Ask before you send: best practice in email marketing

You meet someone at a networking event. They are interested in your business and give you their card. Can you start sending them your email newsletters right away? Or should you ask permission? Bryony Thomas debates the issue

Before we start, let’s declare a bias here, I’m a big believer in asking for marketing permission. Indeed, I see gaining permission as a bit of milestone in relationship building. So I always advise clients to ask people for permission before signing them up to an email newsletter, for example.

But it’s not always straight-forward. If you go to a networking event and exchange business cards with someone, should you take that as a green light to add them to your mailing list for your email newsletter?

Let’s look at the pros and cons.

Reasons for assuming marketing permission on the basis of exchanging a business card:

• They’ve given you their card with their email address, so that means they don’t mind you emailing them.
• If you give them the option to unsubscribe, that constitutes choice and respect for their preferences.
• Hitting delete or unsubscribe is easy, so you’re not really putting the recipient to any trouble.
• They may never have subscribed otherwise, and they may well find your newsletter riveting.
• Getting people to actively sign up for email is hard work.
• Email marketing is a numbers game, so you want to get it out to as many people as possible.
• It’s not illegal.

Arguments against assumed email permission:

• It’s commonly seen as best practice across the marketing industry.
• It’s polite to ask people before sending them blanket emails.
• The practice makes some people very angry, and will often lower their opinion of you and your organisation.
• With the advent of smart phones, most people receive email wherever they are and it can be highly disruptive to receive such email on the move.
• If you assume permission you can’t easily get recipients to state preferences, like frequency and areas of interest.
• Inbox management is often cited as a cause of workplace stress.
• You can’t as easily measure how interested people are.
• Free email marketing systems, like Mailchimp, make it very easy to ask for permission.
• Email marketing is an engagement game, it’s quality not quantity that counts.
• It may not be illegal in the letter of the law (debatable) but it’s certainly not in the spirit of the law.

So why do people assume permission just because they’ve met at a networking event?

Because they’re lazy

Having a system in place that allows you to politely ask for email permission as part of your networking follow up takes a little effort. But not a lot. Here’s how we do it. It takes one person about an hour a month. After a networking event we pop the details of the business cards we’ve received in our database. We tag them with a code that indicates that they are to be asked for email permission that month. At the end of the month everyone with that tag receives an email giving details of our newsletter, a list of benefits, a link to an archive of previous newsletters and a link to the sign-up form. They then actively choose whether to opt-in. If they don’t opt-in, they don’t receive any further marketing emails.

This doesn’t stop you emailing them as one individual to another, to ask them for a coffee or for their advice on something – that is indeed why they gave you their card, it just means that you don’t send them newsletters or offers by email.

For those who are interested, our database system is Highrise and costs us £15 per month. The email system is Mailchimp, which is free.

Because they’re scared

The other reason I encounter is that people think that if they don’t sign people up quickly after meeting them they will have missed their chance. Again, I don’t agree. There are other ways to stay in touch and gain permission when the time is right. The first is as I’ve described above. We get between a 25 per cent and 75 per cent sign-up rate to these monthly emails. We connect with interesting people we’ve met in various ways after networking. We hook up on LinkedIn, follow them on Twitter, or meet them in person for a coffee. Each of these settings offer an opportunity to ask for permission. In the week leading up to distribution of our monthly e-news we pop a link to the sign-up form on our LinkedIn statuses and on Twitter. So, if they hadn’t signed up earlier, they may choose to now. And, in person, Mailchimp has an excellent App that allows us to sign people up in person if they wish to. So, don’t be scared that you’ve missed your chance. If your newsletter is regularly and clearly signposted, and compellingly described, they will opt-in if and when they want to.

Don’t be afraid of a small mailing list. A small email list filled with people who read your stuff and pass it on is much better than a vast list of people who really don’t care and can’t remember how they got onto your list in the first place.

And, don’t be offended if people don’t sign-up, it doesn’t mean that they don’t like your company, it just means they don’t want your email. There are plenty of organisations whose content I consume through RSS feeds or via Twitter, so I don’t need their email. I may already have a very high opinion of them, but I don’t need the level of detail of the newsletter.

Because they’re rude

The third possibility is one I dearly wish wasn’t true, but it is. Some people really do think that it’s OK to send you email that you didn’t ask for. I mean unsubscribe is pretty easy isn’t it? Well, no not always. For example, on my phone, which is where I receive most of my email, unsubscribe is often a bit tricky. So, I end up deleting and then getting the damn thing again next month. And, even when I am at my desk I usually have well over 200 emails per day that actually pertain to my working life – I really, really, don’t want to waste a single second unsubscribing from stuff I didn’t ask for.

Needless to say, when it happens the sender loses credibility with me, and reduces their chances of winning my business or being referred business from me. And, seeing as I’ve referred over £500k of business to my network in the last two years, I’m guessing that’s not the result they were aiming for.

Is making an assumption worth it?

It’s true that you can’t please all of the people all of the time but you can be sure to infuriate some of the people every time you assume email permission. As such, is it really worth it? Moving to an active opt-in might lose you a few people you may previously have captured, but it will gain you a more loyal and engaged audience in the long term.

Bryony Thomas is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and a marketing consultant, speaker, and author. Her first book – Watertight Marketing – is available Summer 2012. 

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