Share <Embed>

Buy New

$13.28

List Price: $26.00
Save: $12.72 (49%)

FREE Shipping on orders over $25—or get FREE Two-Day Shipping with Amazon Prime

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Ship to:

Select a shipping address:

Buy Used

$6.20

FREE Shipping on orders over $25.

Used: Good | Details

Sold by BigHeartedBooks

Fulfilled by Amazon

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Other Sellers on Amazon

Add to Cart

$6.95
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: normanbooks

Add to Cart

$12.15
& FREE Shipping on eligible orders. Details

Sold by: U.S. Bulk Distribution

Add to Cart

$5.90
+ $6.98 shipping

Sold by: Brockett Designs

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers Hardcover – May 6, 1999

by Seth Godin (Author)

250 customer reviews

See all 12 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$12.99

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$13.28

$5.89

$1.45

Paperback

"Please retry"

—

$7.16

$4.03

Audible, Abridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Audio CD, Abridged, Audiobook

"Please retry"

—

$185.88

$79.79

Unknown Binding

"Please retry"

—

$21.31

$4.86

The man Business Week calls "the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age" explains "Permission Marketing"—the groundbreaking concept that enables marketers to shape their message so that consumers will willingly accept it.

Whether it is the TV commercial that breaks into our favorite program, or the telemarketing phone call that disrupts a family dinner, traditional advertising is based on the hope of snatching our attention away from whatever we are doing. Seth Godin calls this Interruption Marketing, and, as companies are discovering, it no longer works.

Instead of annoying potential customers by interrupting their most coveted commodity—time—Permission Marketing offers consumers incentives to accept advertising voluntarily. Now this Internet pioneer introduces a fundamentally different way of thinking about advertising products and services. By reaching out only to those individuals who have signaled an interest in learning more about a product, Permission Marketing enables companies to develop long-term relationships with customers, create trust, build brand awareness -- and greatly improve the chances of making a sale.

Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers

$13.28
FREE Shipping on orders over $25—or get FREE Two-Day Shipping with Amazon Prime In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Frequently bought together

Total price: $41.58

Buy the selected items together

This item:Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers by Seth Godin Hardcover $13.28
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
All Marketers are Liars: The Underground Classic That Explains How Marketing Really Works--and Why… by Seth Godin Paperback $12.77
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin Hardcover $15.53
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Seth Godin

272

Paperback
$12.77
Seth Godin

585

Hardcover
$15.53
Seth Godin

479

Hardcover
$17.42
Seth Godin

272

Hardcover
$17.89
Jay Conrad Levinson

187

Paperback
$12.20
Seth Godin

301

Hardcover
$16.10

Special offers and product promotions

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Seth Godin, one of the world's foremost online promoters, offers his best advice for advertising in Permission Marketing. Godin argues that businesses can no longer rely solely on traditional forms of "interruption advertising" in magazines, mailings, or radio and television commercials. He writes that today consumers are bombarded by marketing messages almost everywhere they go. If you want to grab someone's attention, you first need to get his or her permission with some kind of bait--a free sample, a big discount, a contest, an 800 number, or even just an opinion survey. Once a customer volunteers his or her time, you're on your way to establishing a long-term relationship and making a sale. "By talking only to volunteers, Permission Marketing guarantees that consumers pay more attention to the marketing message," he writes. "It serves both customers and marketers in a symbiotic exchange."

Godin knows his stuff. He created Internet marketer Yoyodyne and sold it in 1998 to Yahoo!, where he is a vice president. Godin delves into the strategies of several companies that successfully practice permission marketing, including Amazon.com, American Airlines, Bell Atlantic, and American Express. Permission marketing works best on the Internet, he writes, because the medium eliminates costs such as envelopes, printing, and stamps. Instead of advertising with a plain banner ad on the Internet, you should focus on discovering the customer's problem and getting permission to follow up with e-mail, he writes. Permission Marketing is an important and valuable book for businesses seeking better results from their advertising. --Dan Ring

From Publishers Weekly

Godin, a business whiz kid who does direct marketing for Yahoo!, asks a provocative question: Does advertising work? He cites example after example of recent misguided campaigns, a "waste jamboree" of traditional ads aimed at consumers who no longer care. There's an "infoglut" out there, he says, of ads in myriad media whose only power is to "interrupt" people's lives. Godin's professional journey to his current status as a guru of online promotion began with his work for such industry bigs as Prodigy and AOL. Now, he specializes in direct-mail campaigns online, where he takes advantage of the interactive nature of the technology. Using traditional terms such as reach and frequency to define his efforts, he moves further, into the touchy-feely area of "permission marketing," his term for developing a personal relationship with consumers, where they actually enjoy receiving correspondence. On tape, Godin's message is winning because of his youthful attitude: self-assured, at times cocky, but always sensible. Based on the 1999 Simon & Schuster hardcover. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product details

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1 edition (May 6, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0684856360
ISBN-13: 978-0684856360
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.9 x 7.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 250 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #63,167 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #113 in Books > Business & Money > Marketing & Sales > Customer Service
- #133 in Books > Business & Money > Marketing & Sales > Advertising
- #560 in Books > Business & Money > Marketing & Sales > Marketing

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Start reading Permission Marketing on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Customer reviews

Write a customer review

See all 250 customer reviews

Rated by customers interested in

What's this?

