Permission Marketing

Permission Marketing by Seth Godin was a good read.   It's mostly a discussion of how the broadcast medium has changed over the last several decades and how you should react to that by developing a culture of marketing through customer permission.  This includes opt-in messages, events, and long term interactive campaigns.

We think of television as still being a mass market and yet Godin points this out:

The final episode of Seinfeld made media headlines.  Yet thirty years ago Seinfeld's ratings wouldn't have made Nielsen's list of top twenty-five shows of the season.

Permission Marketings is summarized as being anticipated, personal, and relevant.

Anticipated - people look forward to hearing from you.

Personal - the messages are directly related to the individual.

Relevant - the marketing is about something the prospect is interested in.