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Your Email Marketing
Permission Email Marketing: “Permission” Is Not Optional
One of the most commonly promoted but least practiced of all the “best practices”
related to email marketing is the aspect of permission: how you add email addresses
to your list and how – or even if – you gain the individual’s permission before doing
so. There’s a variety of different levels, from harvested names with no permission
whatsoever (i.e. spam) to the pinnacle of permission-based email, the double opt-in.
While those that don’t adhere to permission guidelines will argue otherwise, permission-
based list building has become standard practice for legitimate email marketers.
Not only is it considered a best-practice and one that respects your contacts and the
use of their email address, it is also a key component for optimizing deliverability, for
maximizing the return on your investment, and for gaining and maintaining recipient
trust.
 

Therefore, it is always a bit surprising to professionals in the email industry when the
issue is still debated and when large, respectable companies don’t practice it with
their own email programs. The ongoing debate serves as a stark reminder that thousands
of marketers still haven’t climbed aboard the permission-based email marketing
train. Don’t be one of them.
 

This whitepaper outlines:
• Why you should absolutely follow permission-based list-building practices,
• How to go about optimizing your opt-in pages,
• What to you should be doing with your new subscribers, once you have their permission,
• And how to handle unsubsubscribes.
 

Permission Email Marketing: The Challenge
Many marketers understandably resist the idea that they need to get permission fi rst. For anyone who has previously worked
with another channel -- print, radio, TV or direct mail – they may be unused to the standard to demanding recipients’ permission
before contacting them.
But email is different. It’s a personal medium, like the telephone. But as we’ve seen with the popularity of the Do Not Call List,
telemarketing wore out its welcome, and unsolicited email has, too.

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As well, many marketers who do email to a non-permission-based list will think they’re getting acceptable results from an
email program that sends out a general email blast to a list cobbled together from customers, trade shows, demo requestors,
white paper downloaders, etc. But the more experienced email marketers realize that a far more effective way may be
to email to a smaller list of individuals who have actually expressed a desire to hear from you. Why? Because when you
market to people who have told you expressly that they want to hear from you, you can expect to see these results:
• Better response rates
• Increased trust and brand affinity
• Better deliverability
Yes, it takes time and money to build a permission-based house list and create targeted, relevant offers and messages. Yes,
your list will be smaller than if it was an unsolicited email list. When your sales manager or CEO is in your face demanding
cash-money results right now, “permission” can be a tough concept to sell.
But email marketing isn’t about list size or simply blasting recipients with email after email. It is about getting great results
and building relationships. Quite simply, permission email gets better results and is the only way to build email relationships
with customers and subscribers.

What is Permission?
“Permission” at its most basic is the user’s consent to receive emails from you. But there’s a lot more to it.
Permission breaks down into “expressed” versus “implied” consent. Expressed permission comes from the user himself,
when he checks a box requesting your emails on a site-registration form or point-of-purchase postcard, agrees in person, or
sends in an email request.
“Implied” permission is not actively given but is a by-product of another action, such as not removing the checkmark from a
pre-checked email-permission box on a site registration form, or clicking the “agree” radio button on an end-users agreement
that lists receipt of email as a condition of using the site.
 

The gold standard is expressed permission, the only completely unobjectionable method. Implied permission is just another
name for opt-out.
 

The 2003 U.S. law regulating commercial email, popularly called CAN-SPAM, permits opt-out marketing with a couple of
conditions: all commercial emails must have a working unsubscribe function. Plus, emails sent to recipients who didn’t give
you “affirmative consent” must include language that the message is “a promotional email” within the message.
But CAN-SPAM just establishes legal criteria for email marketing. It doesn’t promote best practices, and “best practices”
means opt-in only.
 

“Opt-in” is another name for permission email marketing, but even that has two levels:
• “Single opt-in”: The recipient gets added automatically to a list after completing a Web opt-in form, sending in a
postcard, emailing a request, etc.
• “Double opt-in” or “confirmed opt-in”: The recipient requests a subscription, which generates an automated email
message to which he must reply or click a link to confirm the subscription and be added to the list.
 

