A four-part
series chronicling the origins of today’s permission marketing landscape
By the close of the 20th Century,
unrelenting (and ever-faster) technological innovation democratized media and
shattered the one-way communication model. The rise of the Internet in the
1990s1,
coupled with micro-processing power that brought it (and voice, and video, and
photography and everything else) into the palm of the consumer’s hand created a
landscape where companies spoke to consumers and consumers held the power to reply. Now fully liberated from the
trappings of geography and availability, consumers demand personalization and
recognition of unique preferences.
“Permission doesn't have to be a one-way broadcast medium. The internet means you can treat different people differently, and it demands that you figure out how to let your permission base choose what they hear and in what format.”- Seth Godin
As consumers gained a voice in the engagement
paradigm, marketers and advertisers were quickly forced to recognize the new
reality. Two key themes converged to initiate this landmark change: brand-side
efforts to capture a customer's expectations, preferences and aversions through
Voice of the Customer methodology and a powerful consumer-side backlash to
behavior tracking, interruption advertising and unwanted communications in the
form of phone calls, spam and direct mail.
The result? Marketing guru Seth Godin dubbed
it “permission marketing,” the privilege (not the right) of delivering
anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get
them. According to Godin, brands needed to recognize the new power of the best
consumers to ignore marketing and realize that treating people with respect is
the best way to earn their attention.
Fast-forward to today and the opportunity to
risk ratio on consumer engagement looms even larger. In their 2013 US Consumer
Confidence Index, TRUSTe found that 89 percent of adults worry about their
privacy online, 43 percent do not trust businesses with their personal
information, and 89 percent avoid doing business with companies that do not
take steps to protect their privacy.2
Even the most tech-savvy customers are skeptical. According to a study by
Cisco, three-fourths of generation Y consumers don’t trust marketers to use
their data in a way that doesn’t compromise privacy.3
At the same time, consumers are rewarding
companies that engage them responsibly and deliver personalized experiences. According to Forrester Research, more than 75 percent of consumers say
companies should let them decide how they can be contacted.4 Moreover, 45 percent of global consumers are willing to share personal
information with brands in exchange for relevant ads, according to research
from IPG Mediabrands and Microsoft.5
Ignoring the self-reported preferences of prospects and customers leads
to enormous missed opportunity costs while misusing or abusing that information
is even worse. In order to remain competitive, marketers must implement smart
processes for the collection, maintenance and distribution of consumer
information. Enter “preference management,” a relatively new addition to the
marketing lexicon and the logical extension of Voice of the Customer
methodology and permission marketing insights.
Companies must be able to listen to consumers
and learn from what they say. The key to that process is preference management
– the active collection, maintenance and distribution of unique consumer
characteristics, such as product interest, communication channel preference and
frequency of communication.
These preferences are not derived by profile
data, purchase history or where they are on a website; rather, they are
expressly stated by the consumer themselves. In other words, preference
management means giving customers and prospects the ability to conveniently
communicate with a company, recording the information in a central location and
acting on what they say.
Eric Tejeda is the Director of Product Marketing for PossibleNOW and CompliancePoint. Eric supports the organization’s growth objectives by productizing
and launching innovative new products and services that fill critical needs in
the marketplace.
With 25 years of experience, Eric firmly believes that
permission-based marketing and preference management is a mega trend and the
path to success for marketers today.
Follow me on Twitter: @EricTejeda | Connect on LinkedIn: Eric Tejeda