Optism™

Optism provides permission-based, mobile marketing services. Providing the opportunity for mobile subscribers to opt-in to advertising messages based on their preferences is the core tenant of our service. Our blog series Permission Marketing in the News has been highlighting mobile and other permission marketing news for the past year. The leading proponent of permission marketing is Seth Godin who coined the term in his book Permission Marketing in 1999. To celebrate our one year anniversary, we are running a series of blog posts summarizing his book chapter by chapter and analyzing how changes in the mobile and advertising marketplace have impacted the recommendations in his book.

Here are our summaries of earlier chapters: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten.

In Chapter 11, Seth looks at the “ten questions to ask when evaluating any marketing program:

1. What’s the bait?
2. What does an incremental permission cost?
3. How deep is the permission that is granted?
4. How much does incremental frequency cost?
5. What’s the active response rate to communications?
6. What are the issues regarding compression?
7. Is the company treating the permission as an asset?
8. How is the permission being leveraged?
9. How is the permission level being increased?
10. What is the expected lifetime of one permission?

All of these questions merit attention, but we’re going to focus in on a few key ones that are highly relevant for a permission-based mobile marketing campaign. Read the rest of this entry »

Optism provides permission-based, mobile marketing services. Providing the opportunity for mobile subscribers to opt-in to advertising messages based on their preferences is the core tenant of our service. Our blog series Permission Marketing in the News has been highlighting mobile and other permission marketing news for the past year. The leading proponent of permission marketing is Seth Godin who coined the term in his book Permission Marketing in 1999. To celebrate our one year anniversary, we are running a series of blog posts summarizing his book chapter by chapter and analyzing how changes in the mobile and advertising marketplace have impacted the recommendations in his book.

Here are our summaries of earlier chapters: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven and Eight.

Seth starts Chapter Nine with a look at the impact the Internet will have on the world. In 1999, the Internet – or at least broad public access to it – was still very new. Still, it was already making billionaires out of the visionaries who figured out quickly how to make the most of this new phenomenon.

Seth identifies six key benefits that the Internet offers direct marketers – many of which we can now also claim for mobile marketing. With some paraphrasing and modernizing of Seth’s original text, these benefits are:

1. No postage costs
2. Testing any campaign or initiative can be completed very quickly
3. Response rates are high
4. You can educate people about your product and build their appreciation for its virtues over time (referred to by Seth as “curriculum marketing”
5. Once you’ve made a connection with someone, you can keep the conversation going with little or no additional cost
6. Printing is free (printing is done by the consumer, not you) Read the rest of this entry »

Optism provides permission-based, mobile marketing services. Providing the opportunity for mobile subscribers to opt-in to advertising messages based on their preferences is the core tenant of our service. Our blog series Permission Marketing in the News has been highlighting mobile and other permission marketing news for the past year. The leading proponent of permission marketing is Seth Godin who coined the term in his book Permission Marketing in 1999. To celebrate our one year anniversary, we are running a series of blog posts summarizing his book chapter by chapter and analyzing how changes in the mobile and advertising marketplace have impacted the recommendations in his book.

Here are our summaries of earlier chapters: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, and Six.

In Chapter Seven, Seth explores “working with Permission as a commodity.” He providers four rules to help marketers do this:

1. Permission is nontransferrable.
2. Permission is selfish
3. Permission is a process, not a moment
4. Permission can be canceled at any time.

“Permission rented is permission lost”

Seth’s first rule is very much in keeping with a mobile marketing best practice: the permissions you have been granted should not be shared, sold or traded to anyone else. This is very different from traditional marketing practices where selling and trading consumer data is a multibillion-dollar business. For Seth, “Permission Marketing is at odds with the secret sorting and evaluation of data.” As we’ve been reminded throughout the book, permission marketing delivers advertising that is “anticipated, personal, and relevant.” Brand messages that are received from an unknown source, from someone who has simply bought a consumer’s contact information, aren’t anticipated — they take the consumer by surprise. “And when you surprise a consumer, not only do you void permission, you increase fear.” Read the rest of this entry »