The Email Wars

I was reviewing some stats on some client sites this week and thinking about the two ways that we give away content and how it impacts site visits, time on site, conversion, and the site bounce rate (not talking about email here but how fast someone comes into your site and leaves %).

What I was thinking about was how these two approaches differ to paths to success and how they each can impact and determine some of your measurables/objectives/results.

So what is the crazy man talking about here? Let me illustrate in terms that might be relevant.

1. The Free Content Display Method:

So you have things to share. You have spent hours, days, weeks, months of time researching, reviewing, writing, designing and making sure it is rock solid. Well traditional marketing would lead with a press release, speaking tour, interviews and locking the content up in your site for any visitor to grab as they want to use in an unrestricted manner.

Now this is the idea behind so many site today. Putting your content out into the world in order to grab attention, mindshare, search results and hopefully customers down the road. This way is becoming more popular as it follows the idea of information is free, expertise is open, and opinion is everywhere.

2. The Give to Get Approach:

The same scenario applies but instead you provide a level of access and ask that visitors complete a form to get access to it. Registration in order to get the value of the documents you are making private is the notion that has been around for a long time. The give to get is how many of us grab leads and grow our database. You run the risk of bad data, people not completing the steps you set forth in order to get your research, and the constant struggle to fine tune forms, user paths, and scent trails.

But the perceived value is stronger in most cases as the value in the relationship is clear that you will make everything right behind the curtain of trust.

So which one wins? Which one is the right one?

I can go either way on these two approaches as they both have merit as to why you would use them. I believe that a balance of each is the right way, at this point in time, to drive to your goals. Now what I mean by a balance is similar to how we run our business. Right… here I am giving you the secret information of the Colonel’s chicken without making you register on this blog. Wild.

Our approach is one of complexity and simplicity at the same time. We have found that in order to understand a relationship and place value on both sides of the fence that equal parts make the right mix. What we are trying to get to as a company is a better understanding of you. We want to know what you want, what you read, what you deem important or valuable enough to want to give us a little piece of information as a starting point. We make sure that we tie in behavioral data pre-goal completion back to the time when you take the step to enter the eROI dojo of studies and knowledge.

1. We work hard to create resources that are of value to the marketing community.

2. We talk to writers, bloggers, industry leaders, our customers and publications in order to see what things we should put infront of the Resources center on the eROI site.

3. We work to write pieces not only for ourselves, but for others to put out into the flow of knowledge that you might stumble on in your daily web explorations.

4. We blog the heck out of out thoughts and experiences on a daily basis placing more value on getting our ideas and own experiences down on digital paper in order to share with you what we work so hard to do for our clients.

5. We understand that the value of studies and research are more powerful once you have a mindshare that the work and campaigns we create and crtique are best placed into the stream.

6. We save the largest studies to place behind the curtain that allow us to understand what people like yourselves want to learn more about.

7. We measure everything and tie it back to the data across multiple systems.

8. We understand in the end that knowledge is meant to be shared in order to push the thought forward.

Which in the end leads us back to evaluating this same question on a weekly, if not more frequent basis, as a team allowing us to decide what more we can open up and why the changes are good ones.

It is not about outbound marketing all the time. Sometimes it is solely about inbound marketing. And that in the end we have found to be the most valuable type of marketing. One that brings you back to us on a daily, weekly or monthly frequency by other means so that we do not always need to engage simply with another email.

I leave you to look at your own companies plans, actions and objectives and challenge you to do the same. the more you open up has trade offs if you are not prepared to understand how to gather the knowledge and use it.