Godin however argued simply that the established models of press, TV and direct mail (what he called "intrusion marketing") were simply not working anymore and that the web (long before 2.0 appeared) would be the tool that enabled the consumer to choose who had the right to a dialogue with them.
Fast forward to the current marketing environment and we see many brands now collecting channel permissions from their own customers.
There are sound reasons for this. Permission marketing principles are now enshrined in law for all electronic channels but there is increasing pressure on non-electronic channels too.
The government, primarily driven by its green agenda, continues to pressure the DM industry on the subject and the debate now focuses on whether or not the existing MPS (a classic opt-out scheme) is adequate.
The viability for marketers of the telephone as an outbound channel has been decimated by the extraordinary growth of the TPS.
So the marketer now has an increasing range of media to use but a decreasing audience. We could call this the "Permission Spectrum".
On one side sits the mass broadcast medium of direct mail where consumers have often not requested the contact and, on cold recruitment campaigns, have no easy way of identifying its source. Their only means of stopping it is to opt out of all mailings via MPS or to contact each sender. This is the old world.
Next is the more targeted area of call centres where the selection is really based on an active suppression file (via TPS) and the call often resulting from the consumer having given their phone number for a non specified use. Consumers therefore rarely expect the call.
Following this is the most established electronic channel, email. Email is pretty much universally based on some form of permission albeit often for general mailing programmes (i.e. third party) which means many offers from many advertisers until the consumer says stop.
And finally the newest and most pure form of permission. Mobile messages are by and large sent either on a one-off basis or part of a subscription.
In both cases though they are invariably from the single brand to which the consumer gives permission (i.e. first party). Mobile too has the only "universal opt out" programme (policed by the networks) in which all consumers simply reply with the word "stop".
We will obviously receive many, many more direct mail pieces than we will mobile messages, with the response rate line following an opposite trajectory.
However, the permission spectrum also illustrates a real dilemma for DM'ers. We are used to mass planning but permission marketing cuts right across this -- audiences are smaller, more volatile and less available.
While the results can be argued to warrant the shift, few large brand marketers can yet move more than a fraction of activity to these media -- we all have targets to hit.
So where are we heading?
Take for instance online lead generation. In the US this has overtaken e-mail marketing and most of the trends here look to be heading in the same direction. This is about asking the consumer to step forward, generally, to receive a contact from a single brand about a single proposition.
Then there are areas that may not even be seen as permission marketing such as behavioural targeting. The process of serving online content and ads on the basis of the viewers' previous browsing history within the current site or across others is not personally addressed. It is however increasingly based on the consumer choosing to allow the tracking to be used.
Existing legislation governs the use of cookies -- a minor consumer backlash was felt when some of these services were launched without permission. The result is an example of both how legislation is driving media and how the consumer is very wise to the value of their permission.
Of course the ultimate question is -- when will there be no such a thing as non permission marketing? With a mix of consumer and legislative pressure this isn't such a fanciful idea.
In the meantime, the marketing winners will be those who make the most of permission marketing to ensure that they create "positive interactions" from every contact.
Nick Fuller is a consultant at Jaywing.