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        From Permission to Precision 
               in Email Marketing

Adriana Galgano is an Ottantaventi senior partner, instructor in Italy and abroad for companies of National and International importance. 

Eugenio La Mesa is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SALESWARE - email marketing software, and Chief Technology Officer of PUBLISOFT, the company that won the Microsoft Italy prize in 1997 for the most strategic Internet solution. 


They are co-authors of the book “Selling and buying on the Internet” published by Sperling &  Kupfer and of the Email Marketing column on the Microsoft website and on the marketing magazine MKT7.

Email marketing guarantees many advantages:

• Rapid contact with current customers and prospects. 
• Lower transmission costs.
• The opportunity to monitor the outcome of an email marketing campaign in real time.

These advantages have value for a company only if accompanied by positive results, for example a high number of recipients reading the message sent to them.

It is important to understand that these results do not only depend on using email marketing, but on how it is done.

If you decide to use it as spam, that is to send the same message to many recipients without having any information about them and without their having asked for it, you will probably not obtain good results.

Each day email users may receive dozens of messages, and they must decide which ones to read and which ones to delete. For example, there are those who delete all messages from unknown senders for fear of viruses. Those who lack time read only the most important messages. Then there are those who are so enraged by spamming that they take revenge on the sender, transmitting virus-infected messages or very large attachments back to the spammer.

So spamming not only does not pay, but it can be very dangerous. Therefore, it is a good idea to have the consent of the recipient before starting your email marketing. The body of the message should contain a way of easily and immediately withdrawing consent and unsubscribing from the list. Recipient consent, an immediate unsubscription option and a clear explanation of how the recipient's email address will be used when asking for consent are fundamentals of permission marketing. The inventor of permission marketing, Seth Godin, defines it as a marketing strategy with the objective of obtaining the consumers' permission to communicate with them. Having the consumers' permission ensures that they will pay greater attention to our message. However, permission marketing alone is not enough to ensure the best results from an email marketing campaign.

For example, take the case of a customer who buys a computer from an e-commerce web site and gives permission to be kept informed about promotions. Then every fifteen days a message arrives containing all the promotions for the period. This message is so full of promotions that the customer finds it lengthy, bothersome and even irritating to locate what is really interesting. Although interested in computers and familiar with the sender's address, this customer decides to withdraw permission.

It is not enough to collect recipient consent to obtain the best results from email marketing. It is essential that communications be precisely in tune with the customers' interests, in other words, to use precision email marketing. For example, in the case just described, besides obtaining the consent of the customer, it would be important to know what types of promotions would interest that customer. Furthermore, because the interests of each of us varies over time, using precision email marketing means setting up a dialogue with the recipient, so that we can find out promptly when interests or preferences change. Unlike spamming, precision email marketing requires time, professionalism and extensive use of computerized tools. These are all elements that make it possible to obtain the best results.

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