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Overcoming Objections to Permission Email Marketing
Evidence has shown that permission-based email lists deliver better results and generate fewer unsubscribes, spam
complaints and blocks:
• Marketers who get into the game using opt-out strategies and then switch to strictly opt-in, using either house
or rental lists made up of opt-in addresses, have reported seeing click rates jump from the 0.5%-3% range to
5%, 10% or even higher.
• Findings from IMT Strategies (2001) reveal the importance of permission-based over unsolicited emails.
Seventy-six percent of consumers will delete an unsolicited email without even reading it, compared to 2% for
a permission email. Conversely, only 5% of consumers are eager or curious to read an unsolicited email as
opposed to 61% with permission email.
• A Harris Poll in 2003, taken just before CAN-SPAM was ratified, found 79% of Americans were “somewhat
annoyed” to “very annoyed” by unsolicited email, even if it wasn’t the typical spam. That annoyance transfers
to your product or brand. Can you afford to irritate that many potential new customers?
• Email recipients say they open emails from those they recognize and trust and delete unopened email from
unknown or suspicious-looking senders. In a Forrester study, the two main reasons participants said they
opened commercial emails were because they recognized the sender as a company they signed up with (40%)
and because they recognized the sender’s name (52%).
• A Quris study in 2003 found that subscribers who demand high levels of permission and privacy are more likely
to open and act on those permission-based emails.
• Although the actual rate varies from sender to sender and list type (B-to-B, B-to-C), click-through rates on opt-out
email lists hover in the 1% to 5% rate, while CTRs on house lists can be 10 to 20 percentage points higher.
• An AOL User Behavior study showed email newsletters that used double opt-in had a lower unsubscribe rate --
an average 7.6% -- compared with single opt-in messages, which had an average 22.2% unsubscribe.
• The AOL study didn’t include opt-out email, but a related study found AOL users were more likely to report
unsolicited email as spam. When AOL 8.0 introduced the “Report as Spam” in the inbox, the percentage of email
reported as spam jumped from 25% to 50%.
• In another study, 71.3% of email users whose email clients offered a spam-reporting button said they used it
because they thought it would stop all unwanted email.
 

Non-Permission Email’s Two Secret Traps
• When you send out email blasts to an opt-out audience, you may be wasting half or more of your spend by
sending to email addresses that don’t exist anymore or that block your messages. Address churn on a typical
email list is 20% to 30% a year, on average. So, if a list is two years old, more than half of the addresses likely
have gone bad. If you’re not the one who collected the addresses, you have no connection with the address
owners,and they have no motivation to keep you up to date.
• Opt-out can get you blacklisted, which means you waste even more money on undeliverable addresses.
Spam-reporting services often create specific email addresses and add them to mailing lists just to see who
grabs them up and spams them. Then, they report those email senders to blacklists or file spam complaints.
 

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You know that low-cost mailing list you just rented? It’s probably riddled with spam traps. If you get reported often enough, or
if you generate enough spam complaints or bad addresses, ISPs and email providers will block everything coming from your
email address, IP address, or domain or company name.
Why Permission Email Marketing Makes Sense
Surveys and statistics aside, permission-based email marketing just makes more sense, both for customer relations and
your marketing budget.
 

Why throw money at people who have not demonstrated interest in your products or services? The little you earn from the few
who will open an unsolicited email because they’re interested in your product will be offset by the diminishing returns you’ll
face as more ISPs block your emails.
 

