Interruption marketing — that is, any kind of traditional outbound marketing like direct mail, voicemail calls and text messages that a consumer didn’t ask to receive — is breathing its last breaths. Not only is it costly, but the return on investment can be rather low. For that reason, most companies involved in interruption marketing try to reach as wide of an audience as possible with their campaigns.
In addition, there’s no guarantee that your interruption marketing efforts will pay off. It’s entirely possible to spend a lot and get little, if anything, in return for your efforts. If you’re wondering how to make your “interruption marketing” more welcomed, it would be to shift your focus slightly — to “permission marketing” instead.
What Is Permission Marketing?
Permission marketing lets the customer play a more active role in the marketing process. These are people who have chosen (or given permission), to be contacted. They actively want to hear from you. Permission marketing isn’t just about consumers opting in to your mailing list, for example. It goes much deeper than that.
For example, let’s say you sell a variety of women’s graphic t-shirts online. You have t-shirts for all moods and persuasions: funny quotes, maternity shirts, sporty shirts and so on. Rather than blasting emails or putting catalogs in everyone’s mailbox that happens to be female, it’s a much better idea to present your products and then let them choose. Some women might only want to buy maternity shirts, others might want more form-fitting activewear. Others are all about the funny quotes.
By letting them select which products they’d like to be updated about, you can be sure that when you get in new inventory and categorize it, that your targeted messages to them will be much more likely to be opened – and you’ll have a much higher conversion rate as a result.
Benefits of Permission Marketing
Higher conversion rates aren’t the only benefit of permission marketing. By giving customers what they really want, you’re growing the roots of a stronger customer-company relationship. Continuing to do this over time helps increase the odds that your messages will be shared with others. Imagine marketing on Facebook and seeing friends tag each other when one of your cute saying shirts pops up. While permission marketing doesn’t have the reach that interruption marketing does, the chances that users will convert are much, much higher. Not only are messages targeted, but they’re also targeted to those who eagerly want to receive them and want to stay “in the loop”.
Doing Permission Marketing Right
If you’re ready to move away from stale, old-fashioned interruption marketing and move to smarter, more effective permission-based marketing, now’s your opportunity. Connect with us here at Workdom and let’s talk more about your promotion goals. No matter what you have to say or sell, we can help you create a winning marketing strategy that brings you more actively engaged customers while increasing your ROI and conversion rates.
