What is permission marketing?

It is getting an existing customer or a stranger to give you permission to market to them, to communicate to them, to work to turn them into loyal customers. By gaining permission, you are then able to get through all the clutter (interruption marketing) that all of us are subjected to on a daily basis, most of which we completely ignore.
When you gain permission you gain an attentive, anticipatory person. To keep the permission, you must send personal, relevant information each and every time. By doing this, over time even more trust is built with your customers.

• In the next installment of Monster Bytes
  

Why email is perfect for Permission Marketing

Fix the crazy stuff

I called my cable company earlier today to report some problems with my internet connectivity and the message that played initially asked me to enter my phone #. I did and when I finally got a live person on the line, guess what?

Yep. The first question I was asked was - What is your telephone # ?

Are you kidding me! Always ask your customers what your company is doing that makes no sense. And if a customer offers to tell you without being asked, have the sense to listen to them and make any necessary changes

Should my business collect email addresses?

This is a question many small business owners ask themselves. The answer is a resounding YES! If you have not started collecting email addresses of your customers, you need to start…..TODAY. Not tomorrow or next week…TODAY!

Why? You ask.

When a customer buys from you they have just shown a willingness to transact business with your company. They like your product offering, they like your prices, they like YOU. The time of the sale is a perfect time to capture their email address.

I would suggest offering a discount for giving you their email address or an additional free product that has perceived value to the customer, but doesn’t really cost you anything in hard dollars…maybe a report explaining the health benefits of using your product or a booklet of recipes that can be made using the product they purchased from you.

An important facet of collecting their email address is to get permission (Permission Marketing) to send them future promotional emails, newsletters, communications, etc. You need to be specific and tell them what kind of information they can expect from your company and the frequency with which they will get emails from you.

Find a service that you can use to manage your email lists and allow you to easily design marketing campaigns or newsletters. You also need a way to measure who opens your emails, what links they may have clicked that you set up. By measuring, you gain important knowledge about your customers needs, wants and desires.

With this knowledge, you can continually segment your database and send out totally relevant email campaigns and keep increasing your opening % rates, ultimately growing your business.

Which is what we all want, right?