Ever signed up to your favourite brand’s emailing list to receive some updates and offers? There’s a high chance that you have, and a high likelihood that you’ve received new promotions countless times. Perhaps you’ve given your email and have received a promotion from a coffee shop for 30% off? This offer shows you permission-based marketing in action. If you’re new to the concept, get acquainted because it’s a form of marketing that is becoming ever increasingly popular for businesses. But what exactly is it, and how can it be utilized? Let’s find out more.
Definitions and ideas
So what is permission marketing? Broadly speaking, permission marketing is a form of advertising to an intended audience, where they are given the choice of opting in to receive promotional offers, discounts, and messages. It utilizes the audience’s permission to receive marketing materials from a business. There is little ambiguity for the business whether you are the target audience or not, given that you have opted in to receive announcements and offers.
Marketing expert Seth Godin originally came up with the term, which is generally categorized into two schools: implied permission marketing and express permission marketing. Godin expresses in their latest book, “Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends into Customers”, that a consumer ought to have the power to make choices about how they’d like to be marketed to. When a consumer has agreed that they would like to receive marketing emails, marketers can more easily understand this member of the audience. Because of this enriched understanding, they can better cater to their needs and desires.
Source: Amazon
As an example, if you’ve ever signed up for the Starbucks Rewards program, it’s not going to be because you despise their drinks! You’ve likely signed up because you enjoy their products and think it would be advantageous to earn points to get reductions on future purchases.
In such a scenario, you may have even entered your email address so that the company can access analytic reports. People often also check a box to give permission to be sent relevant offers and discounts. Whatever the case may be, such instances involve consumers providing their details to get deals or reductions in the purchase of future goods and services.
Types and content
“The process of getting new customers needs to be re-engineered to go through a five-step cycle” – Seth Godin.
Source: medium.com
So what is the optimal type of content to send? The following are great examples:
- Promotional content – sending subscribers notifications when there are any promotional events that they’d likely be interested in
- Membership perks – send your subscribers member-only deals and offers to keep them invested.
- Newsletters – Keep your customers informed about the latest changes or updates to your product via a newsletter.
Broadly speaking, two schools of permission-based marketing exist. Express permission marketing is where a consumer has provided their email to receive marketing materials, messages and offers. Implied permission marketing is where the business is already engaged in a relationship with someone.
The fact of the matter is, whichever one of these types of marketing are used, both give everything over to the customer. It is the customer who controls when their marketing relationship both begins and ends. The most advantageous thing to businesses is that they can use this marketing to offer things that the audience is really interested in.
Permission-based email marketing takes a lot of different forms, and there are some general rules of thumb:
- State the fact that the information will be held privately
- Provide ways to unsubscribe that are easy to locate
- Tailor content that provides an incentive for the subscriber to come back for more
- Add flair and personality, engaging in a laid-back manner
- And graphics and be succinct in your approach
- Include calls to action that are visible and easy to follow
Non-permission based marketing
This is simply the opposite, i.e. marketing based on sending the same materials but without the audience’s consent. It is when people haven’t expressed permission or handed over anything in return for content.
While this form of marketing certainly works and makes up the majority of marketing efforts, if one can gain permission then they can build value, brand loyalty, and trust. It’s more likely that customers can get frustrated when they haven’t consented to their permission rather than when they have. But are there any cons to permission-based marketing?
The benefits of permission marketing
It’s not difficult to understand that the person is going to be more willing to participate if they have given their permission to do so, but what exactly are the advantages? Perhaps the biggest incentive for a company to engage in such marketing is to maintain good relationships with clients, boost their league numbers as well as their reputation.
When a company can invest time into what its customers want to see, they will become more loyal. The business can also gain a more positive reputation when it is known to deliver high-quality email content that consumers find interesting.
Furthermore, it’s a great way of generating new leads. When someone has subscribed to your content, they want to learn more about your offers and services. Not only does it generate more leads than other traditional forms of marketing, but permission marketing has much higher rates of engagement. All marketers know that engaged customers are easy to turn into paying customers, and because engagement levels are so high, conversions are much higher too.
Because permission marketing is only targeted at an audience that is actively interested in receiving promotional materials and content, this means that it’s more likely that you can build long-term relationships with your customers. It’s a form of marketing that gives you many more repeat customers than other means of marketing.
Last but not least, this form of marketing is actually exceptionally low cost. Because it’s all about targeting those who have received and enjoyed your promotional material, you can use a lot of cheap online tools to disseminate content. No sunk costs of paid advertising are needed, just some content ideas and automation tools to get it sent out.
What could go wrong
There are some caveats to this line of marketing, so it’s important not to get things wrong from the get-go. One of the largest is that because automation is so common in promotional emailing, businesses need to be wary of sending too many such emails. After all, just because the consumer has expressed some interest, doesn’t mean they wish to be bombarded with information day and night. Companies that send out excessive information about every new sale, deal, or feature can likely overload somebody’s inbox and either irritate them or cause them to lose interest. People don’t want to feel like their personal space has been invaded.
The same can also be said of not sending enough emails. In this tech-savvy world of ours, people are more likely to forget that your business exists after discovering you and signing up. There’s a fine balance to find around content publishing and email targeting. Cadence is key. Most importantly, even though a consumer has at some point consented, they may forget or feel confused if the cadence and tone are off. Make sure that the consumer doesn’t question how you got their information when they see your various promotional messages.
Similarly, if customers are sent content that’s unrelated to what they’ve opted in for, this could lead them away. It’s best not to go overboard and bombard your audience just because they’ve expressed interest. If a customer has signed up for a monthly newsletter on Instagram marketing, then they’re not going to be interested in sales product offer announcements every week!
Here are a number of things to keep in mind:
- Create an obvious call to action in every piece of content that you disseminate to your audience.
- Create clear ways for your audience to sign up and manage their subscriptions.
- When automating your emails, try and add in as much of a personal touch as you can. Can you insert people’s names? How about something about their latest purchase? Use whatever data you have available to make emails appear less automated than they are. The less it looks like a robot made it, the better.
- Pay attention to cadence – don’t aggravate your audience by bombarding them with emails.
Conclusion
Permission marketing is essential for businesses that want to get new leads and retain their current clientele. With a little customization and automation, you can personalize information and make it engaging for your audience. We hope that you’ve got a lot out of our guide – now that you have an understanding of what it takes and have seen some great permission marketing examples, it’s time to get out there and grow your business!
