“Kevin, we’ve got to reduce the number of required fields on our clients’ reg forms and our own,” Andy warned. “We’re losing leads.”
Maybe. How many? Don’t know. Haven’t tested it lately much to Andy’s chagrin.
We brought up the reg form subject again this week with Mark’s post Lead Acquisition Forms – When Enough Is Enough. Mark downloaded a crappy white paper after completing a 52-page registration form.
Yes, an exaggeration – about the registration form – but the point is the payoff wasn’t worth the effort.
We’ve covered the debate here and there and elsewhere. But there are really three things going on:
- How much information is required for the download.
- The immediate-business-application value of the download offer (best practices white paper, for example), which isn’t always apparent from the abstract.
- Luck and timing with the planets aligning.
You don’t have much control, if any, over the third one, but the first two you do.
Our HRmarketer Services Group develops and launches quality content download campaigns all the time for clients and HRmarketer.com, and we do monitor the effectiveness of each campaign and evolve accordingly.
Andy’s persistence paid off; one of our latest client campaigns scored big – over 700 white paper downloads in less than two days while only requiring four pieces of information for the download: name, organization, phone and e-mail (and we’d even argue to scrap the phone requirement since e-mail is the primary way HR buyers want to be initially contacted). Solely promoted with Direct2Net search-optimized releases and direct marketing e-mails to our mailing list.
It’s already generated dozens and dozens of qualified leads and new business for the client.
Rock on.
Posted by Kevin GrossmanLabels: content download, HR buyers, registration form, white paper campaign
