The face of marketing has changed forever in the last year and a half, and it shows no signs of going back. More than ever, customers are hyper-sensitive to when and how they’re being marketed to. This isn’t a bad thing… if you know how to understand customer expectations and meet them where they’re at.
For companies that are seeing these trends, this is a golden era where you can turn someone from being your average customer into being a raving fan of your brand– and the pathway to doing that heavily involves something called permission-based marketing.
If you don’t know what permission-based marketing is, then buckle up because not only do we need to teach you about why it’s the future, but we also need to educate you on the finer details of something that goes even deeper: consent-based marketing.
By mastering permission-based and consent-based marketing, you’re not only going to earn more die-hard customers and increased revenues, but you’ll also protect yourself from the expense that can occur if you don’t fully educate yourself on the new standards for digital marketing. Read on to learn more.
First, Let’s Discuss Interruptive Marketing
Do you love it when you’re watching your favorite show or YouTube video and an ad interrupts your viewing? You don’t? What about when you’re waiting for a webpage to load and it slows down to a crawl and a huge ad covers the entire article you’re attempting to read? Isn’t that your favorite thing?
Of course it isn’t. It’s not something that anyone likes, and these are just three of many examples of what is called interruption marketing. Interruption marketing is about as old as marketing itself, and it relies on a shotgun approach of telling as many people about a product or service as possible. These ads are most commonly interjected where people are already giving their attention such as radio, television, websites, etc.
The strategy in this type of marketing lies in the hope that if you tell enough people about what you’re selling, some percentage of them will be interested, and hopefully, it will lead to enough sales to make your marketing money back plus a profit. The issue is that no one likes being interrupted. So when a consumer is giving their attention to something they’re interested in and you barge in with your advertisement, you have a small chance of converting them, and nowadays it’s actually more likely that they’ll become disgruntled.
The bottom line is that more and more, people don’t like their user experience interrupted while a product or service is waved in their face, and many people consider it a turn-off. People want to spend their time on the things they choose, and when you impose your ads on them, it can actually have the opposite effect of what you’re intending.
If your entire strategy is based on interruptive marketing, you’d better start coming up with a plan B– and don’t worry, we have you covered with some details on a new strategy.
Permission and Consent
Permission-based marketing is the opposite of interruptive marketing. In this form of advertising, you’re giving your audience the opportunity to choose whether or not they receive promotions. The idea is that if you only spend your time, effort, and marketing budget on people who are interested in your message, it’s a win-win for both sides.
One prime example of permission-based marketing is offering the consumer something valuable in exchange for permission to contact them. As a trade for a customer opting in, you would offer them something that’s inexpensive (or no cost) to your business. For example, you can offer your customers a white paper, a how-to guide, a report, an exclusive video, or other premium information at no cost if they’ll give you their email address and other contact information.
The beauty is that permission-based marketing is often cheaper in the long run because rather than taking the shotgun approach of interruptive marketing you’re marketing to an audience that is far more receptive to what you have to offer.
We want to get pedantic for a moment. While they may seem like direct synonyms, there’s a difference that has emerged between permission-based marketing and consent-based marketing over time.
Permission-based marketing is where the audience has a choice not to participate in a promotional message. For example, a skippable video ad could be considered permission-based marketing. The consumer has the option to skip it or watch it, either giving or refusing permission.
Consent-based marketing, however, is more specific and formal. When you get someone’s consent to market to them, it only counts if it is express permission that is written or otherwise provable. This becomes very important when you begin to understand that there are laws related to how you can market to prospects, and having their written consent is a major part of this equation.
Consent: It’s Not Just a Good Idea, It’s the Law
This is where the difference between permission and literal, provable consent comes into play. In 1991, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was signed into law. This was designed to protect the average consumer from the constant barrage of interruptive sales calls and messages they were receiving.
The TCPA clearly states that a customer must give a business explicit permission to contact them using phone calls (on landlines or cell phones) or text messages. If that permission isn’t gained, it’s considered illegal to contact a customer in these ways, and can result in fines ranging from $500 – $1,500 per violation.
This certainly isn’t legal advice (and we recommend you do your own research), but there are some important things that actually constitute formal permission. Here are just some TCPA guidelines that you should consider using:
- Have provable consent that the customer is choosing to be contacted with promotions
- A way to opt-out of future messages
- Mention any fees that may come with their cellphone carrier from the text
- Mention your company’s name
So when it comes to consent-based marketing, the absolute best way to keep it cheaper is to be sure to adhere to TCPA guidelines, or you can be facing costly fines.
Validiform Makes Consent-Based Marketing Even Cheaper
Validiform is a service that automatically captures consumer consent for you. Any time a customer fills out a form on your site, Validiform takes a video of that form fill that is then stored on our secure servers, and you can replay them anytime you need.
Validiform will protect you legally if the burden of proving consent falls on you (which is almost always does). Additionally, it will help protect you from fraud and increase your sales efficiency by helping to quickly identify which leads are real, and which are bogus.
Validiform is far cheaper than other leading brands. Our world-class software is available to you for only $99 dollars a month, with a nominal $0.01 per additional record stored monthly.
High Volume? No Problem
We excel at working with marketers of any size, but for any of you high volume marketers, our record storage fees cap out at $1,000 per month.
This means that once you go beyond 100,000 records at a penny each, you’ll never have to pay more than $1,000 total monthly for Validiform and the peace of mind it gives. No other lead validation company can touch this sort of pricing and flexibility.
If you’re a high-volume marketer, using Validiform is one of the quickest and simplest ways to immediately cut your costs.
Avoid a TCPA Lawsuit, Get Validiform Now
What are you waiting for? It’s time to protect yourself against fraud and TCPA lawsuits and it’s time to gain full access to all of Validiform’s features. You’ll also gain early access to Validiform’s updates to stay current with TCPA guidelines and the ever-shifting landscape of digital marketing and technology. This is a limited-time pricing opportunity, so act now.
If all of that wasn’t enough, we also offer educational tutorials and around the clock, world-class customer support.
It’s time to use the new industry standard in lead certification. Get Valdiform now.