Email Marketing: The Value of Getting Permission

As marketing professionals, we’re constantly on the quest for the ultimate results: high open and click rates, plus increased customer engagement. Marketing teams skillfully craft attention-grabbing subject lines, captivating content, and perfectly-timed campaigns to propel businesses forward. These actions are key to maintaining powerful connections with customers.

Just as important as beautiful content is building and maintaining trust with those who grant us access to send to their inbox. Failing to honor that trust unravels the benefits of all our other marketing strategies. When marketing teams keep permissions at the core of their work, they find:

• Subscribers are less likely to report emails as spam

• Deliverability rates remain high

• They maintain a good reputation with recipients and email platforms

• Subscribers interact with content at higher rates

The key to permission is making sure you’re getting the right kind of permission and you’re maintaining it throughout your relationship.

Getting Permission

What is express permission? Express permission is direct and clear communication agreeing to receive your emails.

Example: Someone signs up for your mailing list and you clearly indicate they are subscribing to your list and will receive marketing emails.

What is implicit permission? Implicit permission is when someone engages with your business through means other than directly signing up for your emailing list. This interaction is enough to assume they have an interest in your work and want to receive your campaigns.

Example: Subscribers can provide implicit permission through various methods, such as making a purchase or entering a giveaway.

If neither of these types of consent are received, you may be sending unsolicited email. Obviously sending email that’s not desired is not only a marketing no-no, but could also be against the law. It’s important that as a team, you know the laws for your country and the country where your subscribers are. If you are actively sending emails to subscribers in other countries, you are bound by the rules of your country and the rules of the country in which your subscriber resides. Depending on your audience, here are some laws you may need to know:

• United States: CAN-SPAM Act

• Europe: GDPR

• Canada: CASL

• Australia: Spam Act 2003

Keeping Permission

While getting permission is the first key step, maintaining permission is equally important. Respecting subscriber preferences by providing a simple way to manage their subscription or to opt-out entirely is essential to preserving business credibility. This means subscribers can easily opt-out from your campaigns altogether because they no longer have any interest in hearing from your business at all, or allowing them to manage the types of campaigns they still want to receive. Mailchimp, one well-liked marketing platform, offers a smooth process by allowing you to set up groups that subscribers can quickly update from their profile. Our popular plug-in, SugarChimp, syncs this data between Mailchimp and SugarCRM to bridge the gap between teams so everyone stays informed of changes quickly and accurately!

In addition to keeping subscribers in control of the type of content they receive, it’s also helpful to always allow subscribers the option to opt-out. Subscribers should have easy access to opt-out at any time, with every campaign. Most marketing platforms (including Mailchimp) offer a simple, one-click unsubscribe process. You can also mitigate risk by ensuring your whole team knows who has opted out by syncing that data to Sugar by using SugarChimp. Unsubscribers from Mailchimp sync quickly to Sugar to protect Sugar users from inappropriately reaching out to leads who have opted out.

Emailing with the right permissions allows customers and leads to build trust and faith in your brand and your company. But getting and keeping permission doesn’t have to be time-consuming. To see how SugarChimp can simplify permission-based email marketing while still offering powerful tools for segmenting subscribers and sending targeted emails, schedule a SugarChimp demo today. Ready to get started right away? Start a free SugarChimp trial on SugarOutfitters at any time.

Contributed by: Heidi Washington, Director of Customer Support at Fanatical Labs