?

Every other e-mail I send to the list I've built myself, almost entirely from people I've actually met and who have given me their address and permission to keep in touch, has a reminder of how we first met and a very obvious unsubscribe button.

I lose a few each mailing but not nearly so many as I'm adding each time as I meet more and more interesting people.

David Winch

Anonymous said...

Yesterday I received a e-newsletter from a lady I had only briefly met at a networking meeting. She had asked for my card which I handed over because I thought she was interested in my services. Turns out she used that information to add me to her mailing list without my permission.

'Business card dumping' is extremely bad practice, yet SMEs consider it the norm. I'm afraid I unsubscribed in a fit of pique, and I won't be recommending her services until she learns some better marketing manners.