Permission Marketing
Building a trusting relationship with your Web site visitors starts
with the common sense approach known as "permission marketing."
The idea behind permission marketing is to get the customer or prospect
to volunteer to receive your email newsletters and special offers.
This is also known as opt-in. These "hand-raisers" are a lot more
likely to not only tolerate receiving your emails, but also to respond
favorably to them.
On the other side of the coin is opt-out, where the recipient doesn't
have the opportunity to avoid receiving your first email, only to
avoid receiving subsequent emails from you. Respect your recipients'
boundaries and stick with opt-in, not opt-out.
Avoid the use of purchased lists. Many of the lists available for
purchase have actually been "harvested" from web pages, newsgroup
discussion posts, or domain contact information (from the "whois"
database) - without the knowledge or permission of the affected
individuals. On the other hand, rented lists from reputable list
brokers may be worthwhile, if the list is double opt-in, fastidiously
clean of unsubscribes, and finely segmented.
You can improve the odds that a user will join your list by providing
numerous opt-in opportunities all with low barriers to entry. Make
sure the amount of work required to sign-up is minimal. Many sites
in fact only require the email address and all other personal information
is optional. Place the email list sign-up on all forms on your site,
including inquiry, order, and feedback forms.
On these forms, you may be tempted to have the "would you like
to receive occasional special offers/newsletter via email" checkbox
already checked. Checking the box by default is considered by some
to be deceptive. I believe it is within ethical limits, since it
still presents the prospect with the choice before they ever receive
an email from you. Just make absolutely sure that this question
and the checkbox are placed conspicuously on the form.
Build trust with these hand-raisers by posting a privacy policy
in an obvious place. Of course this means that you will have to
abide by it, with no exceptions! The privacy policy should address
what you'll be doing with the user's information, both now and potentially
in the future. Don't think for a minute that you can revoke or weaken
a privacy policy once you've already published it on your site,
or you may end up on the wrong side of a lawsuit!
Once the hand-raisers have received your email, you'll want to
ensure that they don't misconstrue your message as "spam" - also
known as UCE or Unsolicited Commercial Email - and thus awaken the
wrath of Internet vigilantes. In most respects, spam is - by its
very nature - bogus. Typical spam has a bogus sender address, bogus
unsubscribe instructions, and bogus offers.
Distance yourself from spammers by:
- having the email signed by a real person with real contact information
- making sure the Reply works
- reminding the recipients that they've given you permission to
contact them, and
- providing an easy and legitimate way to unsubscribe.
This is not something to get wrong. Internet users can be downright
fanatical about hunting down and punishing people who send them
spam. If you are unfortunate enough to be labeled a spammer by these
folks, they will come after you with unrelenting fervor, as if they
have a personal vendetta against you. You could expect to receive
"flames," i.e. hate email. You may be submitted to various online
blacklists of Internet advertisers. You may even have your Internet
privileges revoked by your ISP.
To learn more about permission marketing, you can turn to the excellent
primer Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends,
and Friends into Customers by Seth Godin.
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