Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers (A Gift for Marketers)

It’s fabulous but outdated
To get this off my chest I want to begin by saying that illustrating the statement “Frequency works” with Muhammad Ali’s fight record is simply wrong, or, at best a not well chosen example. Godin writes “Muhammad Ali did not become heavyweight champion by punching twenty people one time each. No, he became the champ by punching one guy twenty times. By applying frequency to the poor opponent’s head, Ali was able to bring his message home…”I might have ignored this if it did not come up a second time.”… Back to Muhammad Ali again. After he’s hit someone ten times and the guy’s still standing, the opportunity for a quick knockout is long gone. Only through persistence…”If this is about illustrating `persistence’ there are better examples. If this is about “boxing/Muhammad Ali AND persistence” it’s a really bad example. Muhammad Ali averaged 9th round KOs. That was Ali’s style. Mike Tyson averaged 3rd round KOs. That was Tyson’s style. Indeed, Tyson knocked out Michael Spinks in 91 seconds in one of the fastest KOs in the heavyweight division.Whereas Ali took the time to dance with the “Ali Shuffle, to showboat, and even talk to his opponent, Tyson did what he came to do -without show (he sold the outcome). But there is a lesson to be learned. After some time Tyson’s fights could not be sold in the United States anymore; most famously Tyson vs. Buster Douglas took place in Tokyo, because Americans weren’t going to pay hundreds of dollars for what they thought would be a 90 seconds fight (Boxing is about entertainment too). Ali knew this. That is why boxing is such a bad example for the contents of this book. Any boxer, who pursues “selling the fight and going for a later round knock-out” risks injury and loss, but fighters, who go for the quick sale, cannot sell anymore after they have done this for a while. So, if the “message” is about winning, the strategy depends on the opponent, and that is why boxing is not a great example.Aside from this flaw Seth Godin’s book is a great book. His elaborations about permission marketing vs. traditional Interruption marketing are brilliant and I can only guess what a huge impact this book made in 1999. Even today students of marketing must be riveted to read about the historic developments in marketing, never mind that some of the quoted companies don’t exist anymore. E.g. my children (in their early 20’s), who know much more about phones than I will ever know, have never heard of MCI. Then again, maybe reading about MCI might prompt them to read up on who this former telecommunications company was and find out why it went down.Of course telecommunication companies are notorious for their ridiculous approaches. For a short while I was Charter’s customer. This company thought they can handle `permission marketing’ their own way. Even though I told them that I wanted to buy Internet services only, and that I haven’t had TV since 2009, and, that I did not intend to get TV because I find nothing worthy to watch, they called me every 10 days to offer me TV. So I cancelled them. At that occasion the customer service representative asked me why I cancelled their services and I told him that I felt harassed. To which he replied that I should have gotten on their no-call list. To which I replied, that no, the fact that they knew my phone number did not entitle them to call me anytime between 8-5 whenever they felt like it. Not even my mother calls me during working hours. Additionally, the fact that I told them more than 20 times in no uncertain terms that I was not interested in getting TV, clearly demonstrated that they were NOT listening to their customer. My new provider sends me “invitations to get TV” every 2 weeks, via snail mail. I throw their mail into my recycle bin.Naturally, Seth Godin elaborates about telecommunications companies too, only he writes about Bell Atlantic, which today is Verizon. I wonder how many of the younger readers of this book know that.The above is a perfect example of permission marketing gone wrong and I would hope that somebody from Charter’s marketing department reads Seth Godin’s book sometime soon. I really appreciated Seth Godin’s elaborations about the “five levels of permission”. Looking into my Inbox I can tell that many corporations’ marketing departments have taken Seth Godin’s advice to heart. Of course the downside of this is that most people simply delete their flood of emails and that’s that. In fact email providers are developing programs to assist this process because people don’t have enough time to unsubscribe the unwanted content.Absolutely brilliant are Godin’s mentioning of Columbia Record Club and the Book of the Months Club. Indeed it was these concepts that lay the foundation for brilliant permission marketing but we don’t get to read too much about these great innovators anymore.While I realize that the book is listed as “published in 1999” I had hoped that the book included some kind of an update, maybe a 3-5 page foreword would have been excellent. The way how it is presented “Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends, and Friends Into Customers” is more of a history book than a cutting edge book. That kind of surprised me.Gisela Hausmann, author & blogger

Old, but still relevant, introduction to direct marketing
This book was written in 1999, but surprisingly still completely relevant today. The examples are a bit dated, but since it’s a conceptual book, the reader will get a good basic introduction to the concept behind opt-in email and direct response marketing.I recommend this book to beginners with no experience with direct marketing or opt-in email marketing knowledge. Although very well written and in a very readable tone, experienced marketers or those with the basic knowledge of marketing will find the book a bit boring and repetitive. For more advance readers, I suggest No B.S. Direct Marketing by Dan Kennedy.I would give the book a higher rating as an introduction to direct marketing if it were edited down by about 1/3 its size due to repetition in the book otherwise it’s a good book.

Have given to each of my budding Marketing students and they are quoting it back to me … regularly!

Un libro di grande attualità, benché sia stato scritto diversi anni orsono. Se siete dei fan del direct marketing e pensate che sia ancora l’approccio migliore, lasciate perdere; non fa per voi. Diversamente, potreste imparare come raggiungere i vostri prospect in maniera efficace, senza rompergli le scatole.