Successful Email Marketing is 1-to-1 Permission Marketing

When it comes to email marketing, many think plain bulk email: essentially the same message is sent to a large number of recipients. This is simple and cheap, but there's one problem with it: it does not work as good as it could and should, and it doesn't take advantage of email's strength.

Email's strength is personalization. Instead of the same boilerplate message going to all of your house list at the same time, truly successful email marketing consists of personalized messages being sent to customers individually.

These messages take into account what the customer is interested in, what she bought in the past, how often she buys on average, her budget, etc. This is one-to-one marketing.

Tailoring your communication to the needs of the individual customer is only possible if you know a lot about her. In order to find out all this, and to enter and continue the dialog at all, you need her consent. The recipient gets only the marketing messages she is interested in, and you get her attention and, if you get it right, eventually her money. This is permission marketing.