One debate that’s always ongoing in the online marketing world is whether site visitors should be required to register (i.e. provide an email) to gain access to a white paper or e-book.
One side of the debate says requiring that information gives you good sales leads…email addresses and other contact information for people that are definitely interested in your products and services…especially if they went to the trouble to provide you with that information.
The other side says simply having a link for valuable content on your site to a white paper or e-book means more people will see it. Site visitors will download the material and be more likely to send it to their friends through email, blogs and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Take this example as an illustration – AIIM, a non-profit organization representing users and suppliers of documents, content and records management technologies released their first e-book on October 1st entitled “8 Reasons You Need a Strategy for Managing Information – Before It’s Too Late”. The book was totally free and required no registration.
In the month of October, the book was downloaded 5,138 times. AIIM also posted a presentation version of the book on SlideShare, which saw 3,353 more views for a total of 8,491 downloads in the first month alone – not bad at all for the first month of their first one!
But for their industry watch research papers in which they require registration, there were only around 513 downloads. Therefore, not requiring registration results in a sixteen-fold increase in the number of downloads. Based on AIIM’s recent experience, they plan to produce three more e-books over the next few months.
So what’s the lesson here?
Based on this experience, it may be better to not require an email address or contact information before letting someone look at your white paper or e-book. It really depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.
If it’s simply getting your production out to as many people as possible, this evidence suggests you do not require any registration.
Tags: B2B marketing, ecommerce, Online Marketing