Optimizing Email Opt-in Pages
Now that you’re convinced that using an opt-in process is the best practice you should follow, what do you do next? Make
sure that you’ve optimized your email opt-in process to your best advantage. How you present your opt-in pages and forms
determines the rate of list growth, the quality of your list and establishes subscriber expectations that subsequently drive
email performance.
Optimizing your process involves several steps:
1. Getting People to the Opt-in Page
Once someone is on your Web site, how do you get them to the opt-in page?
• Don’t Hide the Link – If your email newsletter/promotion is key to your business, make sure that it is easy and obvious
for Web site visitors to find the sign up page. Consider including links in main and secondary navigation and promotional
boxes in sidebar areas. Don’t make your visitors search to see if you offer an email newsletter. Include some form of link
on every page of your site.
• Don’t Disguise It – When referring to your email in links and navigation areas, don’t use some name or term that isn’t
obvious to all. For a link, “Newsletter,” “Enewsletter,” or “Email Newsletter” is fine.
• Home Page – If appropriate, promote articles and news from the current issue on you home page and then link to
article/issue.
• Back Issues/Articles – For newsletter publishers, make sure you have an area of your Web site such as a “Knowledge
or Resource Center” where you house archived issues and individual articles pulled from the newsletter. Then promote
subscriptions to your newsletter throughout this area.
• Web Version Subscribe Link – If you post your back issues on your Web site, make sure they include a “Subscribe” link
within the actual email.
• Product Pages – For online retailers, consider including copy in a prominent spot such as:
Sign-up for Retailer X’s free twice-monthly newsletter and get Special Deals and sales only available to
newsletter subscribers.
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2. Copy and Design/Layout of Opt-in Page
The purpose of your email opt-in page has one goal: to convert as many visitors as possible to subscribers. Its design,
layout and copy, therefore, should be similar to that of a landing page.
• Clean and Simple – The page should be designed in such a way that the images, copy and form instill
confidence, trust and value.
• Samples – Always include a link to a sample copy or copies of your email and consider including a hyperlinked
small screenshot of your email.
• Testimonials/Awards – Use testimonials in pull-quote format, either text or as an image, that highlight awards or
kudos that readers and third parties have bestowed on your email publication.
• Incentives – Offering up an incentive or discount is a great way to increase conversion. Whether it is a “free white
paper” or “$5 off your next purchase”, incentives work.
• Value Proposition – Subscribers are happy to provide you their valuable email address, but only in exchange for
something of value. It is important that your opt-in page copy and images convey the core value of your emails.
For example, if you are a retailer you should highlight things such as “email only specials”, advance notices of
sales and other value they will receive as an email subscriber. Newsletter publishers should stress things such
as the type of content, timeliness, your expertise and the content relevance to readers.
• Privacy/Email Policy – We recommend that you include a brief one or two-sentence email policy located near the
form “submit” button and a link to your company’s more-detailed privacy/email policy.
For example: Lyris will not use your email address or information for any purpose other than distributing the
Lyris newsletter and related special reports. View complete Privacy Policy.
• Expectations – Lastly, the copy and layout should set expectations for the recipient. This includes the frequency
which you send emails, if they should expect other communications from your organization and again,
accurately convey the value of the email. Further, clearly explain your confirmation process if you are using a
double (confirmed) opt-in approach.
3. The Opt-in Form
The point of course of the actual form is to obtain the right balance of information that you need to send, personalize, segment
and optimize your email program for each subscriber.
• Don’t Ask for Too Much Information – Your email opt-in form is not the place to qualify prospects or make them
jump through hoops. Don’t ask for information that you cannot use for email delivery and personalization/
segmentation. If you are concerned that you may have too many fields, consider denoting some of them as
optional.
• Don’t Ask for Too Little Information – By the same token, plan for the future. While only asking for someone’s
email address makes the sign-up process extremely quick, you have not obtained information that will help you
deliver more relevant emails to your subscribers. This includes format preference, name and other preferences/
demographics key to your program.
