On Marketing: Permission Marketing
By Jack Mixner
Seth Godin ran marketing for Yahoo! back in the dot.com days. His book is still relevant in its discussions about how to make - and keep - customers.
From the book jacket ...
1. Does every single marketing effort you create encourage a learning relationship with your customers? Does it invite customers to "raise their hands" and start communicating?
2. Do you ... have a permission database? track the number of people in it?
3. If customers gave you permission to talk to them, would you have anything to say?
4. Once people become customers, do you work to deepen your permission to communicate with them?
Strategic Implication
Focus on the customers - or potential customers - who will let you get to know them in order to solve their problems.
Initial impulse is to call the book dated. It's not. I find it useful for deciding if marketing you are contemplating makes sense. Godin's later books are interesting, as well.
Reference
Godin, Seth. Permission Marketing Turning Strangers Into Friends and Friends Into Customers. Simon & Schuster. 1999.