Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers
14th March 2006 by Sean
| Author: Seth Godin |   |
In Permission Marketing, Seth Godin teaches his well-known idea of getting people to “raise their hands”. The problem with mass advertising, according to Godin, is that it vies for people’s attention by interrupting them rather than asking for permission and then buliding relationships based on that permission. Marketers can learn to be more effective by learning to build over time a meaningful and beneficial relationship between both a company and it’s customers/prospects.
What this book is really known for is email-marketing techniques. This seems to be the main reason this book is recommended. I’ve included a few excerpts from Fast Company’s interview with Seth Godin, in the review snippets. There is also a link to the full interview. It’s very insightful and worth reading the whole thing.
What Paul Allen (The Lesser, in his own words) says.
Unless you’ve read this book, I don’t think you will understand how to do email marketing right. Read this book. Develop a relationship with your prospects and customers. Deepen that relationship over time. Never abuse it. Never spam. Get the permission of your customers before you do anything and then gain more permission over time as you meet their needs and gain their trust. This is a common sense book but it took a luminary like Seth Godin to make it gospel.
Fast Company’s interview with Seth Godin.
Interruption marketing is giving way to a new model that I call permission marketing. The challenge for companies is to persuade consumers to raise their hands - to volunteer their attention. You tell consumers a little something about your company and its products, they tell you a little something about themselves, you tell them a little more, they tell you a little more - and over time, you create a mutually beneficial learning relationship. Permission marketing is marketing without interruptions.
The Net is not television. It is the finest direct-marketing mechanism in the history of mankind. It is direct mail with free stamps, and it allows you to create richer and deeper relationships than you’ve ever been able to create before. The real killer app for marketers isn’t the Web - it’s email.
Permission marketing also changes how companies evaluate their marketing campaigns. In this model, you don’t care about cheap impressions. You care about deep relationships. Forget Nielsen ratings, clicks, hits, page views - that’s all rubbish. How many consumers have given you permission to talk to them? How far does that permission go? Does every marketing piece you create invite consumers to “raise their hands,” to volunteer to hear more?