• Address Validation – To ensure that subscribers enter their email address correctly, include a script that checks for
syntax errors upon submission. Additionally, consider a secondary box that requires them to re-enter their
address. This will minimize invalid addresses due to input errors.
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• Form Fields – the minimum:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Email address
• Format Preference (HTML or Text) – In addition to providing options of whether to receive HTML or text, consider
including a note such as the following: Text is recommended if you use Eudora Light, Eudora Pro 3 and below,
Lotus Notes versions below R5 or AOL 5.0 and under.
• Form Fields – optional:
- Secondary Email Address – Since approximately a third of your list will change their email address every year,
consider asking for a secondary email address. Then when their primary address bounces you can send a
follow-up email to the secondary address.
- Frequency – Many sophisticated etailers and publishers give subscribers the choice of how often they wish to
receive emails, i.e., daily, weekly, monthly.
- Demographics (gender, age, location, etc.)
- Interests/Preferences (topic, rock vs. jazz, etc.)
4. Other Opt-in Pages
In addition to your actual email opt-in form pages, there are other means on your Web site of gaining new subscribers,
including:
• Download/Registration Pages – Always include an email subscription check box as part of your registration
(download white papers, membership, demo request, etc.) forms. This approach can generate a subscription
conversion rate of 50 percent or more.
• Purchase/Shopping Cart Pages – Be sure to include product/shopping preferences in your shopping cart form
and a clear opt-in check box for your email. Lyris recommends that you NOT use pre-checked boxes. If you
choose to use this approach, however, the CAN-SPAM Act requires that you include a notice of advertisement in
the email.
A Good First Impression Equals Stronger Opt-In Relationship
Congratulations! You’ve initiated an opt-in – hopefully even double opt-in – process for your list. That’s great, and you should
feel good because you have done the right thing both for your brand as well as for your subscribers and those that you didn’t
indiscriminately subscribe to your list. What now?
Now that you’ve these new subscribers on board, your first task is to begin to engage them – and quick! By bringing them
into the fold, letting them know you appreciate their interest, you’re demonstrating that you value them and want to respect
their needs and they desire to hear from you.
As with old-line direct marketing, the best addresses on your mailing list are the newest ones, the owners of which are more
likely to open and respond to your email messages than even those who have been on your list for just three months.
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Why then does it take some marketers days, weeks, sometimes forever to send even a basic welcome message? This
problem is bad enough when opt-in is done solely online. It gets worse when your program also collects email addresses at
point-of-purchase outlets in a store, at an event, on the phone, or in customer-service contacts.
Engaging new subscribers is an issue marketers deal with all the time. First impressions count when building a relationship
with new opt-ins. That can reduce future spam complaints due to lack of brand recognition.
Get the Ball Rolling
We’re actually talking about two problems here:
• Timely database entries – Get names entered into your database as soon as possible after the opt-in. For retailers,
customer-service staff, and others in the brick-and-mortar world, this means relaying them to your intake center
daily if possible, but certainly no less frequently than weekly.
• Immediate response to the opt – in. This includes not just a “thanks for subscribing” welcome message, but a
whole package of offers, information, past articles, downloads, or whatever else it takes to gather your new
subscribers into the fold and make them eager to see you show up in their inboxes.
The first three weeks or so are the most critical for converting new opt-ins from browsers into loyal customers. Take this
opportunity to build your brand recognition. Show email subscribers immediate value.
Here’s a three-stage quick start program:
1. Optimize Your Welcome Message
This goes out as soon as possible after the opt-in. Your list management software should be configured to send a welcome
message as soon as an opt-in is confirmed. This is also why names that originate at the cash register or in the customerservice
pipeline must also be confirmed ASAP. Your welcome message not only confirms the opt-in but also starts the loyalty
and brand-building process. It should include:
• A thank-you for signing up, along with a reminder about where and when the sign-up occurred, if your list
software provides that much detail
• An invitation to fill out a preference form and provide postal data as a backup should the email address fail
