to receive further communications from a company (see Figure 3.3 for further examples).
This approach is referred to as ‘opt-in’. This is preferable to opt-out, the situation where a
customer has to consciously agree not to receive further information.
The importance of incentivisation in permission marketing has also been emphasised
by Seth Godin who likens the process of acquisition and retention to dating someone.
Likening customer relationship building to social behaviour is not new, as O’Malley and
Tynan (2001) note; the analogy of marriage has been used since the 1980s at least. They
also report on consumer research that indicates that while marriage may be analogous to
business relationships, it is less appropriate for B2C relationships. Moller and Halinen
(2000) have also suggested that due to the complexity of the exchange, longer-term rela-
tionships are more readily formed for interorganisational exchanges. So, the description
of the approaches that follow are perhaps more appropriate for B2B applications.
Godin (1999) suggests that dating the customer involves:1 offering the prospect an incentiveto volunteer;
2 using the attention offered by the prospect, offering a curriculum over time, teaching
the consumer about your product or service;
3 reinforcing the incentiveto guarantee that the prospect maintains the permission;
4 offering additional incentivesto get even more permission from the consumer;
5 over time, using the permission to change consumer behaviour towards profits.
Notice the importance of incentives at each stage. The use of incentives at the start of
the relationship and throughout it are key to successful relationships. As we shall see in
a later section, e-mail is very important in permission marketing to maintain the dia-
logue between company and customer.
Writing for What’s New in Marketinge-newsletter, Chaffey (2004) has extended
Godin’s principles to e-CRM with his ‘e-permission marketing principles’:
Principle 1. ‘Consider selective opt-in to communications.’ In other words, offer choice in
communications preferencesto the customer to ensure more relevant communications.
Some customers may not want a weekly e-newsletter, rather they may only want to
hear about new product releases. Remember opt-in is a legal requirement in many
countries. Four key communications preferences options, selected by tick box are:- Content – news, products, offers, events
- Frequency – weekly, monthly, quarterly, or alerts
- Channel – e-mail, direct mail, phone or SMS
- Format – text vs HTML.
Make sure though that through providing choice you do not overstretch your resources,
or on the other hand limit your capabilities to market to customers (for example if cus-
tomers only opt in to an annual communication such as a catalogue update) you still
need to find a way to control the frequency and type of communications.
Principle 2. Create a ‘common customer profile’. A structured approach to customer
data capture is needed otherwise some data will be missed, as is the case with the util-
ity company that collected 80,000 e-mail addresses, but forgot to ask for the postcode
for geo-targeting! This can be achieved through a common customer profile – a defi-
nition of all the database fields that are relevant to the marketer in order to
understand and target the customer with a relevant offering. The customer profile can
have different levels to set targets for data quality (Level 1 is contact details and key
profile fields only, Level 2 includes preferences and Level 3 includes full purchase and
response behaviour).CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENTOpt-in
A customer proactively
agrees to receive
further information.
Opt-out
A customer declines
the offer to receive
further information.