At a recent online marketing conference, I taught a 4-hour introductory session on email marketing best practices. But my carefully structured agenda got shredded when about half of the participants and I spent 30 minutes discussing - make that "arguing about" - whether you need to get permission first...

...before you start emailing offers or newsletters. You know where I stand on that issue. Permission is basic equipment, not an optional extra. Ten years after email marketing proved its commercial viability, it has become standard practice for legitimate email marketers because it is a key component for optimizing deliverability, return on investment and recipient trust.

So, I was a bit stunned by the pushback from these marketers on an issue which, for me, hasn't been an issue for years. Although I emerged a little battered from the session, it was a strong reminder that thousands of marketers still haven't climbed aboard the permission-email-marketing train.

Permission Email Marketing: The Challenge

I can understand why some session attendees resisted the idea that they need to get permission first. Many were new to email marketing but worked with other channels -- print, radio, TV or direct mail – that don't demand that you get permission first.

But email is different. It's a personal medium, like the telephone. Well, telemarketing wore out its welcome with a vast number of Americans, and unsolicited email has, too.

I can also understand the marketers' concerns. They're getting OK results (or so they think) right now when they send out a general email blast to a list cobbled together from customers, trade shows, demo requestors, white paper downloaders, etc. But excuse me! If getting mediocre results is good enough for you – then you can stop reading right now.

On second thought, stick around. You're exactly the person who needs to see why it pays to get permission.

Here's my elevator speech: When you market to people who have told you expressly that they want to hear from you, you can expect to see these results:

1. Better response rates
2. Increased trust and brand affinity
3. Better deliverability

Yes, it takes time and money to build a permission-based house list and create targeted, relevant offers and messages. Yes, your list will be smaller than if it was an unsolicited email list. When your sales manager or CEO is in your face demanding cash-money results right now, "permission" can be a tough concept to sell.

But email marketing isn’t about list size or smacking recipients with email after email. It is about getting great results and building relationships. Quite simply, permission gets better results and is the only way to build email relationships with customers and subscribers.

Some marketers think their “non-permission” programs are working just fine. One workshop participant argued that opt-out was getting good results, but when I pressed him, he didn't know what kind of open, click or conversion rates his program was pulling. I’m sure his company was getting some responses and maybe they were thrilled. But the point is I bet the results could be 5 times better using a permission-based approach.

What is Permission?

"Permission," at its most basic, is the user's consent to receive emails from you. But there's a lot more to it.

Permission breaks down into "expressed" versus "implied" consent. Expressed permission comes from the user himself, when he checks a box requesting your emails on a site-registration form or point-of-purchase postcard, agrees in person or sends in an email request.

"Implied" permission is not actively given but is a by-product of another action, such as not removing the checkmark from a prechecked email-permission box on a site registration form, or clicking the "agree" radio button on an end-users agreement that lists receipt of email as a condition of using the site.

As far as I'm concerned, expressed permission is the only acceptable version. Implied permission is just another name for opt-out.

The 2003 U.S. law regulating commercial email, popularly called CAN-SPAM, permits opt-out marketing but with a couple of conditions: All commercial emails must have a working unsubscribe function. Plus, emails sent to recipients who didn't give you "affirmative consent" must include language that the message is "a promotional email" within the message.

But CAN-SPAM just establishes legal criteria for email marketing. It doesn't promote best practices, and "best practices" means opt-in only.

"Opt-in" is another name for permission email marketing, but even that has two levels:

• "Single opt-in": The recipient gets added automatically to a list after completing a Web opt-in form, sending in a postcard, emailing a request, etc.
• "Double opt-in" or "confirmed opt-in": The recipient requests a subscription, which generates an automated email message to which he must reply or click a link to confirm the subscription and be added to the list.

Overcoming Objections to Permission Email Marketing

Evidence has shown that permission-based email lists deliver better results and generate fewer unsubscribes, spam complaints and blocks:

1. Marketers who get into the game using opt-out strategies and then switch to strictly opt-in, using either house or rental lists made up of opt-in addresses, have reported seeing click rates jump from the 0.5%-3% range to 5%, 10% or even higher.

2. Findings from IMT Strategies (2001) reveal the importance of permission-based over unsolicited emails. Seventy-six percent of consumers will delete an unsolicited email without even reading it, compared to 2% for a permission email. Conversely, only 5% of consumers are eager or curious to read an unsolicited email as opposed to 61% with permission email.

3. A Harris Poll in 2003, taken just before CAN-SPAM was ratified, found 79% of Americans were "somewhat annoyed" to "very annoyed" by unsolicited email, even if it wasn't the typical spam. That annoyance transfers to your product or brand. Can you afford to irritate that many potential new customers?

4. Email recipients say they open emails from those they recognize and trust and delete unopened email from unknown or suspicious-looking senders. In a Forrester study, the two main reasons participants said they opened commercial emails were because they recognized the sender as a company they signed up with (40%) and because they recognized the sender's name (52%).

5. A Quris study in 2003 found that subscribers who demand high levels of permission and privacy are more likely to open and act on those permission-based emails.

6. Although the actual rate varies from sender to sender and list type (B-to-B, B-to-C), click-through rates on opt-out email lists hover in the 1% to 5% rate, while CTRs on house lists can be 10 to 20 percentage points higher.

7. An AOL User Behavior study from 2004 showed email newsletters that used double opt-in had a lower unsubscribe rate -- an average 7.6% -- compared with single opt-in messages, which had an average 22.2% unsubscribe.

8. The AOL study didn't include opt-out email, but a related study found AOL users were more likely to report unsolicited email as spam. When AOL 8.0 introduced the "Report as Spam" in the inbox, the percentage of email reported as spam jumped from 25% to 50%.  In another study, 71.3% of email users whose email clients offered a spam-reporting button said they used it because they thought it would stop all unwanted email.

Non-Permission Email's Two Secret Traps

1. When you send out email blasts to an opt-out audience, you might waste half or more of your spend by sending to email addresses that don't exist anymore or block your messages.

Address churn on a typical email list is 20% to 30% a year on average. So, if a list is two years old, more than half of the addresses likely have gone bad. If you're not the one who collected the addresses, you have no connection with the address owners, and they have no motivation to keep you up to date.

2. Opt-out can get you blacklisted, which means you waste even more money on undeliverable addresses.

Spam-reporting services often create specific email addresses and add them to mailing lists just to see who grabs them up and spams them. Then, they report those email senders to blacklists or file spam complaints.

You know that low-cost mailing list you just rented?  It's probably riddled with spam traps. If you get reported often enough, or if you generate enough spam complaints or bad addresses, ISPs and email providers will block everything coming from your email address, IP address, or domain or company name.

Why Permission Email Marketing Makes Sense

Surveys and statistics aside, permission-based email marketing just makes more sense, both for customer relations and your marketing budget.
 
Why throw money at people who have no demonstrated interest in your products or services? The little you earn from the few who will open an unsolicited email because they're interested in your product (about 11% in the Forrester study quoted above) will be offset by the diminishing returns you'll face as more ISPs block your emails.

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