• A request to be added to the recipient’s address book or personal whitelist to ensure future delivery
• A link to your Web site’s privacy policy and a short statement about what you’ll do with the email address
• Customer service contact information (toll-free numbers to reach a live support person)
• A special offer available only via email exclusively for new subscribers
• An unsubscribe link (required by CAN-SPAM and other government email regulations)
2. Fire Up the Welcome Wagon
Prepare a special mailing, sent a day or two after the welcome message, designed to be your subscriber’s guide to your
company, brand, or Web site. This should provide value to newcomers while also keeping your name top of mind. Include
these elements:
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• An exclusive email offer for new subscribers.
• Links to services or remote but useful areas of your site subscribers might not find on their own.
• A link to your most recent newsletter or offers they may have missed.
• Links to archived news stories or special-interest articles. This not only increases your utility to subscribers but
also provides more exposure for material you’ve already produced.
3. Request Opinions
After your subscribers have been around for a couple of weeks or so, send a survey or invitation to fill out a more detailed
preference form. Again, this mailing serves two purposes:
• You get more detailed information about your subscribers, which will allow you to better target your future mailings.
• You give your subscribers a value-oriented reason to interact with you, which should further cement your
relationship with them and provide less reason to hit the “report spam” button.
As usual, provide an unsubscribe link, but be sure it links to a page where they can tell you why they’re leaving.
One Final Tip
Scatter your email opt-in links everywhere: on each page of your Web site; on your landing pages for people who find you
through paid or organic search, in customer-service email, and anywhere else a link or blank is appropriate. Then, test your
opt-in process to make sure it works.
Optimizing the Unsubscribe Page
Regardless of how well you succeed in following best practices for your opt-in process, opt-in subscription pages, and
regardless of how targeted your content is to what you believe your readers’ or customers’ needs are, it is an undeniable fact
that your list will experience some churn. People will simply lose interest or perhaps they are getting information from you via
a different avenue, such as direct mail or proactively on their own, from your website, rather than waiting for your newsletter.
Regardless of the reasons, people will want to leave your list. However, this too is an opportunity for you to optimize the
process and glean more information at the same time, helping you to continue to improve your site and your content.
If your Web site’s unsubscribe page is like most others, it is probably a one-shot transactional page where the subscriber
goes to opt out. But this is selling this page and your subscribers short. Subscribers can have several reasons for wanting to
opt out, and a one-shot page doesn’t recognize those alternatives.
Unsubscribing itself has evolved over the years. Early on, marketers threw up one barrier after another to keep subscribers
around or simply ignored unsubscribe requests. That tactic backfired, of course, giving rise to the dreaded “report as spam”
button. So marketers moved on to a no-questions-asked policy: You want off this list? Click here and you’re gone.
Instead, treat your unsubscribe page like a landing page. Give subscribers options to manage their subscriptions and market
your other email programs that might better meet their interests. Design is key to this page. Keep text to a minimum, remove
unnecessary navigation, headers, etc., and use graphics and buttons so that visitors can comprehend their options by
browsing, rather than having to read a bunch of copy.
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Phase One: Improve the Process
Assess how many clicks it takes to get from the unsubscribe link to the thank-you or acknowledgement page. (Hint: the correct
answer should be one.) Don’t make someone wade through four or five pages.
Don’t require a password to unsubscribe or make recipients log in to a preference center. You might require a password at
opt-in to reduce bogus subscriptions, but malicious unsubscribing isn’t a major problem.
If you require recipients to send a removal request only by email, trade it in for a Web-based system. Unsubscribe requests,
and confirmations, can get lost or overlooked. The email also can’t tell you why the subscriber is leaving unless she takes
the time to write a note.
Test your unsubscribe system frequently to make sure it works. Test the link every time you send an email, and check the
whole process from the first click to the last confirmation about monthly. Watch all mailboxes associated with your email
program to see if anyone complains the unsubscribe isn’t working.
