Five Steps in Permission Marketing

This post is about the five steps in permission marketing found in the classic book aptly titled Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers by Seth Godin, and includes 10 things you can do to increase permission marketing in your own business. Enjoy!

Five steps in permission marketing:
1. The marketer offers the prospect an incentive to volunteer to opt-in to inbound messaging.
2. Using the attention offered by the consumer, the marketer offers a curriculum (over time) teaching the consumer about their products and/or services.
3. The incentive is reinforced to guarantee that the prospect maintains the permission given to the marketer.
4. The marketer offers more incentives to gain even more permission from the prospect as the relationship ages.
5. Over time the marketer leverages the permission to change consumer behavior and turn the new behavior into profits for the company.

10 things you can do to increase permission marketing in your own business:
1. Figure out the lifetime value of a customer (LTV)
2. Invent and build a variety of communication suites that you will use to turn strangers into friends

a. These “suites” should take place over time
b. They should offer the consumer a selfish reason to respond
c. The responses should alter the communication moving forward
d. The communication should have a “call to action” so that you can measure the success of the desired result

3. Change all advertising to contain at least some call to action
4. Measure the results of each suite, throw out the bottom 60% and replace them with new ones
5. Measure how many permissions you achieve through your efforts
6. Protect the permission base that is built, make sure you or someone else ensures that this permission is not abused
7. Work to automate your communication and move towards email (if you haven’t already)
8. Rebuild your website to turn it into a permission building machine
9. Regularly audit your permission base to see how well you are doing and how deep your permission goes
10. Leverage your permission by offering products and services and/or co-marketing with partners