The costs and benefits of 'permission marketing'

Author Seth Godin has a reputation that precedes him: he's written more than 20 best-selling books, among them Tribes and Purple Cow.

His insights have held up well over time in the book Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers. Considering that the book was written in 1999, some of Godin's references seem quaint and/or obsolete - for instance, he references his love for his Palm Pilot.

At the time of publication, Amazon only sold books, but the author is prescient when he predicts Amazon will expand its reach with a reference to the behemoth it has become today.

The book is a breakdown between the traditional "Interruption Marketing," jumping in to communicate with consumers via traditional media like television commercials, and "Permission Marketing," a fundamentally different way of thinking about selling. If we had marketing clutter in our lives back in 1999, imagine the exponential growth of that clutter with new forms of communication.

The biggest breakthrough in technology - the smartphone - trumps the tech company examples the author uses throughout the book, companies that may or may not still exist. However, the point that consumers are burdened by the influx of messages hitting us at all hours of the day and in all forms (who doesn't love those billboards on the way to O'Hare?) is more relevant today than ever.

At some point Godin reveals the holy grail of advertising: frequency. Without permission to enter into the consciousness of our clients, customers and prospective clients and customers, frequency will be perceived as spam. (I learned in this book that "spam" came from a Monty Python skit in which everything that was served came with a side of the questionable foodstuff Spam - even Spam.) But once permission has been granted, that frequency of communication in whatever form is, if not welcome, at least permitted.

I learned about permission marketing from a member of the Wheaton Chamber of Commerce, Jeffery James of Spire2 Communications. James and I met through the chamber and we both ultimately became clients of each other, he as a designer and me as a business coach in a former career. In helping me set up my outgoing newsletter, James urged me to always ask permission, then to guard my company database with my life. This book reinforced what James told me those many years ago,

The other point of the book that caught me was Godin's reference to the conundrum of time as our most valuable commodity, and the brass ring for advertisers. Imagine how much more stretched our time is in 2023 than 1999, inundated as we are by messages from social media.

Permission Marketing is a kind of time capsule that demonstrates how far we've come, and how far we still have to go, in understanding what makes people tick and what makes people buy. One thing we know for certain: to be granted permission to talk with our clients and customers, to establish a real dialogue with them, is an act of trust. Trust can only be built over time, but once it's earned, trust can generate customer loyalty that's hard to beat.

• Vickie Austin is president & CEO of the Wheaton Chamber of Commerce. A longtime reviewer of books and a former contributor to the Daily Herald Business Ledger, she writes for business leaders and lifelong learners on topics related to marketing, sales and the power of human potential. You can reach her at president@wheatonchamber.com.