What is permission email marketing?
Also known as permission-based email marketing, permission email marketing, as the name suggests, is a form of email marketing that involves getting the express consent of a lead or prospect to be contacted via email before sending them anything.
If you want a more in-depth understanding of this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: Why is it important?
Permission email marketing is important because it keeps you from getting blacklisted as an email marketer.
You see, when you send marketing emails—or any kind of email for that matter—to people who do not know you and have not given you any indication that they want to hear from you, there is a big chance that they will flag your emails as spam, block you, or both.
When enough people do this, it sends a signal to internet service providers (ISPs) and email servers that you are a spammer, which, in turn, would prompt these service providers to blacklist your email and, depending on the volume of the reports, IP address as well.
When you get blacklisted, all your emails either automatically go straight to your recipients’ spam folder or do not get delivered at all, making it more difficult—in some cases, even practically impossible—to do email marketing.
Question #2: What are the benefits of permission email marketing?
The biggest benefits of permission email marketing are as follows:
- Higher open rate – People who actually signed up to hear from you are significantly more likely to open your emails than those who have no idea why you are contacting them.
- Higher click-to-open rate – People who signed up to hear from you are clearly interested in whatever it is you are selling, making them more likely to click on links in your marketing emails.
- Lower unsubscribe rate – People who signed up to hear from you are clearly interested in your content. This means that as long as you keep delivering the type of content and offers you promised them in the beginning, there is a smaller chance that they will unsubscribe.
- Higher engagement rate – Needless to say, when people are actually interested in your content, they are more likely to engage with it.
- Higher conversion rate – Again, when people sign up to hear from you, they are clearly interested in whatever it is you are trying to sell—which makes them easier to convert.
Question #3: What are the keys to effective permission email marketing?
The keys to effective permission marketing are as follows:
- Sending quality, relevant content – Getting your recipients’ permission to be contacted is just the first step. If you want to keep them on your list, you will need to keep providing them with content that they might find interesting and valuable.
- Sending relevant, compelling offers – If you want to bump up your conversion rate, you will need to craft offers that your recipients would find valuable and irresistible.
- Getting your sending frequency right – Even if your recipients give you the go signal to contact them, doing so too often or not often enough could have a negative impact on the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. So, either ask them how often they want to be contacted or give them the option to adjust their email frequency settings themselves whenever they want.
- Regular list cleaning – Just because a recipient signed up to receive emails from you does not mean that they used their real email address or that they will be interested in being contacted forever. So, you will need to constantly go over your list and remove any invalid and inactive recipients.
Question #4: What are the steps in doing so?
To do permission email marketing, simply follow these steps:
- Identify your target audience
- Prepare a lead magnet that they might find valuable
- Get your lead magnet in front of them
- Confirm their intent to join (optional)
- Subdivide your email list (optional, meant to make it easier for you to craft relevant content and offers)
- Send out quality, relevant, and compelling content and offers