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Permission Marketing is introduced by Seth Godin used in marketing in general and e-marketing specifically. According to Seth Godin, Permission Marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.

Sometimes, customers ignore marketing, so that’s why many experts said that to treat customer respectively is the best way to earn their attention. Nowadays, it’s important to know that customers’ satisfaction and attention is the best power to drive our marketing strategy become successful. Seth Godin stated that permission marketing is an old concept with a new relevance because Permission Marketing can take advantage of new technology better than other forms of marketing. Permission Marketing can use internet to boost it method through direct mail and it is known that internet offered low cost. Permission Marketing is the tool that unlocks the power of the internet. The leverage it brings to this new medium, combined with the pervasive clutter that infects the internet and virtually every other medium makes Permission Marketing the most powerful trend in marketing for the next decade.

Permission Marketing is an investment. Permission Marketing lets you turn strangers, folks that might otherwise ignore your unsolicited offer, into people willing to pay attention when your message arrives in expected, appreciated way. Permission Marketing encourages customer to participate in a long-term, interactive marketing campaign in which they are rewarded in some way for paying attention to increasingly relevant message.

Permission Marketing demands that in addition to looking downstream, marketers now look upstream. The challenge facing most companies is that they notice people too late. The process of getting new customers needs to be reengineered, so that there are five step cycle to obtain prospect: Strangers – Friends – Customer – Loyal Customer – Former Customer. Today, most marketers don't notice, track or interact with people until they are a customer. And some don't even pay close attention until the consumer becomes a loyal customer. Unfortunately, a few don't notice their customers until they become disgruntled former customers.

It's essential, given the high cost of talking to strangers, that marketers move their focus of attention up the stream. They need to have a process in place that nurtures total strangers from the moment they first indicate an interest.

At that moment, a suite of marketing messages must begin to be applied. The goal is to teach, cajole and encourage this stranger to become a friend. And once he/she becomes a friend, to apply enough focused marketing to create a customer.

Permission Marketing allows a marketer to speak to prospects as friends, not strangers. This personalized, anticipated, frequent, and relevant communication has infinitely more impact than a random message displayed in a random place at a random moment.

Permission Marketing is anticipated, personal, and relevant. Its means:

• 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 interest in.

Permission Marketing is like dating a customer. To date customer, there are five steps to go:

1. Offer the prospect an incentive to volunteer
   Every marketer must offer prospective customer an incentive for volunteering. The incentive you offer to the customer can range from information, to entertainment, to a sweepstakes, to outright payment for the prospect's attention. But the incentive must be overt, obvious and clearly delivered.


2. Using the attention offered by the prospect, offer a curriculum over time, teaching the customer about product or service


3. Reinforce the incentive to guarantee that the prospect maintains permission


4. Offer additional incentives to get even more permission from the customer


5. Over time, leverage the permission to change customer behavior toward profits

So, this is important to B2C to use Permission Marketing to reach the customers. The conclusions about the description above, Permission Marketing give benefit to not only B2C, but also to other types. The benefits are:

1. Permission Marketing let us to have a permission from customer and it help us to free from many bulk email and its not recognized as a spam since they choose to “opt-in” our newsletter.


2. Giving us the effective marketing communication similarly with one-to-one marketing as our marketing message is sent to the appropriate customers.


3. The growth in technology let Permission Marketing to be done in a low cost than other types of marketing strategies.


4. Permission Marketing give the opportunity to have a long lived in the industry, because its such an investment to change the strangers into our loyal customer.


5. Using Permission Marketings, Marketers can get trust from customers. B2C industry using internet media in their transaction really needs trust from their customers and Permission Marketing can accommodate it.

The way to do permission marketing can be shown like this below picture:

To talk with a stranger, get their attention and permissions, after that, don’t forget to do a tracking to maintain relationship. This way is starting even they are just a strangers.




Permission Intensity and Models

Consumers define the boundaries of their relationship with firms in such businesses. In some cases, they give the business tremendous leeway and in others the firms are held on a tight leash. Formally, permission intensity is defined as the degree to which a consumer empowers a marketer in the context of a communicative relationship. High permission intensity is characterized by three factors: high information quantity, high information quality and information usage flexibility.

There are four business models of Permission Marketing below:

Model 1. Direct relationship maintenance
Very little additional information is asked for and hence, there is no sophisticated targeting being conducted here. This is seen as an additional service offered to customers to maintain a strong relationship

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Model 2. Permission partnership
The consumer provides a portal or media site with the permission to send him or her promotional offers. After receiving this permission, the intermediary alerts its partners who wish to send out promotional offers. All consumers signed on receive all offers

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Model 3. Ad market
A consumer provides an infomediary with detailed information about his or her preferences and interests. The infomediary then uses this information to identify advertisers. The ads supplied by these advertisers are then carefully targeted to be consistent with the consumer’s tastes. Consumers win by reducing clutter and are paid to participate in the process, advertisers find target customers for their promotions with lower cost of targeting and the infomediary makes a profit by facilitating this exchange.

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Model 4. Permission pool
Different consumers provide different firms with the permission to send them promotional offers. These firms pool the information provided by the consumer and then promotional messages are sent out targeting this larger pool.

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The difference between model 1 and the rest is that in the former, an individual firm directly transacts with its customers while in Model 2, an intermediary such as a portal plays this role and in Models 3 and 4, an infomediary matches consumer demand for ads with firm ad supply. Naturally, since it may be inefficient for a consumer to sign up with several firms in the manner of model 1, the other models are likely to be more common.

