No doubt you have filled out forms and questionnaires given to you by businesses in the past. As you see the fields asking about your phone number, marital status and occupation you’ve probably thought “why do they need all of this?” you may even have declined to provide that information. This method of getting to know someone is less than ideal (for most businesses anyway). Stop and ask yourself who would ever seek to make friends this way?

We prefer to approach the task of gathering information in a more organic manner. Like making friends in the real world your interactions with contacts and customers should occur over time. You will get to know them better and start earning their trust by staying in touch regularly and building up your knowledge of them over a series of interactions.

This is why we like newsletters so much. They are a great reason to touch base and show contacts and customers what you have been up to. By providing special offers and interesting information within your newsletters you can reward and reinforce the permission that has been granted. Of course when you send your newsletters with Mailshot you can also analyse the data to see who has opened your newsletter, who has forwarded it and what links they were interested in – which helps you to learn more about your customers and contacts with every edition.

Please do not forget that “variety is the spice of life” – do not keep repeating information or making the same special offers time and again. The last thing you want to do is bore a customer or contact and have them stop paying attention to you. This is a two way process and you need to show yourself and your business to be responsive and creative – and grateful for the permission you have been granted.

Well done! You have made contact and they want to know more about you and your business. So what next?

Now you need to invite your contact or customer to engage in a two-way dialogue in a way that will benefit both parties. The aim is for you to teach the customer or contact about your business, what you stand for and what you offer.  At the same time your customer or contact should be invited to tell you more about themselves.

This is where building a good client database comes in. All the information you can glean such as age, gender, family situation, geographical location, preferred product ranges, hobbies and interests etc may be useful to you in the future so take note now.  One of the beauties of Mailshot is the ability to build a database and use the information to segment your customers into groups. This lets you make special offers or provide more relevant information to particular people. You might make an offer to customers living in a single geographical region or let previous purchasers of a specific product know when you have more in stock. Mailshot will also let you analyse data from past campaigns and promotions to identify what individual customers are most likely to respond to. The more personalised your contact becomes  – the more likely your customers are to want to hear from you.

A word of warning however – your contacts and customers must be treated as  intelligent individuals. They will know if you are simply harvesting information – or if you are genuinely trying to get to know them better.  Try and approach it as if you are making a new friend – genuinely seek out the common ground and be prepared to learn from them. Ask how they find your products and service – and be prepared to follow up and make changes to the way you do things if needed.

A good permission marketer will take every opportunity to get to know their customer, earn their trust and inspire their loyalty.  We think of it as the modern version of enticing a customer into your corner store and then taking the time to get to know him or her. You want to earn their trust so they not only return to your store time and again but learn to trust your recommendations and suggestions – and in turn to recommend you to their friends and contacts.

At its simplest Permission Marketing requires the advertiser to obtain the permission of the customer prior to sending their promotional message.  We see two key parts to this statement. Firstly you need to find your potential customers and then you need to obtain their permission.

You might meet a potential customer in any number of ways. The easiest is by having an existing customer sign up to receive your special offers or newsletters voluntarily. Start by ensuring you have a “sign up” option on your website and, if relevant, a sign up sheet in your store. The customers who sign up voluntarily know  (or at least hope) they will be hearing from you – so touch base soon before they forget you or your business.

You might gather business cards at conferences or seminars or meet an interesting contact at a BBQ. An important difference here is that these people are contacts – not yet customers but you need to treat each and every one of them as a potential customer. We don’t think it is very useful to just assume a business card exchange is all the permission you need – how many cards have you handed out in the last month and to whom? If one of those contacts emails you out of the blue in a couple of months time will you still be interested in hearing from them? We think it is more effective to check with those contacts at the time of exchange cards that they do want to hear from you  – then follow up nice and promptly and start getting to know them – with luck one day they might move from being contacts to being customers.

You might incent new customers to give you the time of day by making a special offer or giving some kind of benefit (such as valuable information, a decent discount or a free sample). You could get this offer out there by advertising in many different mediums (online, radio, television or print) depending on the nature of your business. You might also ask your existing customers to recommend you or your business to a friend – just don’t neglect to thank them!