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10 Nov, 2008

Is your email list permission based?

Posted by: Prashant Kaw In: email marketing| permission marketing

SPAM by Holley St. GermainSpam email converts at a whopping .00000008% or gets 1 response for every 12.5 million emails. According to Tech Radar while spammers still make money off this conversion rate it makes one wonder how important it is to have a permission based list.

There’s roughly 300 million people in America (some place it at 350 million).  From what I’ve read there’s internet it only 150 million homes but for the case of this example let’s say 250 million people had internet and an email address.  At the measly conversion rate of 1 in 12.5 million I would get only 20 responses by spamming the entire country!  That’s super inefficient.

Even though this example is about spammers it is still important to note that a lot of companies do not employ best practices for permission based marketing and still don’t do a great job at segmenting their lists so their messages are on target.

Permission based marketing is so much more efficient.  First off the end users are not upset to receive a promotion from a service they’ve opted into.  The content is likely to be a lot more relevant and the likelihood of churn from that list even if it is not targeted appropriately is still lower becaue the user probably recognizes the sender.

Marketing guru Seth Godin has written a book on the subject that is so relevant even today and I highly recommend that everyone in Marketing should own a copy of it!

Spam image by Holley St. Germain.

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3 Responses to "Is your email list permission based?"

1 | Pete Kulenek

November 12th, 2008 at 2:59 pm

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I don’t know how spammers even get that many responses. If I don’t know your name or have not signed up for info even related to your email, you don’t even get a second thought. And how about the emails with a subject line of winning the lottery or other offers of giving me large sums of money. Who opens any of those?

2 | Linda

November 22nd, 2008 at 4:38 am

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It makes so much sense NOT to spam!! It is so annoying! Marketers should just concentrate on building a list via opt in! Not spam! Marketing is great when you are being marketed to by choice!!!

3 | Maurine Dodge

November 25th, 2008 at 4:13 am

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Permission based lists are the only ethical way to do business online. Having a way to opt out should my customers change their mind is also a built in factor with all my emails.

Approval to send one email is implied when you give your email addy online in exchange for a free report or information, or when you use my ffa site, but to bombard folks with your ads based upon that one contact is stepping into the realm of spam and to be avoided if you want to stay in business on the internet.

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  • dotcompals: the ability to capture notes on the profile page for each contact - this is a nice feature. Sometimes we really forgot some nice and useful things reg
  • Hamilton Wallace: Nicely done. The more I care for my clients' sites the more I learn how important and powerful simplicity is. In the message and the experience.
  • Toby: Thanks I think Prashant. My Flickr stream is not well versed but I'll look for the 6 photo .. although I doubt I can top yours! Appreciate your ki

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