The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing

4

The Benefits of Permission-Based Email Marketing

Email marketing is a very inexpensive way to communicate. Not surprisingly, some misguided people think that the low cost of sending a message gives them the right to blast their message out to everyone with an email address.

If I had to choose one thing that was the key to Constant Contact’s success in the early days, I would probably say that we were the first email marketing company to take the issue of permission-based marketing very seriously. Constant Contact was an advocate for permission marketing in 1998, one year before Seth Godin’s famed book on the subject. Obviously, we weren’t the only ones who knew the power of permission.

In 2001, we tested offering a list rental service through one of the most reputable list rental companies in the business. We quickly shut down this test when our customers gave us feedback that the results they were experiencing were horrible. I can honestly say that we would be doing our customers a tremendous disservice today if we allowed them to buy or rent email lists.

This chapter explains how and why your reputation is on the line with every email that you send, and helps you to make sure every impression you make is a positive one.