Online Means

There is no doubt that the most vital aspects as far as email marketing is concerned, is the permission marketing concept. This is the one and only thing that distinguishes genuine email marketers from spammers. But for some reason, this concept remains a difficult to understand area to many people, even to some professional internet marketers.

First things firsts, lets start by trying to clarify what constitutes spam, before pointing out what type of permission you need to have so that your email marketing campaigns are not considered as spam.

The permission aspect of email marketing is of tremendous importance, since you may have legal problems if you do not comply with all the rules and regulations evolved. I should also let you know that, just being within the law is not enough in this case. There are quite a number of mails which are well within the anti spam laws, but may still be considered as spam by the recipient.

It is quite true that the introduction of the anti-spam laws was a big step in the right direction, taken to categorize and reduce spam, but these laws do not help so much in spam reductions, especially because they usually differ from country to country, or even from state to state. Thereby marketing the permission marketing concept even more difficult to analyze.

Here is our definition of spam, which actually goes beyond the laws of different countries and encompasses what we believe to be true "permission marketing":

"Spam is simply an email that you send to someone whom you did not directly obtain permission to communicate with.

This definition may not take every aspect of spamming in to consideration. But as we all know, if you leave a word vague, you subject it to diverse interpretations. In our case, the word “Permission” is kind of vague. By observing certain common scenarios on the internet today, it seems clear that some cases, permission to send emails to certain people for marketing purposes, is not really given.

The type of permission you need to get
In most cases you can only work with email marketing professionals and service providers (Aweber and others) in sending emails if and only if you have obtained permission in one of the following ways:


1-Your subscribers have registered or opt-in to your mailing list through your website

This may be to register for your newsletter or maybe entering their email address in a check box when filling a form on your website. Please it is important to note that this checkbox should not be checked by default and you must plainly explain that by checking the checkbox, your website visitors are agreeing to receive communication by email from you.

2-Your subscribers have completed an offline form and have clearly indicated their wish to receive emails from you.

Permission for marketing is given If a person fills out an offline form, say a survey or a contest, you don’t in anyway have the right to use his contact information to send him emails, unless he clearly gave his consent by checking a box indicating they wish to be contacted by you.

3- Your subscribers have expressly given you their private or business cards containing their personal information

If someone gives you his business card and you've explained that you'll be in touch via email, then you have the right to send them emails on the subject you agreed upon.

4- Your subscribers have bought something from you in the last two years
Most people may not know this, but by purchasing one of your products / services, your customers have implicitly given their permission. You can well do your marketing by sending emails in this case, but it is still better to ask them before. So why not include a simple checkbox in your online payment process asking if they would want to receive emails from you?

The scenarios that are not permissions

Typically, anything that is not identified in any of the above situations, results to the email being a spam. However, it is good to clarify a number of scenarios that do not constitute permission.

1- You got the email from a third party
Whether you bought a list that has been provided by a partner or bought the customer list of a competitor who has gone bankrupt, people listed in that list did not give you permission to send them emails marketing your products, and therefore would consider your emails as spam.

No matter where this type of list is coming from, you can not work with email marketing professionals and email marketing service providers in this case.

2- You copy and paste or harvests email addresses from the Internet
Just because some people make their email addresses visible on the Internet, doesn’t mean that they want to read emails from you! It is not ethical to rip email addresses from the internet and start using them to spam people. Sadly enough that is what is happening on the internet today. That is gross violation of the permission marketing concept.

3- You have not send any email to the address for a period of two years or more.
Generally speaking in email marketing, permission does not expire. That not withstanding, if you had obtained permission legitimately, it is highly probable that your subscriber will not remember you if you don’t send any mails for very long periods of time. If you do not have anything sent to an email address for at least two years, then it is too late to start sending because your emails will be considered as spam. With this, you see that the permission marketing concept can be sometime tricky to deal with.