Understanding the Principles of Permission Marketing
In my entry into the world of Internet Marketing, one of the books that had a great influence on me and which largely shaped the techniques that I have subsequently developed is the book by Seth Godin, “Permission Marketing.” At the time of its writing, Mr. Godin was the Vice-President for Direct Marketing of Yahoo, then the undisputed giant in the World Wide Web. Aptly subtitled “Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers,” the title alone fully encapsulates the overall guiding paradigm of the permission marketing principle.
For a long time before the World Wide Web came into the
picture, marketers were engaged in an ever-spiraling advertising
approach which Godin calls “interruption marketing.” The main goal of
this type of marketing approach is to grab a potential customer’s
attention from whatever he is doing and keep that attention long enough
for the advertiser to make his pitch. It could be in the form of a TV
commercial which interrupts our favorite program, or a telemarketer
which intrudes into a quiet time being enjoyed. Godin claims that
interruption marketing has lost its potency and in fact, has become an
increasing source of annoyance for most of its targeted public.
