You Lost Me At Hello

While reviewing a client’s engagement process today for one of their services, I noticed a few things they could improve upon:

1. Deliver Your Promise.
The promo link from their site promised one thing, but after registering, what I wanted (and was promised) could not be found. If this client’s goal was to merely capture my email address to spam me later for another service (or worse, rent it from a list), he succeeded. But did he? If the unsuspecting registrant (me) were to ever receive an email from this service (or something vaguely resembling it) they’d surely mark it as spam. Long term strategy fail.

2. Just Give Me What I Asked For
I didn’t get one email after registering for my promotional content that I requested, but two! One was about the service (I had actually only signed up for a sample report, not the “service”) and the second email was long-winded with instructions on how to retrieve my special report. Jeebus man, just get to the point and give me the link!

3. Keep It Focused
After orientating myself with the retrieval instructions, I clicked a few links, logged in and ended up on what appeared to be an overview page for their entire service (and then some). Most of the content was inaccessible to me since I just had just signed up for the little trial freebie. To boot, the particular item I had requested was not available. If they had just a dedicated page with “here is the content you requested”, it would have went a long way to reinforcing their brand in my brain (really!). It’s called keeping a ‘scent’ for your prospect, if they land on your page or website and they don’t see anything that smells like your previous page, email or link was talking about, they’re gone, my friends.

Times are tough, we know. It’s even harder to imagine “nurturing” a prospect vs. pouncing on them with every offer you have, relevant or otherwise. Don’t. In the case above, they could have kept it light and simple. I gave them my email (and permission). They could have sent a follow up email a week later asking what I thought about the content piece I downloaded, or forwarded me relevant (!) offers in the future.

Are you afraid you’re not giving prospects enough options? Try giving them less, and keep them relevant and on-brand. You don’t want to lose a prospect, but you don’t want to damage your reputation either to cause prospects to leave the (virtual) room the next time you come around.

Posted on July 18, 2010 by Eric Gockel | Leave a comment