Seth Godin’s book Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends and Friends Into Customers revolutionized the way marketers perceive their customers, enabling them to “stay ahead of the digital revolution.”

As Godin defined, permissioned marketing refers to a form of marketing in which consumers are given the option to opt-in to receiving promotional messages. You’ve probably seen companies offer incentives for following you on social media or subscribing to her email list to get coupons. It is deeply rooted in our society.

What sets permission marketing apart from other strategies for reaching consumers is that it already has an engaged audience. Users do not choose to subscribe to your business newsletters, emails, or social media unless they have prior interest in your products. It also has the advantage of being a low-cost way to create personal and relevant relationships, as it is typically done through digital communication tools.

Essentially, this is the opposite of direct marketing, aka blind marketing. In blind marketing, sometimes the only thing consumers have in common is their zip code.

Godin’s book is an essential item in any marketer’s toolkit, but there’s no denying that it was released a long time ago (23 years ago, to be exact).

Meanwhile, an explosion of technology unimaginable in the Y2K era has rocked our world. Marketers have generally tried to keep abreast of these rapid changes, but things like social media and data privacy laws will change the marketer landscape even more.

Still, the idea of ​​allowing consumers to consent to being marketed to them — permission marketing — is more important than ever in this day and age. By enacting permission marketing and adapting it to today’s challenges, brands can adapt to these constant changes while serving their number one priority, the customer.

Below, we’ll take a look at some of the challenges we foresee in the industry and some best practices on how to tackle them with permission marketing.

Related Article: Why Awareness, Nurturing, and Trust Are Critical Elements of Marketing

Social data collection and privacy uprising

Any marketer will tell you that the more details you know about a potential customer, the more likely you are to sell successfully. Over the past decade, many marketers have learned more about their customers through their social media data.

Brands primarily used this data to create a synergistic relationship between their marketing efforts and their customers. Because people used social media and businesses could see what their customers liked and disliked, businesses were able to fine-tune their advertising.

Meta — arguably the largest social media company, as it owns WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram — suffered a massive data breach in 2019, resulting in a massive exodus of users and a new wave of data privacy concerns. raised concern.

To further complicate matters, Apple has found two ways to benefit from Meta’s loss. First, they launched a new marketing campaign with his one major selling point: privacy. According to Forbes, users now have more control over how their data is tracked and used. This change had a big impact on other companies, reducing their advertising return on investment by 38%.

A second benefit for Apple was partnering with other companies like Singular to take advantage of ways to model and analyze this newly lost data. This is what separated other brands from the advertising game.

keep an eye out for new tools

Not all businesses can use these data collection technologies that are needed today. Annie Wisner, his CMO of Avenue 10 and vice president of marketing for High Level Marketing, said in his search for new tools for marketing at Permissions: From blog posts to podcasts to webinars to newsletters, content in any format is good as long as it’s valuable, fun to consume, and highly relevant to your audience. “

If any of your company’s current strategies do not meet these criteria, it may be time to change where you are spending your time and money.

One of the proven applications of permission marketing is email subscriptions. Email marketers have to seriously compete for the attention of the younger generation. On average, millennials receive 6-50 emails per day, and Gen Z receive 1-20 emails. Also, they are less likely to get you to open your email.

But that doesn’t mean that these groups don’t like receiving email, and companies shouldn’t abandon their communication medium. According to MediaPost, over 66% of millennials and over 53% of Gen Z want to receive his marketing by email at least once a week.

Wissner says email is a great tool for organizing and finding content. This is a necessary feature due to the increasing need to structure content across multiple communication channels.

She argued that while email has its advantages, other channels such as Slack and social media may be a bit more appealing to younger audiences, as questions, concerns or comments can be responded to immediately. .

For example, some businesses use Facebook Messenger to send ads directly to consumers and maintain it as a place for customers to contact if they need help with an order. Meanwhile, Slack has recently been used in digital conferences as a way to communicate event logistics and award prizes based on participation in chat channels.

Related article: 5 ways to increase loyalty and email signups

Be aware of where your customers are

Permission marketing is often how companies initiate and recirculate clients into the sales funnel. But in an age when the digital and physical are beginning to blur, omnichannel marketing efforts can help consumers complete the sales funnel.

Wissner offered another piece of advice to marketers on the subject. That is using an omnichannel strategy in permission marketing. In many ways, permission marketing is a cornerstone of omnichannel, serving customers where they are.