Permission Marketing

5 Steps to Dating Your Customer 

Offer the prospect an incentive to volunteer 

Using the attention offered by the prospect, offer a curriculum over time, teaching the consumer about your product or service

Reinforce the incentive to guarantee that the prospect maintains the permission 

Offer additional incentives to get even more permission from the consumer 

Over time, leverage the permission to change consumer behaviour toward profits 

Permission Marketing Example: Summer Camp 

Uses 2 inch square black and white advertisement. The only goal of the ad and the trade show is to get permission to send a video and a brochure. The ad sells the brochure, not the camp. The brochure is very well done, and the video is also the best in the market. 

The only goal of the video is to sell a personal meeting, it doesn’t sell the camp. 

Now, fully qualified, having seen the testimonials, the photographs, the facilities, the happy campers, the family is ready to be sold on the camp. And that’s done in person. And because of repeat visits and more family members, the sale is worth nearly $20,000. 

At each step, the only goal is to expand permission. She interrupts to get permission to send a video using a small print ad, she uses the video to get permission to visit, she uses the visit to get permission to sell one summer, and she uses the summer to sell 6 more. 

The 7 Levels of Permission 

Intravenous 

Purchase on Approval 

Points 

Personal Relationships 

Brand Trust 

Situation 

SPAM 

1. Intravenous 

Your Doctor has permission to put whatever he thinks is best in your IV bag 

A marketer is making buying decisions on behalf of the customer 

Eg: The Book of the Month Club. Their clever marketing and excellent taste earned them the right to chose, print, ship, and bill books to a public that was eager to read their selections. 

Eg: Magazine subscriptions. You pay for the issue before you read it. Why would anyone do this? Why give up so much control and allow someone else to profit from this level of trust? Reason 1: To save time – this is becoming ever more important. Reason 2: To save money. It may cost 3 times the price on the shelf. Reason 3: So they don’t have to make a choice. Fourth Reason: To avoid stock outs. The milkman and water cooler man makes sure we don’t run out. 

How can you extend the idea of automatic replenishment into your business? 

2. Purchase on Approval 

If you don’t want this month’s item, you can just send it back. Eg CD of the month club. 

3. Points 

Eg Rewards Cards, Airpoints, Frequent Flyer Miles, Coffee Cards, FlyBuys 

It’s another excuse to keep the conversation going 

Much more efficient than having sales and slashing profit (with no long-term benefit), just give away more points 

Use sweepstakes 

Build a steep reward curve to ensure loyalty (eg no points to those who fly once very few months, but push the envelope a little further and the rewards kick in) 

But what does setting up such a programme cost you? Do the points you give out cost you cash? (Eg the airlines would be in serious trouble if everyone cashed in their Airpoints) 

No one enters a promotion thinking he’s going to lose 

No one quits a promotion when she’s tied for first place 

The fear of losing because you don’t have enough points outweighs the cost of attention that comes from performing in the way the marketer asks 

If the interactions are fun and good for the ego, it’s likely the consumer will continue to participate 

4. Personal Relationship 

Doesn’t scale 

Completely dependent on individuals (eg Dentists don’t get much money for their client list because the clients might not like the new dentist) 

An extremely effective way to temporarily refocus his attention or modify his behaviour 

Slow and difficult to make deeper (years of golf, excellent products and focused selling to make more profitable) 

It is powerful if you can define your target market. Eg Can you list all your customers in a specific geographic area? 

5. Brand Trust 

The mantra of Interruption Marketers 

Extraordinarily expensive to create, takes a very long time to develop, is hard to measure, and harder still to manipulate 

Brand trust leads to brand extensions 

Don’t be tempted to burn brand trust in exchange for short term profits. Eg AOL interrupted and annoyed users with pop up ads. 

6. Situation 

“May I help you” in the store, calls to an 0800 number 

“Do you want fries with that?” are the most profitable situational permission marketing words in history. With 100,000 employees repeating that mantra to millions of customers every day, McDonald’s has generated billions of dollars in incremental sales using situational permission. 

How can you use this level of permission to upsell to the next level? Eg Dentists sell a health maintenance plan 

7. SPAM 

Most marketing is SPAM. TV is SPAM. 

Marketing messages are going to continue to get cheaper as the number of media channels increases. With an infinite number of websites and TV channels, there will be an infinite number of interruptive ads. And the Permission Marketers will win. 

Are you messages anticipated, personal and relevant? 

10 Questions to ask when evaluating a Permission Marketing Programme 

What’s the bait? 

Easy to describe, coveted by a large portion of your target market, economic to deliver, tangible enough so that the consumer will give up precious attention and privacy to participate, overlaps with your message 

What does incremental permission cost? 

How deep is the permission that is granted? 

One catalogue? Then deliver only that. Be overt about what the customer can expect so there are no misunderstandings and no cancelled permissions 

How much does incremental frequency cost? 

What’s the active response rate to communications? 

How many people write back? How many take action? How can you use a feedback loop to increase personalisation and relevance of the messages over time?

What are the issues regarding compression? 

Do you have a feedback loop and technology in place to increase the bait as its effectiveness begins to tail off? 

Is the company treating the permission as an asset? 

How is the permission being leveraged? 

When you have permission to talk with relevance and personalisation to a large number of people, you can piggyback new messages to the group and dramatically increase profits. Eg American Airlines does this with hotels 

How is the permission level being increased? 

What is the expected lifetime of one permission?