Marketing & Sales

3.9 out of 5 stars

Business & Economics Books

4.0 out of 5 stars

Marketing & Sales Books

4.0 out of 5 stars

Is this feature helpful?

Thank you for your feedback.

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

I loved this book

ByRyan Donovanon September 29, 2016

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I loved this book. As a business owner without formal business schooling, this was helpful to get me thinking rightly about marketing. During every chapter, I found myself stopping to make notes, stopping to write down ways to implement the information into my own strategy, and also recognizing some mistakes I was making. Some of the material about internet marketing is dated, so it requires a bit of translating into the modern era, which is crazy to say, since this book isn't that old. I'd love to read more from him that explores these same concepts, but with contemporary internet examples.

If you have a decent understanding of how internet marketing works currently, and what current tools are available, it won't be too difficult to translate this material into today's world.

0Comment 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Continues to be a highly relevant foundational read

Bylindsayon October 25, 2016

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Although originally published in 1999, Permission Marketing continues to be highly relevant. It's a particularly important read for marketers who "grew up" in the pre-Internet world where marketing was about interrupting a consumer during her TV show, her drive (billboards), her reading (print ads). Whether you were classically-trained or grew up in the Internet marketing era, you'll find this an excellent foundation for all modern-day messaging

0Comment 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Different Levels of Permission -- I never thought about

ByAndrew Smithon July 18, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I'm sure this book was like revelation when it was first released. I wish I was into marketing at that time. I've come across the principles of building an audience and selling to them internally before finding this book.

What was in this book that I never happened to come across is the levels of permission. Even if you've been building an audience and marketing internally, You should get a copy of the book for what it says about the different permission levels.

0CommentWas this review helpful to you?YesNo

How not to screw things up

ByMax Jeniuson January 26, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I think the book does a good job educating the reader on how not to mess-up an interaction with other people, but it doesn't do much more. I hoped to pick-up some methods that would more often then not bring myself into a stranger's comfort zone. Naïve? Probably. But if it doesn't do that then the book probably doesn't teach a reasonably likeable adult more than he already knows, albeit at an unconscious level. Ultimately, it's about time and volume of interactions. Use the author's tips to grow a large network of people and don't piss them off. Eventually (hopefully), you'll get a good return on investment. But there's no magic revealed.

0Comment One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

It may be over 15 years old but....

ByAlessandraon April 3, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

The advice in Godin's book continues to be pertinent and actual. Worth reading as a beginner's guide to modern day marketing.

0CommentWas this review helpful to you?YesNo

An insightful book pointing out "self-evident" ideas that seems to be not so self-evident

ByRoland Heszon November 30, 2009

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Being an old book, a lot of information is a bit outdated. AOL, AltaVista are gone, Yahoo! was replaced by Google, and we had a dot-com burst since then.
Banners and pop-ups are still with us.

However the basic concept is still valid. I've read many reviews where people complain about Godin not writing anything "new", that the whole permission marketing idea is thousands years old - as he himself points out a few times in the book, it was the norm until about a 100 years ago -, and this is all intuitive, nothing new there.

But if it is intuitive and so well known, why don't people use it?

The concept is well explained - some would say, repetitive, but those who complain about it forget that he wrote a lot about frequency in his book -, there are 22 short case studies showing different aspects of the concept of permission marketing - including a fledgling amazon.com, just trying to be a successful online bookstore in the shadow of Barnes & Noble.

Yes, it contains a lot of self-evident ideas (short term profit kills off long term profit), but looking around I think self-evident ideas have to be pointed out, because people always forget them, and yes, it can be a bit repetitive at times - how many times did you solve very similar equations in calculus class until you learned how to do it? -, but this is not a novel. It is book that intends to get a message through.

Anyway, I say read it. It won't hurt. :)

0Comment 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Exactly right!

Bydlbon March 7, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Seth Godin is right about this. It feels a bit aged, but the crafty reader will develop from it.

0CommentWas this review helpful to you?YesNo

This is a Must Read!

ByAmazon Customeron August 19, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This book is a MUST for anyone launching their own product or starting their own business. I learned so much from it!

0CommentWas this review helpful to you?YesNo

Customer images

See all customer images

Most recent customer reviews

Three Stars

Not as good as his other books, but worth a read.

Published 1 month ago by KD

Masterpiece!

The only thing I regret is that is that I did not read this book before.
Mandatory to

Published 2 months ago by Miguel

Totally Irrelevant

Published in '99, this book feels totally irrelevant now. Completely outdated in just a few years. Interesting historical artifact, but you're better spending money on a business...Read more

Published 5 months ago by A/M

Written a long time ago in a galaxy far away, Permission Marketing still holds many truths for today's marketing managers

Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers While the book is showing it's age, it's also still vitally needed by marketers of all levels.Read more

Published 6 months ago by Joe G Kushner

Four Stars

Very good book never thought about marketing in this way.

Published 6 months ago by Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Seth Godin is the Marketing God

Published 7 months ago by Optical Suppliers

Its an older book. Late 1990's so not everything ...

Its an older book. Late 1990's so not everything is relevant to today.

Published 8 months ago by Martin S.

5 stars in 1999. 2 stars in 2016. Split the difference and I get 3

Antiquated and outdated. I read it because I thought it might offer something new, but it's not for anyone who is already running a newsletter aka permission marketing.Read more

Published 8 months ago by Michelle

Five Stars

Alot of good information .

Published 9 months ago by paul sloan

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers

Set up a giveaway