The man Business Week calls the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age
explains Permission Marketing -- the groundbreaking concept that enables
marketers to shape their message so that consumers will willingly accept it.
Whether it is the TV commercial that breaks into our favorite program, or the
telemarketing phone call that disrupts a family dinner, traditional advertising
is based on the hope of snatching our attention away from whatever we are
doing. Seth Godin calls this Interruption Marketing, and, as companies are
discovering, it no longer works.
Instead of annoying potential customers by interrupting their most coveted
commodity -- time -- Permission Marketing offers consumers incentives to accept
advertising voluntarily. Now this Internet pioneer introduces a fundamentally
different way of thinking about advertising products and services. By reaching
out only to those individuals who have signaled an interest in learning more
about a product, Permission Marketing enables companies to develop long-term
relationships with customers, create trust, build brand awareness -- and
greatly improve the chances of making a sale.
In his groundbreaking book, Godin describes the four tests of Permission
Marketing:
1. Does every single marketing effort you create encourage a learning
relationship with your customers? Does it invite customers to raise their
hands and start communicating?
2. Do you have a permission database? Do you track the number of people who
have given you permission to communicate with them?
3. If consumers gave you permission to talk to them, would you have anything to
say? Have you developed a marketing curriculum to teach people about
yourproducts?
4. Once people become customers, do you work to deepen your permission to
communicate with those people?
And in numerous informative case studies, including American Airlines´
frequent-flier program, Amazon.com, and Yahoo!, Godin demonstrates how
marketers are a
