Put SWYM to work for you. In the spring of 1999, Seth Godin s Permission Marketing hit the bookstores and quickly generated a summer buzz among Web marketers. He s the founder and president of Yoyodyne Entertainment, an online game company that s been a pioneer of email marketing. He feels that mass marketing, as it s represented by traditional advertising, won t survive. There s too much of it.
Consumers can t absorb it and have stopped paying attention to it.
Godin says mass marketers are like the guy who tries to find a marriage partner without dating first. They d be more successful if they built a relationship, exchanged some information, and made friends of prospective customers, before trying to sell them something. This approach is prohibitive using traditional print and broadcast media. But email is more cost effective and more powerful because it can be interactive and customizable. So it s like dating.