Let 'Em Opt In Before They Tune Out
Good morning, fellow leaders. I’ve been watching the news in the direct marketing arena lately, and the trend is for the government and to continue to narrow the ways your business can directly approach prospects. In fact, maybe soon the government won’t even allow businesses to call people “prospects” anymore (you have to remember, I live in California, where you can now sue someone for harassment if you only “feel” uncomfortable around them, so why couldn’t the same hyper protectionism extend to direct advertising contacts too).What I’m talking about is the growing number of barriers against contact. There are Do Not Call lists/ legislation, email newsletter and spam restrictions, hundreds of pop up blocking technologies, and now I’ve read that a dozen states are considering legislating a Do Not Mail list into existence. Yikes, I think I just heard Ed McMahon fall over from a heart attack.
What does this trend mean? It means that advertising is going to be allowed more and more only in an “opt in” context, in which a consumer has given you relational permission to contact them about what you do. This means that creating community relationships with consumers will be essential. The biggest way to do this is via the Internet.
When someone joins your newsletter list or checks out your company blog or forum pages, they are opting in to your presence, and are willing targets for your message. How are you designing portals for this kind of influence for your company? You will be able to go to them less and less through old direct marketing methods; you need to design ways in which they will be coming to you regularly if you are going to survive the whittling down of marketing messages in the new privacy rights culture.
You ready to “opt in” to that?
As always, if you have any stories or questions to share, I’d love to hear them!
Joe Pursch
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