\u201cAw fer cryin\u2019 out loud knock it off!\u201d It seems that even though online marketing is now entering its third decade, far too many professionals in the industry continue to have a highfalutin impression of their own importance to their customers that they blindly continue to make truly massive miscalculations and outright errors when it comes to their signup forms. Since they have deluded themselves that they need to collect a huge amount of information at signup in order to \u201cbetter serve the customer\u201d it is a lost cause to try to convince them that not only are they actually pushing customers away, but if they carefully look at the data which they are managing to obtain, most of it is garbage and gobbledygook.<\/p>\n
Enormous barriers between customers and offerings<\/strong> The signup form is not the place to collect this data<\/strong> This advice is surely falling on deaf ears, as online marketers will continue stuffing their signup forms with all types of \u201ceverything including the kitchen sink\u201d junk which only acts to minimize the quality and quantity of the data they collect. After all, there is no reason why the customer is not going to obtain the barricaded download by entering:<\/p>\n Name: Santa Claus \u2026 and so on\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cAw fer cryin\u2019 out loud knock it off!\u201d It seems that even though online marketing is now entering its third decade, far too many professionals in the industry continue to have a highfalutin impression of their own importance to their customers that they blindly continue to make truly massive miscalculations and outright errors when it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2171],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beyond"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nFar too many companies will place enormous barriers between their customers and their online offerings to the point where they are minimizing their own compliance rates. There are far too many offers of a free download of an ebook, white paper, report, or study which are guarded by overlong onerous forms with every single field marked with that evil red asterisk denoting mandatory field entry. Some of these forms truly cross the line between information gathering and outright intrusion with obligatory fields such as:<\/p>\n\n
\nThere is a time and a place to collect information like this but the signup form is emphatically not the place to do that. The collection of information like this is best kept until the individual has signed up and in the best possible case become a happy member of your email subscription list. At that time you can ask them to enter fully optional information into their Preferences Center or harvest that data through a series of again fully optional surveys and polls, backed up by the promise of a valuable incentive or entry into a sweepstakes or contest with a series of sought after prizes. The data that you collect through a reasonable participation with the customer based on how well you can motivate them is going to be far more accurate and useful than the type you glean by making it the only way to break through the wall that you\u2019ve erected around your offering. Isn\u2019t the whole point of signup to show that your company values its customers?<\/p>\n
\nAddress: 123 Elves Hut Road, North Pole, Alaska
\nPhone: 555-555-1212
\nTitle: Toy Distributor<\/p>\n