Almost everyone by now is familiar with bulk email advertising techniques. Emails from companies are sent to a vast number of potential customers on a schedule (daily, monthly, bi-monthly). These emails encourage the recipient to buy or to find out more about certain products that the company has to offer, potentially increasing sales.

Unfortunately mismanagement by a large number of companies of questionable repute has given email marketing campaigns a very bad name; potential customers are finding bulk email systems to be the electronic equivalent of junk mail, with the caveat that they are much easier to get rid of. The concept of permission email marketing adds a measure of control to what the potential client does or does not receive, which makes him or her much more likely to be receptive to the message.

Permission Email at a Glance

We are all familiar with the idea of email marketing. In the past, merely filling out a questionnaire on a web site where you went to find information could get you daily emails on the very latest that particular company had to offer. This would often be an annoyance to customers, who had already fulfilled their needs when visiting the site. Permission email asks for the customer’s consent to include their address in an email campaign, usually by allowing them to check or uncheck a box requesting regular updates.

The Advantages

You can probably see right off that permission email leaves a customer with a sense of empowerment, having control over what he invites into his inbox. Just asking if the customer would like regular updates is a step ahead of most advertising techniques; it assures the customer that he is in the driver’s seat. This arrangement is actually in marked contrast to most other forms of advertising.

Customers are also likely to be much less annoyed with permission email, as they know they indicated an interest in receiving updates. This sits a lot better in people’s minds than having to re-visit a website to take their names off a list for emailing that they never wanted to be on in the first place.

Permission email allows a business to focus resources on a targeted base of interested customers, allowing a much more efficient strategy. Knowing that your emailing list recipients have expressed interest in receiving your information makes it easier to frame the content to their needs; you already know you’ve eliminated most of the insincere tire-kickers from your audience. Now it’s a simple task to provide interesting updates to attentive readers.

More and more businesses are using permission-based marketing to reach their customers. In fact, this approach has become law for Internet businesses in some countries. It is in the best interest of most companies to ensure that their potential customer base is interested in the product rather than annoyed with the approach.