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As leaders in the field of online direct marketing, Connectus has managed to break through the information overload to provide a framework for managing the customer relationship lifecycle online, which we call Relationship Lifecycle Marketing. The intent of this paper is to provide marketers with the direction they need to optimize their online direct marketing programs, and fully understand the comprehensive solutions available to meet their evolving needs.
Importance of Permission versus Direct Marketing
The term 'spam' has become almost as recognizable as Kleenex and Xerox. Derived from the Monty Python comedy skit in which an overzealous waitress repeatedly serves a customer spam (even though he did not order it), it has become the most significant pet peeve among Internet users. In fact, the continued use of spam in the short term will have a negative impact on the email marketing industry as a whole with respect to effectiveness and perception among customers. While email marketing continues to enjoy significant success despite the onslaught of spam, the pressure on companies to ensure their audience is receptive to their message will increase ten-fold over the next few years. We are now at the point where failure to gain marketing permission could actually earn a company an appointment in court, resulting in exposure to potential fines, a tarnished reputation and more than a little embarrassment. This means that effective immediately, marketers must be knowledgeable of how to best collect, use, disclose and handle personal information to ensure compliance with current regulations.
According to an excerpt from Steve Diorio's book Enterprise Permission Marketing, for permission based email marketing to truly exceed its potential, it is dependent on company-wide buy-in to the permission only process from concept to execution. His book reads:
"Because email marketing campaigns trace a course across an organization, they require high levels of enterprise-wide coordination to be effective. Consider the cross-functional journey of an email relationship. A customer may register on a web site for more information on a product or to get something in return for their email address. This information is ideally checked to ensure it is correct, unique and deposited in a central direct marketing database. At the appropriate time, an email campaign could be originated by any one of a variety of channel organizations - sales, Internet, direct marketing and customer service or, in some cases, a business partner".
"To make this happen, a marketing analyst will thoughtfully select that name for a relevant and interesting promotional campaign. The email campaign, with the proper privacy and permission etiquette, would be sent using in-house software or a third-party service bureau. The customer will either ignore the email, respond, or in some cases get angry and complain. Also this customer has the choice to respond directly online, call an 800 number or follow up in person at a retail outlet. If and when they do respond - depending on the circumstances - the call can be handed off to customer service for an apology or a field salesperson for a visit.
"The problem is that organizations are not structured to work this way. Organizations are finding that existing approaches to sales and marketing programs do a poor job of managing and executing email programs. Today, this journey looks more like the hazardous trek of Ulysses in The Odyssey than a drive on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The path across these organizations is filled with pitfalls, perils, detours and dead ends."
S. Allen, author of the paper Don't Call Yourself a Permission Marketer when you are a Direct Marketer, agrees with this statement. He points out that "despite the fact that we receive messages every day via traditional mail that we didn't ask for and don't want - it is unwelcome and uninvited email that really makes our skin crawl. Firstly, since it is usually addressed to us personally, it feels like a personal violation, and it is! Since the average number of emails we receive each day is about 97, with about 10% of this being SPAM, it is secondly a big waste of our time." The solution to spam is of course, permission marketing- which is where the success of email marketing truly lies.
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