Digital Marketing Student Blog: How to effectively increase your permission based email marketing database for a small food business

Following Beth Nicholson’s last post, I wanted to share her excellent blog on permission based marketing.

Permission based email marketing

Permission based email marketing was introduced due to the increasing amount of ‘spam’ emails that were being received by customers (Ellis-Chadwick & Doherty, 2012). It is now the law in England to obtain the recipients’ permission before emailing their account (GOV.UK, 2017). Read the government rules on email marketing.

However, this has created an additional challenge for businesses. The task now is to be able to successfully persuade customers to ‘opt-in’ to receiving their emails, in order to target them directly. Once the ‘opt-in’ has been successful, email marketing allows a bigger return on investment (ROI) than any other online marketing tactic (Pavlov, Melville & Plice, 2008). This is perhaps because, unlike social media posts, an email has the ability to sit in a customer’s inbox until they are ready to engage with it.

Ellis-Chadwick & Doherty (2012) found that the main incentive consumers face when deciding whether to sign up, is if the company matches with their personal interests and is able to draw their attention. Krishnamurthy (2001) explain that the more interested a consumer is in what you have to say, the more they will contribute, therefore increasing your email marketing efforts dramatically. The idea that a ‘deal’ must be struck between you and the consumer is an important concept. Consumers are much more inclined to enter their email address if they are made aware that they will get something back in return (Godin, 1999), ultimately creating trust as well as a relationship with the customer.

It is crucial that the consumers’ interest is created through the relevance of the message, as well as the financial benefits. It is also important to avoid costs and excessive information entry (Krishnamurthy, 2001). These ‘relational mediators’ emphasise a number of factors which Palmatier (2006) argues are essential for a successful relationship with the consumer.With these factors in mind, here are 4 tactics to increase your ‘opt-in’ rate:

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