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Many online marketing experts assert that permission acquisition before sending an email offer is compulsory, and not optional. Most business owners would question the necessity of this tedious process, which also cuts down the number of people who see their promotional offer. However, despite the restricted number of advertisements sent out, this mode of email marketing gives much better response rates and a much higher level of brand affinity from the recipients. Let us look at a few advantages that permission based email marketing has over regular email marketing, and then you can decide for yourself what your business needs more!

Reasons for Sticking with Permission based Email Marketing:
•    When you send unsolicited email, half the addresses could be blocking you, or they simply may not exist anymore, so half your time and money goes right down the drain.
•    Low price mailing lists may seem like a very good option, but in reality they are full of what we can call “spam traps” – features that will show up in a spam filter and may get you blacklisted. For instance, spam reporters sometimes create specific email addresses and add them to mailing lists, just to check who sends an email there. The moment you deliver an email to that address, you will be reported.
•    There is overwhelming evidence that recipients of permission based emails will actually read the emails much more often than unsolicited recipients – in fact, according to IMT Strategies (2001), only 2% of recipients of a solicited email delete it without reading, opposed to 76% of recipients of unsolicited ones!
•    Secondly, according to the same study, only 5% of the receivers of unsolicited email opened it with curiosity and eagerness, opposed to 61% of permission recipients.
•    We often receive promotional newsletters for products that we never signed up for, but most of us also find that highly irritating. As a business owner or manager, you do not want to irritate prospective buyers. A Harris Poll in 2003 found that 79% of US residents found unsolicited email “somewhat annoying” to “very annoying”, and annoying that many people at once is a very risky move!
Finally, survey results aside, it simply does not make sense to promote your business with people who are not interested in it. You only risk irritating potential buyers, ruining your brand image, and eventually bringing down your sales and revenue. Before launching your emails, think twice about whether your business can afford that kind of risk. If not, then the time and money spent compiling a legitimate mailing list will be well spent.