Permission Marketing – What’s It All About?

Permission Marketing is an age old marketing term that simply means you need to ask for permission to market something to a consumer unlike advertising that jarringly gives out a message whether people want the message or not. The term became popular recently thanks to a book titled Permission Marketing by Seth Godin and is now a buzzword in the online marketing sphere.

Forbes magazine paid tribute to Seth this year to mark the 15^th anniversary of the release of his book earlier this year, remembering his revolutionary and simple thought process that changed the way consumers look at brands today.

As a marketing principle Permission Marketing states that you need explicit permission from the prospective or existing customer before sending any promotional material or information about your brand. This approach has now become an essential part of online messaging, email and SMS marketing making email list cleaning a must to ensure smooth operations. 

Godin’s book goes on to define Permission Marketing as messaging that is anticipated by your customer as well as being a topic of interest that is relevant to them. He believed that a strong business-consumer relationship could only be possible through empowering your recipient – you only send them stuff they will want to read and know about further enabling the possibility of the communication resulting in an end sale or response. This makes your marketing efforts all the more effective as well, because your target audience is identifying themselves to you and allowing themselves to be recipients. When an inbox is overloaded with spam, permission based marketing on social media and other online platforms become a welcome change to consumers. This is also where email list cleaning can help you.

The concept of Permission Marketing has evolved over the years from merely asking permission via short codes and online subscriptions to really creating demand for your content. As with any relationship, the one you have with your consumer or reader should work on the principle that they look forward to your content and miss it when it’s gone. If they seek you out, then the permission is already granted because they are demanding for your content over you having to ask them for permission to do so.

Consumers today who engage with both traditional and online content are a smarter and more evolved species – they are aware of their power to ignore marketing and tend to exercise this right regularly. This is all the more reason to treat them with the respect they deserve in order to earn their attention. This choice to pay attention is a precious privilege that marketers should be aware of and treat with utmost care if they want to have long-standing relationships with their consumers. It requires marketers to have a more individualized focus to their marketing; if you want people to want you –you have to let them know, personally. This is the essence of Permission Marketing.