Permission

Permission can be a "Catch-22" situation. You need a prospect's permission to send email, but how do you get it without sending email? You can obtain explicit email permission by using pay-per-click ads to draw prospects to a landing page, on which they exchange their email address (and permission to use it) for something of value. You can also send unsolicited email messages to addresses you obtain from a purchased list of leads. If you are a U.S. company, such messages are legal, as long as they comply with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Refer to online resources such as the Federal Trade Commission's site at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.shtm for more about the Act.

Whether you use online ads or a purchased list of email addresses, the key is to provide sufficient incentive for the prospects to explicitly grant permission for you to send future email messages. Offer a newsletter that provides valuable information, for example. Or offer access to an informative white paper. Although the CAN-SPAM Act permits the use of implied permission, you gain more credibility with forthright communication. Obtain explicit permission from your prospects by providing the right kind of offers to the right people.

Once you have permission, the next most important part of your plan involves cadence – that is, how often you communicate. Successful marketers have learned that monthly messages are too infrequent. You'll lose too much mind share if you wait that long before sending the next "drip" in your drip marketing campaign. Biweekly messages, on the other hand, are too frequent and can cost you sales by annoying the prospect. The best practice, therefore, is to reach out to a prospect every 21 days. Companies commit a common error when they have more than one person working from the same database. For example, one staff member might send a white paper offer to a prospect and another staff member, not knowing that message went out, could send a webinar invitation two days later. Software tools, such as marketing automation software, can help prevent such errors. More information about software appears below.

The most successful marketers do more than enforce a 21-day cadence. They go a step further by scheduling messages based on a prospective customer's explicit preferences. For example, they allow the customer to specify what day of the week is best to receive the messages. Then, instead of sending all their second stage messages at one time, they spread them out over a week, depending on the prospects' expressed preferences. This level of execution is another example of a place where effective software tools are of great assistance.