Email Marketing

By Seth Godin

Email is the marketing tool most have been dreaming of. Want to go truly one to one, want to go for free? Email makes it fast and easy. From the earliest response tests, it became clear that email gets impressively higher response rates than virtually any other media including traditional stalwarts like direct mail. Imagine a 7-10% rate.

It’s really the only true one-to-one as well. If you have been waiting to go digital, now is the perfect time. Seth Godin spotlighted the power of digital communication in his landmark book, “Permission Marketing.” Certainly Permission Marketing seems like the right thing to do but where to begin. Try these ten steps to get started with permission.

1. Determine what an “A” level customer is ultimately worth. Figure out the lifetime value of an average new customer. Without this data, it will be extremely difficult to compute what’s worth to acquire a new permission or how much you should be spending to keep it.
2. Conceive and write a series of communication suites (action plans) that you will use to turn strangers into friends. This an e a series of emails, a series of letters, a number of scripts to use in phone conversations, a series of Web pages, or a delicate mix of all. Essential to each suite are four elements.
   • They must take place over time
   • They must offer the reader a selfish reason to respond
   • The responses should alter the communications moving forward (change the message as you learn more about the reader)
   • They should have a final call to action so you can measure the results.
3. Change all of your advertising to include a call to action. Make them an offer. Never run an ad of any kind that doesn’t give consumers a chance to respond. Once they respond, initiate one of the communication suites (drip marketing).
4. Measure the results of each suite. Throw out the bottom 60% and replace them with new suites. Continue testing different approaches forever.
5. Measure how many permissions you achieve. Measure how much permission changes buying behavior. Reward all parties on the permission team for exceeding metrics.
6. Assign one person to guard the permission base. Have that person focus on increasing the level of permission gained from each individual and reward him/her for resisting short-term profiteering.
7. Work to decrease your cost of frequency by automating response and moving to email and the Internet.
8. Rebuild your Web site to turn it from brochure-ware to a focused permission-acquisition medium.
9. Regularly audit your permission base to determine how deep your permission really is.
10. Leverage your permission with extreme care by offering additional products or services, or by co-marketing with partners.

Excerpted and edited from Permission Marketing by Seth Godin, (c) 1999 Simon & Schuster.