Example:
SAP Newsletter



Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permission_marketing
• http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/permission-mark.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opt_in_e-mail
• http://www.bjoconsulting.com/review/permission_marketing.htm
• http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol6/issue2/krishnamurthy.html

There is no doubt if people tend to be more mobile, and this kind of behaviors shifting also affect to industry in almost every segments. To offset this transformational, industry begin to exploit internet advancement. So, nowadays, people become more familiar with every kind of “e-business”.

Hospital is one of industry which has to implement internet system in both their operational and marketing. Hospital marketing is, effectively a way to let local residents know about the services that a hospital provides. Not only that, time by time, Hospital marketing also reach global resident around the world who want to know about hospital information. Using this way, they can push down their cost in promotion and they may be able to get known globally. Also, Hospital marketing is used to prove that they are always improving their services and let people know about hospital credibility by inform their papers, article, social event or activity that done by hospital’s doctors or professors.

Meanwhile, Hospital also use internet to make their operational become more effective and efficient, it is called as Intranet Operational. The using of intranet is proven to improve hospital’s service both inside and outside. They can cut paper-based report or data (minimize or remove data loss); improve doctor’s easiness in accessing patient’s historical data, help in scheduling both nurses and doctors, rooms management, financial excellence, and many other benefits to improve their efficient and effective way in hospital work.

So, Hospital evolves to be more global in sounding their services to (potential) patients. Internet brings new face to Hospital industry, because by using internet, they have opportunities to increase their profit and extends their services. In brief, it can be said if expansion of patients means both a larger cash flow for the hospital to spend on upgrading equipment, hiring new staff, and giving bonuses to employees. But beyond that it may mean that people who would not necessarily know about the care that a hospital provides, are introduced to the idea. In other words, hospital marketing benefits both the hospital, and the community.

Look at the using of internet by hospital, we can see if step by step, hospital become know how to exploit internet to be more lucrative to them and more easy to be accessed by people.


Past

In the past, well-known hospitals which know about the benefit in using internet were starting to build their website that provide many information about their profile, doctors, services, facilities, and how to contact them. In brief, the past internet utilization by hospital is for:

1. Provide information about hospital
   Hospital give basic informational such as doctor, their services in hospital, sometimes, price also include in it.


2. Contact information or map
   To contact the hospital, they also provide contact information such as address.


3. Consultation by email
   Some hospital in the past also give chance to people to asking their question about health issue by consult it with the doctors.

Present

In present, Hospital website is become more complex and more informational, looks like other website, hospital trying to capture people’s interest in browsing their website. Now, we can say that Hospital industry that develop website can be called as e-healthy.

The development in hospital website relate to the patients as their customer. Consumers have embraced the e-health revolution with alacrity, arming themselves with the necessary tools to become "online patients." They can be found on the Web seeking information on a recent diagnosis, checking for provider information, and even filling prescriptions. In an industry long characterized by traditional patient/provider interactions, the consumer as a driving force behind e-health is a new paradigm.

As a result, health care professionals are only beginning to realize the many implications of this trend. And while it's consumers who drive the e-health revolution, their satisfaction is not the only benefit. Developing and implementing a comprehensive e-health strategy can be an all-around win for physicians, hospital administrators, payers and consumers. Health care organizations that are proactive, giving consumers what they want, will be able to carve out their place in the emerging e-health movement.

Now, e-health or Hospital website is prepared to afford:

1. Descriptive Information about hospital
   It includes the services provided by hospital, facilities in hospital, information about their nurses, doctors, slogan, environments, prices, and contact information. By provide this information, customer acquisition can be done by impress them by price competitive, place, cleanliness environment, advanced technology in their facility. Sometimes, some of Hospitals can add Online Value Propositions (OVP) by adding their slogan in their website.
   
   
   
2. Online appointment
   Nowadays, many hospital websites provide online appointment. Using this way they target people who do not want to waste their time to go the hospital and waiting for their next or do direct appointment by phone. Using online appointment, they can save time and make sure what time they have to go there.
   
   
   
3. Health Information
   In their website, they can provide health information related with diseases. This information may be containing what is the disease, its symptoms, and how to deal with it. By provide this, people will know that the hospital is care about health and expertise in that area.
   
   
   
4. Health Archive (Article, Paper, Journal)
   Some of Hospital websites also have journal or article published by their doctors or professors, using this article; they can introduce themselves as a hospital that always improve their knowledge in health care.
   
   
   
5. Search Feature
   People who usually go there or people who know the well-known doctor and want to be his patient can search him easily.
   
   
   
6. Online assessment by specialist
   The new site provides many advantages for patients, in particular for individuals suffering from mental health related illnesses. Due to the stigma associated with mental health, the online services allow people to discuss their concerns, receive mental health education, ask questions and receive assurance from one of our experts online in a secure and safe environment.

Future

In the future, internet may be more exploited such as:

1. Online consultation using video conference with patients in specific time
   Patients can consult with their doctor vie internet, they have to make an appointment first and then if accepted, they will be informed about the time.


2. Remote Surgery (Becoming reality now, but related to technology and regulations)
   Remote surgery becomes reality now and it was succeed when it was performed for the first time. In the future as the internet structure becomes faster, stable, and reliable, remote surgery will be used often not only for surgery but also in education.


3. Improve services in appointment
   Some people think the condition or environment of hospital’s room is not friendly with them. As the industry become more develops, hospitals can provide service such as room decoration by the patient themselves through website.


4. Virtual visit to the hospital
   People can access hospital like they are walking in there. So, the website look s like more attractive to them and they can feel more familiar with the hospitals. Also they can put attention in looking the environment and views in hospital.