Permission Marketing: Strangers into Friends into Customers [Paperback]

Commentary:
Permission marketing has been around for years in record clubs, airlines and even doctor's surgeries & the church! However, it is now easier to take advantage of the permission techniques Godin highlights in his book, since the use of technology cuts out a lot of costs previously associated with such an approach.
Permission Marketing is best explained by the following example. A company sends a mailer highlighting the products and services it offers. This mailer is designed not to directly sell the product or service but instead invites the customer to call or email to request more company information. Once the customer has made contact, the 'dating' process can start. The brochure that is sent out in response to the request not only informs the customer of products and services but within the process, is designed to get permission to follow up and arrange a meeting. The meeting will give the chance to learn more about the customer's needs (and budgets!). This meeting can then leverage permission for many other contact opportunities and finally not only make a sale but also build a stronger relationship.
Although Seth Godin focuses mainly on marketing to consumers, this shouldn't put you off as the theories can be translated to a B2B environment and there are a few examples of how permission techniques work in business to business marketing. Not only does he provide case studies of companies including American Airlines, AT&T, Levis, McDonald's, AOL and Columbia Record Club, but also a FAQ section and an area entitled "Questions to ask yourself when evaluating any marketing program."

Reviewer Views:
If you read this book -and I suggest that you do- you might have the feeling that all the key messages Godin delivers could be written in a '20 page pocket guide to Permission Marketing'. This is arguably true, although you might be in danger of forgetting a crucial element highlighted throughout the book. Permission Marketing is a process- not a moment. It is a relationship that takes time to build - the customer is in control and one wrong move can end the relationship forever. This is definitely a book worth reading and not just once - you should keep it very close by when planning any marketing campaign. He steers well clear of the marketing jargon and makes it very easy to read.

But Permission Marketing is a belter. Seth Godin explores the creative interaction of three motive forces with modern marketing : diminishing returns from conventional advertising; the rise of sophisticated, seen-it-all-before consumers; the revolutionary impact of the Internet as a marketing device. "If you believe that the Internet changes everything", he says, "you will readily appreciate this book". We do and we did. The emphasis that the creative interaction of technological and social change provides a genuinely new possibility of dialogue with customers just has to be right. At the coal-face of modern marketing, large corporations are still spending zillions chasing sales from inherently promiscuous consumers through ever more expensive applications of the old-fashioned marketing mix. Not for nothing are individual advertisements sometimes called "executions". But the changes reviewd by Seth Godin allow for a much deeper basis of loyalty between the cash-rich consumer and the companies that spend time analysing and anticipating real needs. This is the basis for "permission marketing".

Here in the UK, we worry a lot about companies having too much information about us, especially credit card details. But as Seth Godin shows, if companies stock and handle this information successfully they can earn the crucial right to intervene in our lives to save us time and money. It has to be right to assume that, in due course, consumers will realise this and reward the most assiduously professional "permission marketers". Seth Godin is an early philosopher of this process. And anyone who can so dazzingly sustain the potentially seismic claim that "the overwhelming clutter in the marketplace has made traditional advertising almost worthless for most marketers" gets our vote.