Permission marketing

Permission Marketing is a book published in 1999 by Seth Godin, founder of the Yoyodyne Entertainment. It describes a non-traditional marketing technique that sell goods and services when advance consent is given.

Traditional methods of marketing often revolve around the idea of interruption – whether it is a television advertisement that cuts into a TV show, or an internet pop-up that interferes with a website. According to Godin, such methods (often referred to as “interruption marketing”), have become less effective in the modern world, where consumers are overloaded with information.

Interruption marketing is essentially a competition to win people’s attention. Before the advent of the internet, it was relatively easier to win people’s attention. However, in today’s world of mass-marketing, people are overloaded with advertisements that compete for their limited time and attention span. The average consumer is said to come into contact with 1 million advertisements per year – which is nearly 3000 per day. When there is an overflow of interruptions, people’s inevitable response is to disregard them, tune them out, and refuse to respond to them. Such traditional methods of marketing have thus become more difficult and costly – increasing the number of exposures required to attain the same outcome.

Seth Godin's experience as an entrepreneur helped cultivate his philosophy. Godin observed that successful campaigns were the ones that sought the customer’s consent. From such observations, Godin believed that marketing strategies should be based on the following elements:

These elements were combined to define permission marketing, first publicized in Godin’s book, “Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers”, published on May 6, 1999.

After permission marketing was first introduced in 1999, it inspired a large number of firms and companies to establish permission-based marketing agencies, campaigns, and platforms. It has also largely contributed to the development and the expansion of the social media, which heavily utilizes the methods of permission marketing; “friending,” “liking,” and “following,” all closely associate with the idea of permission marketing.

Permission marketing allows consumers to choose whether or not to be subjected to marketing. By targeting volunteers, permission marketing assures that consumers pay more attention to the marketing message. Permission marketing thus encourages consumers to engage in a long-standing, cooperative marketing campaign.

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Wikipedia