This post is in relation to the last post I did on ZMOT – Here . Zero Moment of Truth was a huge topic at NADA this year but was not the only thing. The other side of the coin How are you doing at permission based marketing? - NADA Part 2 was permission-based marketing. For those who do not know, is marketing to those who have given you permission to contact them about promotions and relevant information about your brand. It is very similar to direct marketing (a form of marketing that requires a direct response in order to track the effectiveness of the marketing done) but in many ways distinctly different.  Forms of permission based marketing can include text promotions, e-mail campaigns, etc.  Since laws have been passed that require the acknowledgment from the consumer to receive such marketing advances permission based marketing has suffer its unfair share, but studies show that it is still out preforming Direct Mail marketing and only continues to grow. With Direct Mail which now gets a return rate of less than 2% on a good day, compared to email who gets an average click rate of 3-5%, it is sill the obvious way to go. Just on track ability and auto-responders alone the digital realm is much more measurable and what gets measured gets improved. That said even email marketing has its road blocks and pit falls. In this blog I want to discuss different ways to approaching quality lead building campaigns.

The idea of SPAM although has specific definable routes is a bit different in the real world. SPAM simply put is any unwanted or unauthorized content/communication. It can take on many different forms, frequencies, themes, and senders. It’s truly in the eyes of the beholder. You always want to put yourself in the viewer’s shoes. Even if you did business with a particular brand, would you really want to hear from multiple times a week? Back to the business point of view, unless they are your biggest fan sending them multiple communications a week will just wind you up on a blacklist, SPAM folder, or simply Unsubscribed – which only hurts your overall “score” in the email client world. This brings up a great though process though. Email Marketing is a diminishing return, meaning that your prospect list will only continue to become smaller and smaller. The concept of preference managers coupled with inbound internet marketing will help to keep your list fresh with new leads and give them choices on how frequent they want to hear from you and about what content. What about offline though? Other than the dead Direct Mail, how do we build quality permission based leads?

If you are a business owner with a retail store or brick and mortar, chances are you have some percentage of unique visitors coming in each and every month. So, what are you doing to convert them from Visitor > Lead > Customer? Consider this, nearly 80% of the population send and receive text now and over half of the adult population now have smart phones and use their browsers for web searches. So unless you plan to go up to every person with a clip board who walks in, it may be time to look into the most widely growing medium today – mobile.
I don’t mean making your website mobile friendly. I am talking about mobile marketing. Engaging with your visitors and collecting quality leads. If you have no system or mechanism in place that is creating opt-in campaigns, sending out text promos, or offering up customer surveys and feedback you may want to look for some help. Now you can attempt to set this up on your own but unless you have a very firm understanding of technology and telecommunications in general, you’ll need a company to do this for you. Shouldn’t hurt the old wallet too harshly and it will bring customers in to your business for additional revenue opportunities.