The Six Cs of Permission Email Marketing

by Karen Talavera

Published on February 19, 2008

Permission Marketing. Beyond buzz word, it's clearly the status quo for email and has long been debated as the future state of direct mail, too. Already legally mandated by data laws in other countries, opt-in marketing may evolve into the preferred model within the US as well.

With marketing channels of choice proliferating and messaging devices diversifying, it's not hard to imagine an opt-in vs. opt-out future where permissions are granted not only by marketing channel (email, postal mail, phone, RSS), but also by content, device, time, and place.

All the more reason to genuinely understand permission, which in the world of email marketing alone appears relegated to subjective definitions. We'll help set the record straight by exploring the first two of six dimensions of permission in this three-part series, "The Six Cs of Permission Email Marketing."

They may seem obvious, and they may sound simplistic, but you might be surprised how often the fundamentals are dismissed.

 

1. Conscious Consent

There are numerous ways individuals end up on email lists, and many of those ways are unknown even to them.

Terms like "affirmative consent," "passive consent," and "third-party consent" abound. But when it comes to genuine 100% permission marketing, the only consent that matters is conscious consent.

Are your join and subscribe invitations structured in such a way that list members must voluntarily take action to receive your messages, and do they realize the action they are taking will result in email from your company, partners, or affiliates? If you can't answer "yes" to these questions, your methods are not garnering conscious consent.

Sure, people are bombarded with messages and advertising impressions from a growing array of channels; and, yes, they forget what they've signed-up for. However, conscious consent ensures that an opt-in process is clear and non-deceitful.

Without a self-initiated action on the part of your list members, it is virtually impossible for them to join. Requiring such self-initiated, voluntary measures requires conscious action on the part of your recipients and increases the likelihood that they remember having taken such action.

On the other hand, unconscious or passive consent assumes rather than requests permission. It takes true voluntary choice out of the equation by pre-checking boxes, using data gathered from publicly available sources, or gathering information via some other opt-out collection model.

While those methods are certainly not illegal and are often justifiable, they don't constitute conscious consent. If 100% permission marketing is what you aim for, nothing less than voluntary consent will do.

2. Choice

Choice and conscious consent go hand in hand, since conscious consent assumes individual choice. Yet beyond the choice to join/subscribe in the first place, you should make available options that offer control (one of our upcoming C's).

Which options will you—can you—offer in a permission marketing environment? These are just a few:

• Communication type (news, promotional, legal, transactional)
• Content type (product information, reminders, sales offers)
• Preferred communication channel (email, postal mail, phone, fax)
• Frequency preferences
• Device-specific message formatting (mobile vs. desktop)
• Temporary suspension of messages
• Unsubscribe

For an expert example of how it's done, see United Airlines customer preferences at www.united.com. If you're a United Mileage Plus program member, just log-in and select "My Profile." You'll be able to edit email preferences, flight notification preferences, and other options. Another excellent example can be found at Hallmark. Create an account there if you don't already have one to see what we mean.

When offering permission and communications choices, you offer preferences; so, present only the options that you can successfully fulfill. And don't forget to note when certain types of content or communication are available only through a particular channel and not others.

It's fine to restrict choices solely to what you can realistically manage; aim your sights on under-promising and over-delivering—and your customers will reward your efforts.

Next: The next two Cs of Permission Email: Clarity and Confidence.

http://www.marketingprofs.com/8/six-cs-permission-email-marketing-part-1-talavera.asp?sp=1

New Study Shows that Heavy Clickers Distort Reality of Display Advertising Click-Through Metrics

New Study Shows that Heavy Clickers Distort Reality of Display Advertising Click-Through Metrics

