Permission Based Marketing
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The term permission based marketing has been around since the millennium change, and is a term that embodies an unobtrusive philosophy to promoting companies and products. For whatever reason, this kind of advertising is becoming more and more popular for the business world as people are beginning to resent more and more the interruptions that most commercials and messages bring into people's lives. Try getting someone's attention when they are taking a bath can be pretty easy compared to when they are in traffic at the end of the day and fighting the rush hour blues. But most people are fighting the rush hour blues all day. Someone once said we live in the minute and half culture, where if it can't be accomplished during that time, it is seen as basically irrelevant. Why? Because we are too busy to care.
So enter the new kid on the block that has now been around since about 2000. Permission based marketing seeks to get a consumer's attention through an agreement ahead of time to talk or display a message in return for something cool and worthwhile after the message has been read. The prize for watching or listening can't be junk and it can't be based on deceit or the whole thing blows up. Why permission based advertising? Consider that fewer and fewer traditional type ads are even getting less and less attention on the Internet. Banner ads for instance may be actually getting less than .025% of viewer's attention, and only 2% of those convert into actual sales. The only glimmer of hope is that in a very highly concentrated marketing campaign where a slim demographic spectrum is pursued, the percentages might inch up a point or two.
That glimmer of hope can become a ray of hope if a business chooses to use a permission based marketing strategy that will increase dramatically the chances of getting a good response. Those good responses are the result of a permission based marketing firm doing a vast amount of farming long before a client enters the picture. This farming is the conducting of massive email campaigns asking for permission to send the recipients future emails. As in most cases, people will delete what they consider to be spam, but some will show interest. In the course of gathering those that are interested, the promotional agency will provide a check box to agree to such future mailings. This is called an opt-in mailing list and certainly ups the future success for would be clients.
There are shenanigans that go on in the marketing business (surprise!) and one of them is to offer clients what are called opted in mailing lists as opposed to opt-in lists. These are recipient lists that have been put together from newspaper ads, advertisements, and other general data bases. Then the advertising agency begins mass emailing to these addresses and assumes that if they don't hear from them with complaints the recipients have opted in. Sneaky. "Praise ye the Lord. Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in his commandments." (Psalm 112:1) The mark of one who loves God is a love of His Word, the Bible.
In order to gain absolute integrity with clients, some permission based marketing firms have put together double opt-in lists. The first wave of permission cultivating through a checked in box is followed by a follow up email asking, "Are you sure you want to receive emails from us?" That certainly is the most trusted and secure type of permission based marketing possible. Now when that type of list is coupled with income, gender, occupation, residence location, education, hobbies and other discriminatory factors, a person then has very strong chances of breaking the four or five percent barrier in terms of response rate. But nothing can be taken for granted and when choosing a marketing agency to conduct one's campaign, an initial question should be about the response rate of their opt-in mailing lists.
The key to success in permission based advertising is the trust that the recipients begin to have with the one sending the emails. As stated earlier, many firms that are working on the pre-approval philosophy of email promotions are using games and prizes as a way of keeping their recipients happy. For example, short games where people actually have an opportunity to win some cash are being used by many firms. These games, like rub off lottery tickets or online slot machines enable people to make cash. This keeps recipients ready to accept new mailings from the permission based marketing firm for a longer period of time. Of course there are rip offs on the Internet and so the client should ask the firm how winners are identified and how they are announced in order to keep customers from feeling like there really isn't a chance to win.
Choosing an agency to handle one's email campaign is not always easy. The siren song of the Internet websites where these firms reside can be sweet to the ears. Obviously some are better than others, so make sure and research their success rate. Get the lists of clients they have used and ask those clients if they would ever use the firm again. You cannot be certain that the firm offering the lowest cost is the best deal. Their lists may be awful. Do your homework, research further into permission based marketing and go slowly until you have confidence in your provider.
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