Notes from ‘Permission Marketing’

This weekend I randomly picked up Seth Godin’s classic business book ‘Permission Marketing’. Though it was written ‘way back’ in 1999, there’s still plenty of prescient information within these pages that feels applicable and relevant today.

The book, in a nutshell, is a case for a new way of marketing (that’s really an old way of marketing that takes us away from what Godin calls ‘Interruption Marketing’. This is advertising and messaging designed to grab our attention: Television ads, billboards, web banners, and so on. Godin is not a fan of this technique, and believes that there is an over-saturation that is reaching the point of insanity:

The clutter, as you know, has only gotten worse. Try counting how many marketing messages you encounter today. Don’t forget to include giant brand names on T-shirts, the logos on your computer, the Microsoft start-up banner on your monitor, radio ads, TV ads, airport ads, billboards, bumper stickers, and even the ads in your local paper.

For ninety years marketers have relied on one form of advertising almost exclusively. I call it Interruption Marketing. Interruption, because the key to each and every ad is to interrupt what the viewers are doing in order to get them to think about something else.

So how have we gotten to this point? Simple:

Over the last thirty years advertisers have dramatically increased their ad spending. They’ve also increased the noise level of their ads — more jump cuts, more in-your-face techniques — and searched everywhere for new ways to interrupt your day.

Godin believes that this sort of marketing simply doesn’t work, because we’ve gotten used to it and have grown desensitized. However, there is another way:

The alternative is Permission Marketing, which offers the consumer an opportunity to volunteer to be marketed to. By talking only to volunteers, Permission Marketing guarantees that consumers pay more attention to the marketing message. It allows marketers to tell their story calmly and succinctly, without fear of being interrupted by competitors or Interruption Marketers. It serves both consumers and marketers in a symbiotic exchange.

Godin uses this metaphor to delineate the two approaches:

Walking into the singles bar, the Interruption Marketer marches up to the nearest person and proposes marriage. If turned down, the Interruption Marketer repeats this process on every person in the bar.

A Permission Marketer goes on a date. If it goes well, the two of them go on another date. And then another. Until, after ten or twelve dates, both sides can really communicate with each other about their needs and desires. After twenty dates they meet each other’s families. Finally, after three or four months of dating, the Permission Marketer proposes marriage.

Godin’s lesson of the book is that it’s better to find the right person than it is to try and talk to every person. Why bother if there’s no interest? Why spend money on 50 people to get one purchase, when you could lavish that one person with attention and get them to not only buy what you’re selling, but become an evangelist themselves? The book continues:

Unlike Interruption Marketing, Permission Marketing is a measurable process. It evolves over time for every company that uses it. It becomes an increasingly valuable asset. The more you commit to Permission Marketing campaigns, the better they work over time. And these fast-moving, leveragable processes are the key to success in our cluttered age.

Interestingly, Godin uses 1999-era Amazon as an example of ‘permission marketing’. Whether or not this is true at this point is a matter of interesting debate, but here’s the argument from this time:

Amazon appears to be building a permission asset, not a brand asset. Amazon has overt permission to track which books you buy and which books you browse. They have explicit permission to send you promotional e-mail messages. They are building special-interest communities in which Amazon and its customers will be able to talk with each other about specific genres of books. Why? Where’s the payoff

The payoff comes the day Amazon decides to publish books. This is where the profit lies and where Amazon is best able to leverage their permission asset.

A book costs about $2 to print and $20 in the store. A huge gulf! But most of that money disappears in advertising, shipping, and especially in the shredding of unsold books. What if you could remove all of those?

Godin sees Amazon as making it’s money from a future-point where they profitably publish books that they know they can sell. Intriguingly, I see this more as Netflix’s model than Amazon’s (AWS for the win, in this case), but it’s an interesting premise that certainly was worthy of predicting.

So what are examples of poorly marketing to customers that already love you? Here’s two:

Apple lost a great deal of brand trust when it introduced the Newton with much fanfare. Microsoft risks the huge brand trust it has built every time it unleashes a new operating system on the public. This watershed moment is worth billions to Microsoft, and they (correctly) treat it that way.

The Microsoft example is surprisingly funny to me. In 1999, Windows reputation was still intact with Windows 98, which would be succeeded by the less-and-less well received ME, XP, Vista (ugh), 7, and on. To this day I see users complaining about hostile updates and crashes due to Windows 10. Microsoft has forgotten the importance of this ‘watershed moment’.

So what’s the lesson to be learned from correctly using the technique of ‘permission?’ There’s four rules:

Once you have earned permission, you must keep it and attempt to expand it. These four rules go a long way to help marketers understand permission:

Permission is nontransferable.

Permission is selfish.

Permission is a process, not a moment.

Permission can be canceled at any time

If you’re using this style of marketing, it’s a great idea to keep those truths in mind.

Godin begins to wrap up the book with an interesting example of how a religious priest is an example of ‘permission marketing’:

The priest leverages the permission earned by the church by marketing directly to his parishioners in a very straightforward, appropriate way. He speaks their language and understands their priorities. He customizes the message by making it relevant to each individual and by keeping his messages personal. And of course, each priest can personalize the appeal by asking only for an amount commensurate with their income.

These ideas are not new, but indeed, very old. Old enough for the church to have organically and naturally stumbled upon them, for hundreds of years. Let’s learn a lesson from these concepts, instead of continuing to interrupt people that just don’t care.