Do away with the unmonitored reply-to address. You miss out on important feedback that could alert you to problems before
the recipient feels forced to unsubscribe.
When you improve the unsubscribe process, you boost deliverability. That’s because you make it just as convenient, if not
more so, for subscribers to opt out the right way instead of clicking the “report spam” button. That, in turn, improves your
reputation with ISPs and third-party authenticators and accreditors, making you less vulnerable to blocking and filtering.
Phase Two: Your Unsubscribe Page
A useful subscription-management page could have these features:
• A statement recognizing the subscriber’s wish to leave the list but also asking them to consider other options,
such as less frequent mailings, or other emails/newsletters, blogs, podcasts, etc. that your company may offer.
• A form allowing subscribers to change preferences instead, including format (HTML to text or RSS or vice versa),
frequency, or type of mailings and an address change form
• A link to customer support or service, or a telephone number (if that’s more appropriate) for subscribers who
want to report a problem receiving or viewing your email. (This should also be part of the regular email message
template to keep subscriber frustration from escalating into unsubscribing.)
• Links to other resources on your site the visitor might find useful. Yes, they may be opting out of your email, but
they still might find that white paper or special offer of value.
• And perhaps most important, a quick exit survey (text box or clickable options) that asks for the reason for
leaving and any suggestions for improvement. More on this below.
Phase Three: The Exit Interview
Your unsubscribe process can work better with a simple two-phase upgrade, one that addresses unsubscribe reliability first
as detailed above, then helps you mine more data from your departing subscribers. You may even be able to salvage a few
customers. How do you mine this data?
Instead of letting unsubscribers go with just a thank-you note, give them the opportunity to tell you why they’re leaving.
You can use that information to sharpen the focus of your email program, redo your template or send schedule, improve
personalization, or find other ways to become more valuable to subscribers or customers.
The fastest way to do this is to beef up your Web-based opt-out page by requesting more information or by offering other
ways to keep the relationship going. Instead of a brusque sentence saying, “Thanks, click here to be removed from future
mailings,” an opt-out page should include these elements:
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• A form asking why the subscriber is leaving. You can either use a text box and let the subscriber use his own
words or provide a checklist of common reasons (no longer interested, don’t like the offers, too much email,
images don’t show up properly, mailings weren’t what was expected or wanted). You’ll get more responses from
a checklist.
• Keep it to two questions maximum. Preferably, have the survey form on the unsubscribe page so they don’t have
to leave, as once they do it is unlikely they’ll go elsewhere to complete a survey. Also, don’t require subscribers
to fill out the survey forms for an unsubscribe to take effect.
• Be sure to set up the page so it loads with the recipient’s address pre-populated in the form.
Why Invest in the Unsubscribe?
It seems counterintuitive to devote time and resources to helping someone opt out of your list. It’s certainly not a problem
(print) direct mailers have to deal with.
But that’s one of email’s advantages. Someone can pitch your paper catalog into the recycle bin and you’ll never know.
Email unsubscribe data, on the other hand, can help improve your program and retain more customers, even if they switch
to a different channel. Your recipients started the conversation—give them the last word.
Lyris, Inc. (OTCBB:LYRI.OB) is a leading marketing technology company that provides hosted and installed
software solutions for marketers at mid-size businesses. The company offers marketers an integrated technology
platform through its Lyris HQ product and point solutions including ListManager, EmailLabs, ClickTracks, BidHero,
Sparklist, Hot Banana and EmailAdvisor. These sophisticated, yet easy-to-use tools provide marketers a suite
of best-of-breed applications for managing email marketing campaigns, publishing and managing Web site
content, creating landing pages, optimizing Web sites and managing pay-per-click campaigns. Clients include
Nokia, Adobe, PalmSource, Johns Hopkins University and Jupitermedia. For more information, please visit
www.lyrisinc.com, www.lyris.com, www.emaillabs.com, www.clicktracks.com, www.hotbanana.com and
www.sparklist.com. The company is based in Emeryville, California.
Lyris Technologies, Inc.
5858 Horton Street, Suite 270
Emeryville, CA 94608 • USA
Toll-free in the US: (800) 768-2929
International calls: (510) 844-1600
Fax:(510) 844-1598
Customer Support: (888) LYRIS CS
(1-888-597-4727) or 571-730-5259
www.lyris.com
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