Marketing Profs

The idea of permission marketing - obtaining permission from a prospect or customer before sending them a marketing message - is a simple one which holds the promise of more effective (email) marketing in a wired world.

Problems arise, though, when you get into the interpretation of what permission means.

One approach sees it as an administrative inconvenience; something required simply to avoid the problems associated with *not* gaining permission.

The idea is to satisfy any legal or contractual obligations. To somehow get a tick in the box that says you can email the prospect or customer something, anything, at some time. Just as long as you can "prove" you're not sending unsolicited mail.

"You know, we should get some of that email marketing action, too. What minimum requirements do we need to fulfill to get on the bandwagon?"

This approach sees permission as something negative; a constraint to business or an entry fee to the email marketing game. This misses the whole point; permission, properly gained and used, benefits the marketer.

Anyone taking this negative approach will inevitably end up sending emails to people who don't really expect or want them. That way lies marketing perdition; negative word of mouth, spam complaints, blacklisting and more.

A second approach sees permission as a valuable but flexible concept. This is the type of permission marketing often practiced by companies with strong brands or reputations, and deep pockets. In the initial engagement with the customer or prospect, they seek and get genuine and clear permission to send specific marketing messages.

Then they fall victim to the temptation to extend and redefine the permission granted; "You signed up to a newsletter about X. Well, if you like X, you'll probably be interested in Y, too. So we signed you up to our newsletter about Y."

The marketer often justifies this arbitrary extension of permission by claiming that it's acceptable in the context of the relationship they've built with the customer or prospect. Or that it's somehow in the customer's best interests.