Permission Marketing

Earlier today while I was doing some listing on eBay I was listen to a podcast by Seth Godin talking all about market and permission marketing. If you have not heard of Seth before go and do a quick Google of him and watch, listen and learn from the man and then put into action what you have learnt. But one of the stories that he told really struck home with me and got me thinking how can we put this into place into our eBay business, and with a few tweaks I think we could and make it work.

The story went something like this. -

Hallmark Cards are one of the largest retailers of cards and the people who visit their shops on a regular basis in the USA buy on average 52 cards a year not including Christmas, but for some reason card sales dropped off in July. And it appeared it was just July and then in August they picked up again. This got one of their employees thinking how they could make sales and make profits in July, so he came up with the idea of selling collectible Christmas decorations and sell them in July.

Now when you first hear this you think who would buy Christmas Decorations in July, then come home and store them to Christmas and bring them out and put them up……….. well hundreds and thousands did. And if my memory serves me right in year two they sold $100 million and made a profit of $92 Million. (but please do not quote me on this). But the story does not stop there.

Remember how I said they were collectible?  Well when someone bought an item the sales person asked them a question or two. They said would they like some advance warning when the new decoration was out, most of the people said yes and gave over Name, and Address. Roll on year two, the cards all went out in med- July 24 hours later the Hallmark Shops were all sold out of stock and that is where the $100 Million sales came in and this built year in and out.

But also something else happened, when Christmas came around and that first decoration went up, people had friends around and showed off this new Hallmark Decoration and of course they loved it and asked where it came from. Their friend said it was a collectors club and next July when they get the card telling them the date when the new one will be out they would take them with them.

Hallmark have never had to do large advertising it has all been done by postcards and permission marketing.

So How Can You Add Permission Marketing To Your Business ?

Let’s say you sell a range of products that are only available certain times a year, you could build up either a snail mail list or an email list and when the time comes for these items to be in stock and you have them listed on the site, you send out an email and let them know. These people have already said they want to know, they like the product and they have money waiting to buy from you. This is permission marketing.

Or you sell a certain range of items that are quite hard to find, you build up a list of buyers of this item and when they come into stock, you just send out an email.

In all these cases the buyer has said “I give you permission to market to me” – or they are ready and willing to spend money with you.

Andrew Milburn, eBay Consultant Based In Lichfield Staffordshire