Shifting to Permission Based Marketing

Posted by Daniel Herndon on Apr 06, 2011 in Blog, Email Marketing, Indianapolis Marketing

Companies that are growing have to continue to market their brand and product to keep the business coming in. Permission marketing is a term that is talked about in reference to social media, email marketing, and many data driven methods. Set Godin Says:

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.

It recognizes the new power of the best consumers to ignore marketing. It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention

I speak more about this under relationship marketing in a later blog.

What do you do when you have a long history of outbound marketing and you want to shift your focus to a permission based model? Well I have an active model to discuss on this one.

We took on a client late last year that had a long history of outbound marketing such as direct mail. They would get leads from direct mail and then sell them, then send out more mail to repeat the process. As much as hip marketers would like to say that this is a tired old way of doing things, it is still a valid method and is producing results. Still, a permission based approach will strengthen your brand and your response.

So what is permission marketing?

When people are marketed to in a movie theater, via radius based direct mail lists, through billboards, etc. they did not necessarily permit the advertisement. Clearly, if I subscribe to your blog, sign up for your mailing or email list, etc. then that level of permission says that I am qualified within your market and interested in hearing your message.

How do you shift to a permission based model?

With our client, instead of slashing successful efforts, we are using the outbound marketing to invite people for a deeper marketing relationship. By partnering with a non profit, we’ve offered a dollar for everyone that will pledge their support through subscribing to the website. YES, We (our client) are donating the dollar for every subscriber. This simple approach is building good will with the community, not being too “on sale now” oriented and is attracting people that will support the brand because of what they stand for.

This is one of 5 ways that we have implemented an “ask” for their permission to connect with them further. The result is response rates far higher and marketing costs far lower. The way to shift to permission based marketing is simple… ASK FOR PERMISSION. The value will be tremendous over time. The greatest way to measure the value of your brand is the size of the permission based marketing database.

###

redwall LIVE is an Indianapolis Marketing Company that creates campaigns, Strategies and Tools for Successful Marketing.