... And the Clients Went Wild!: How Savvy Professionals Win All the Business They Want

Chapter 14. Permission-Based Marketing

Strategies for Successful E-Mail and E-Newsletters

To be successful you must create a quality message that recipients just can't bring themselves to delete.

Like all those other things that have fallen out of favor over the years—acid-washed jeans, VCRs, fax machines—the good old days of welcomed e-mail messages are over. Yes, not too long ago, many of you would have been excited about getting a new e-mail—now you look at your inbox and want to cry. How many times have you found yourself exclaiming at your desk—either to yourself or anyone who will listen—" Forty new messages in the past hour! How is that possible ?!?"

The reality is that e-mail has become one of your main methods of communication, and as a result, you get a lot of it. Unfortunately, to get to the truly relevant messages, you frequently have to sift through a lot of junk. On any given day, you might find out you inherited money from the King of Nairobi or be asked to forward a message to 10 of your friends, or risk permanent bad luck.

These kinds of junk marketing e-mails are the enemy for professionals who use or want to use permission-based marketing to promote their business. This "spam" is the reason customers and potential customers automatically hit delete when they see a message from an unknown e-mail address, and they are the standard you absolutely must avoid when developing your permission-based marketing campaigns.

Permission-Based Marketing

"Permission-based marketing" ...