One of the basic business truths is that it's almost always more profitable to retain customers that you have than it is to constantly have to keep bringing in new ones to replace the ones you lose. Another business truth is that if you continue to develop your relationship with your good customers, their profitability goes up as well. Permission marketing is a way to do that in the Digital Age.
Permission marketing is merely the way that you send people marketing messages that they've given you permission to send. In some parts of the world you have to do things that way.
In Denmark, for example, you can't send commercial messages to people soliciting their business unless you've already asked for them. That makes Danish marketing companies experts at what we, in the United States, refer to as permission marketing. Here's what they do and what successful U. S. permission marketers do, as well.
Permission marketing begins when you ask people if they'd like to receive information from you about products that might interest them. At this point you want to be clear about what you will and won't send them if they give you permission. This is also a good time to trot out your privacy policy, and let folks know what it is.
The most successful permission marketing programs, the first contact involves one kind of information or a fairly limited number of kinds of information. Once you've got the permission, you start sending information.
Now, it's important to send things that matter and things that have real value when they hit your customer's e-mail box. Don't just send junk for the sake of filling in time. Send special offers, special information, and more.
When you've been sending people information for awhile, ask them if you can do something else to help them along. Here's an example.
One hotel that I worked with asked guests if they'd like to receive regular "recreation ideas.% The idea was that, throughout the year, folks who had visited their resort would get ideas on fun things that they could do.
On that first signup, the guests could select from a variety of topics like: "things to do with kids under ten;ä "sports;ä "dining out;ä and, "sightseeing.%
The hotel staff would put together short suggestions on each of these things and send them out to folks who had requested them. Each message had one or two good ideas and sometimes links to where folks could get more information or retrieve special offers.
Note what the hotel was getting from the process. In addition to having permission to contact guests (or prospective guests who's visited at the Web site) on a regular basis, they also had some good, solid, behavioral information about what interested those people. They didn't have to do any guessing from demographic descriptions. Instead, the folks had told the hotel what their interests were.
For the guests who signed up, there was an option that read like this. "In about six months, weâll send you some ideas about what you might want to consider in your next stay with us. If you'd rather not receive this reminder, just check here.%
Sure enough, six months later, those who hadn't checked the box would receive a reminder that it was probably time to make their reservation for the next year, along with some information about their fields of interest and how they could enjoy some of them during their stay.
Making It Work
There are a couple of keys to making permission marketing work.
Send people only information they have given you permission to send them.
Make that information valuable -- no fluff, no sales hype, just valuable information that delivers a benefit to them.
Develop a system to increase the quality of the information for the type of information or the frequency of information you send based on information you receive back from them. Have a stepladder of opportunities to build your relationship
Created/Revised/Reviewed: 30 July 2002
This is only one Big Idea. You'll find more in Wally's book, What's the Big Idea? and in his Big Idea column. There's a complete list on the Main Big Idea page. You may also order the book by clicking here.
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