CHICAGO – Media agency Starcom USA, behavioral targeting network Tacoda, and digital consumer insight company comScore collaborated on a research study whose results call into question click-through rates as a primary source of accountability for Internet display advertising aimed at brand-building. Called “Natural Born Clickers,” the study reveals that a very small group of consumers who are not representative of the total U.S. online population is accountable for the vast majority of display ad click-through behavior.
Full findings of the study, its methodology and results are being presented this afternoon at the iMedia Brand Summit in Coconut Point, Florida.
The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public. In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers.
Further preliminary Starcom data suggests no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked. The research presentation suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance.
“There is more and more emphasis by advertisers for greater return-on-objectives in campaigns, particularly in the digital space where the accountability data is so readily available,“ says Starcom USA Director of Connections Research and Analytics Grant Prentice. “Natural Born Clickers shows us that we can’t count on click-through rate as our primary success metric for display ads; Starcom is more reliant on shifts in brand attitude metrics and analytics tying on-line exposure to sales as the true measures of online advertising efficacy.”
“While the click can continue to be a relevant metric for direct response advertising campaigns, this study demonstrates that click performance is the wrong measure for the effectiveness of brand-building campaigns,” said Erin Hunter, executive vice president at comScore. “For many campaigns, the branding effect of the ads is what’s really important and generating clicks is more of an ancillary benefit. Ultimately, judging a campaign’s effectiveness by clicks can be detrimental because it overlooks the importance of branding while simultaneously drawing conclusions from a sub-set of people who may not be representative of the target audience.”
“One of the underlying values of looking at people and not just pages in our business is that we are able to help uncover behavior that is counterintuitive to what much of the media world assumes about online audiences,” says Daniel Jaye, CEO of TACODA.

http://www.smvgroup.com/news_popup_flash.asp?pr=1643

Interactive Marketers Unsure of Tracking Capabilities

According to the new Sapient annual Interactive Marketing Survey more than half the marketing senior level respondents felt only ‘somewhat confident' or ‘not confident at all' in their organization's abilities to track campaigns across multiple channels in real-time, with only 19 percent reporting the ability to make campaign changes in less than 24 hours.

Confidence Level To Track Campaigns Across Multiple Digital Channels in Real Tiime

Confidence Level

% of Respondents

Highly confident

16%

Confident

33

Somewhat confident

39

Not confident at all

12

Source: Sapient, January 2008

While social networking was cited the least "trackable" digital channel, according to the survey, it was the channel with the largest anticipated increase in marketing analytics spend for 2008. Only 12 percent of respondents tracked social networking campaign performance in 2007; in 2008, 42 percent anticipate using analytics to track this increasingly important channel.

Performance Least Confident in Tracking

Digital Channel Performance

% of Respondents

Search

11%

Email

12

Mobile

16

Digital advertising

11

Social networking

25

None

6

Don't know/na

9

Source: Sapient, January 2008

Nearly half the respondents said they do not believe campaign data provided to them evenly measures and compares performance across all digital channels, but ifficulty in comparing metrics across channels is the most common hurdle to accuracy in this area, cited by 28 percent of respondents

Biggest Hurdle for Organization to Measure and Compare

Hurdle

% of Respondents

Don't have capabilities to interpret

15%

Difficult to compare metrics

28

Difficult to work with IT to implement

8

No technology in place

18

Bias toward previously effective channels

20

Don't know/na

11

Source: Sapient, January 2008

Email and search were cited as the two channels that marketers were most confident in their ability to track, and 38% of marketers said search resulted in the highest ROI to their organizations. 28% of marketers plan to increase search spending in 2008.

Area of Digital Marketing Budget Expected to Increase Most in 6-12 Months

Digital Channel Performance

% of Respondents

Search

28%

Email

14

Mobile

14

Digital advertising

19

Social networking

16

None

2

Don't know/na

7

Source: Sapient, January 2008

Sapient Chief Creative Officer, Gaston Legorburu, concludes "In 2008, marketers will seek the ability to seamlessly incorporate social networking with their other channels, including search and email, and the capability to monitor and measure performance to ensure they are achieving optimum results."

For graphic charts and additional information, please visit Marketing Charts here.

More information on the report and Sapient may be found here.