The From Line

 “Permission marketing” is one of the most important terms marketers encounter. However, despite its importance, many marketers struggle with its implementation. Marketers should not be discouraged though, success is possible. Still, it is not an element that should be overlooked; in fact, every marketer should aim to master it.

This marketing effort is unique because it understands and respects your customer's ability and right to ignore you and your correspondence. It is built on the knowledge that the best way to earn customer loyalty is to earn customer respect. You want your customers to always value your contact and in turn see that value build as your relationship grows

Permission Marketing means being completely upfront with a customer about what you want from them and what they can expect from you in return. An example of this marketing is the social media site that lets you establish an online presence on their platform in exchange for the ability to push relevant advertisements. LinkedIn has done a great job so far of mastering this balance. The key to maintaining a successful relationship is to only do exactly as promised and resist the urge to change the rules. Changing things behind your customers back in order to obtain more of their attention will only strain the relationship. Do not initially promise monthly contact, and then suddenly switch to daily correspondence. Managing this permission base will demand patience and study. You will decide how you interact with different types of customers based upon what they want to hear.

Consumers now demand a greater sense of control over their relationship with a brand. Email marketers specifically have had great success creating this relationship via explicit and documented permission-based marketing. A recent eMarketer article noted that as a result of permission,“consumers are more open to email messaging than most other digital marketing.” In fact, it is the trust and ease of control that comes with this approach that has made consumers more open to further communication.

The permission-based marketing trend has proven effective and fruitful in the email community and will soon make its way into the structure of all other digital marketing. Marketers, having seen emails’ success, will tackle this change by providing their customers with detailed, open and explicit permission programs.

Takeaway: Prepare for a permission-based culture.

There is no question that permission in email marketing is essential. However, ALL digital marketers must be aware that permission-based advertising will eventually affect their brand. There has been a shift in technology that now gives the consumer greater power to demand permission from brands. Now is the time to prepare your strategy for this shift.

Google places optin form directly in search ad, eliminating the need to visit advertisers’ site.
From an email marketing perspective, list growth has and always will be a top goal. We have covered numerous list growth tactics here in Trends and Takeaways, the good and the bad. Even still, it’s always exciting when something cutting edge like this surfaces. Not only is this concept extremely efficient, combining an advertisers preexisting Google ad with an optin form, it also simplifies the process for the subscriber. Users no longer have to worry about leaving their current page and visiting an advertiser’s landing page. As long as they’re logged into Gmail, the form will auto populate their basic information and with just one click, they’re signed up. It looks like quality and efficient list building practices are finally coming into the mainstream and it’s promising to see a big name like Google facilitating it.

Takeaway: It’s still early, but keep an eye out for this game changer.
Normally we stick to proven and executable trends here, but we just couldn’t help ourselves with this one. Obviously it is in its testing phases and there is little hard data to analyze, but judging by the big names who have jumped in to test, I think this format is here to stay. This trend, when and if it takes off, will inevitably change the way we look at search marketing. Where cost per click, cost per impression etc left marketers confused when calculating their ROI in the past, cost per acquisition will be the tangible game changer. Marketers will be able to quantify their results and see exactly what it costs to build their lists.

Despite enormous efforts on the part of marketers, email deliverability rates have halted after the first half of 2011, coming in at 81%, according to a study released on September 20th by Return Path. 

Although reasons for this are numerous and often situational, a certain amount of blame in this case can be placed on “priority inbox”. This lovely little tool, created last year by Google, essentially puts a brain within your email account. It sees and records every action and configures message placement accordingly. So what we’re seeing are high reported delivery rates that don’t necessarily reflect the number of messages actually delivered. Technically the provider may have accepted it, but it doesn’t mean it’s landed in the customers’ inbox.