You’ve probably heard the term “permission marketing” at your organization, but may not be sure what it is.  In this post, Seth Godin redefines and clarifies permission marketing, a term he coined nearly a decade ago.

Chambers of commerce and membership organizations must embrace this philosophy.  The days of the "blast" email and fax to all members are over.  Other sites are using permission marketing to communication with you members and build relationships.   Yes, your members have paid you dues to deliver a certain number of benefits and services to them throughout the year.   And, you need to communicate your members when you deliver those services.

But you need to do it in the way that they want and get their permission to use additional methods as well.  From Seth’s blog post:

In order to get permission, you make a promise. You say, "I will do x, y and z, I hope you will give me permission by listening." And then, this is the hard part, that's all you do. You don't assume you can do more. You don't sell the list or rent the list or demand more attention.

You need a membership management software system that allows you the flexibility of recording many different types of interests and communications preferences for your members (and their employees), prospects, government officials and other entities you must communicate with.

In a previous post, I talked about collecting member intelligence on your membership application.  Guess what…you can also use the membership application to collect your new members’ permission to communicate with them in several different ways and on many different topics.  Send surveys to your existing members or use other social media to explain to them that you’re looking to communicate with them more effectively ask as them for their help.  They’ll be glad you’re making an effort to communicate differently.  Delivering messages to members about the topics they said they were interested in (and important to them) is the essence of permission marketing and can be very powerful.

This will be difficult for many organizations and very few do it well.  But those that do it well probably enjoy higher member satisfaction and retention rates.  And isn't that your goal?