Lingo alert: assumed permission
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on July 25, 2006
Assumed permission is a "grey" practice common among certain big companies and brands who think the normal rules of email marketing don't necessarily apply to them.
A few months ago I signed up to get a *specific* email newsletter from a "respected" media company. Today they sent me a different newsletter they publish...with the following message on top (I'm paraphrasing to protect the guilty):
"Since you subscribe to newsletter A, we figured you'd want to read Newsletter B, too. So we signed you up. If we're wrong, you can unsubscribe below"
I did not sign-up for this newsletter. The contents do not interest me. I really do not want yet more commercial email. So for me, it's spam. Perhaps not in the legal sense, but certainly in the marketing sense of the word.
There is a temptation to take an initial opt-in to something specific and assume that gives you permission to send the reader other material.
Although this breaks the rules of permission-based marketing, it's easy to convince yourself it's OK, because the recipient is bound to be interested in the new material, aren't they? So it's not really spam, is it?
But in my experience the assumption is often misplaced. People aren't that predictable.
So you may get away with it. If your assumptions hold, people might indeed welcome the new email. But more than likely your assumptions don't hold for everyone, possibly not even for the majority. And they might just react like me, and give you a big thumbs down in the image and reputation stakes.
It's a lazy way to expand your database. It certainly works for some, but it might just cost you more in the long run if you're concerned about image, reputation and the long-term viability of email marketing.
A better way, which is still a permission compromise (but one more people are likely to accept) is to send readers an example of the new newsletter, but require them to actively sign-up if they want to continue reading it.
(Update: Tom O'Leary of The Messaging Times comments on this issue and has an even more permission-friendly suggestion for how to get existing subscribers to opt-in to a new publication.)
A few months ago I signed up to get a *specific* email newsletter from a "respected" media company. Today they sent me a different newsletter they publish...with the following message on top (I'm paraphrasing to protect the guilty):
"Since you subscribe to newsletter A, we figured you'd want to read Newsletter B, too. So we signed you up. If we're wrong, you can unsubscribe below"
I did not sign-up for this newsletter. The contents do not interest me. I really do not want yet more commercial email. So for me, it's spam. Perhaps not in the legal sense, but certainly in the marketing sense of the word.
There is a temptation to take an initial opt-in to something specific and assume that gives you permission to send the reader other material.
Although this breaks the rules of permission-based marketing, it's easy to convince yourself it's OK, because the recipient is bound to be interested in the new material, aren't they? So it's not really spam, is it?
But in my experience the assumption is often misplaced. People aren't that predictable.
So you may get away with it. If your assumptions hold, people might indeed welcome the new email. But more than likely your assumptions don't hold for everyone, possibly not even for the majority. And they might just react like me, and give you a big thumbs down in the image and reputation stakes.
It's a lazy way to expand your database. It certainly works for some, but it might just cost you more in the long run if you're concerned about image, reputation and the long-term viability of email marketing.
A better way, which is still a permission compromise (but one more people are likely to accept) is to send readers an example of the new newsletter, but require them to actively sign-up if they want to continue reading it.
(Update: Tom O'Leary of The Messaging Times comments on this issue and has an even more permission-friendly suggestion for how to get existing subscribers to opt-in to a new publication.)
[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
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