Progressive Profiling Your Subscribers
Although progressive profiling is not a new concept, it is a ‘practice’ that many marketers seem to have side-lined of late. This is evident with the number of otherwise great websites that bombard would-be subscribers with a 15 field sign up form, all for the privilege of receiving a newsletter. Needless to say it can (and quite possibly does) hinder ones sign up and conversion rates.
Registering for something or requesting a download should be a quick and painless experience that needn’t require handing over too much private information. So, when a visitor is confronted with a stream of increasingly personal questions with no explanation behind them, they are likely to abandon the process, permanently.
Of course ultimately you want to find out as much information about your subscribers as you can, but if you want to do it right, you need to do it subtly. Enter progressive profiling. What this clever little feature allows you to do is ask for information incrementally rather than all at once, thereby engaging with your subscribers in a slow and steady manner.
How it works is like this:
- When a visitor first lands on your site and wants to sign up for your newsletter, only ask for their name, surname and email address. This is all you need to start building a basic profile of them.
- The next time they return to the website, prompt a few more questions such as their industry and job title. On their following visit, ask them the name of their company, city and or country. Subsequent questions to this could be what their interests are and what they would like to receive from you. What’s key here is that because you are only asking two or three questions at a time your abandon rate is low.
Remember to reconfirm your privacy policy each time a subscriber converts, and reassure them that any data you gather is used to make sure your email campaigns remain relevant to them.
One of the great benefits of this tactic is that with each new interaction you find out valuable information about your subscriber. At the same time, they don’t feel uncomfortable with an intimidating sign up form because the process is handled over a number of stages, at their own pace. The result, everyone’s happy. You get the information you need and the subscriber gets their newsletter (or whatever it happens to be).
Naturally, to keep your subscribers coming back for more and happy to give out personal details at each interaction, you need to be offering truly unique and relevant content from the start. You can read more about keeping (newsletter) content relevant here and great ideas for content here.
The process of setting up progressive profiling questions might involve a little bit more PT, but there is no doubt that it allows you to develop a strong online relationship with your customer, even if it is over a longer period of time.
Although progressive profiling is not a new concept, it is a ‘practice’ that many marketers seem to have side-lined of late. This is evident with the number of otherwise great websites that bombard would-be subscribers with a 15 field sign up form, all for the privilege of receiving a newsletter. Needless to say it can (and quite possibly does) hinder ones sign up and conversion rates.
Registering for something or requesting a download should be a quick and painless experience that needn’t require handing over too much private information. So, when a visitor is confronted with a stream of increasingly personal questions with no explanation behind them, they are likely to abandon the process, permanently.
Of course ultimately you want to find out as much information about your subscribers as you can, but if you want to do it right, you need to do it subtly. Enter progressive profiling. What this clever little feature allows you to do is ask for information incrementally rather than all at once, thereby engaging with your subscribers in a slow and steady manner.
How it works is like this:
- When a visitor first lands on your site and wants to sign up for your newsletter, only ask for their name, surname and email address. This is all you need to start building a basic profile of them.
- The next time they return to the website, prompt a few more questions such as their industry and job title. On their following visit, ask them the name of their company, city and or country. Subsequent questions to this could be what their interests are and what they would like to receive from you. What’s key here is that because you are only asking two or three questions at a time your abandon rate is low.
Remember to reconfirm your privacy policy each time a subscriber converts, and reassure them that any data you gather is used to make sure your email campaigns remain relevant to them.
One of the great benefits of this tactic is that with each new interaction you find out valuable information about your subscriber. At the same time, they don’t feel uncomfortable with an intimidating sign up form because the process is handled over a number of stages, at their own pace. The result, everyone’s happy. You get the information you need and the subscriber gets their newsletter (or whatever it happens to be).
Naturally, to keep your subscribers coming back for more and happy to give out personal details at each interaction, you need to be offering truly unique and relevant content from the start. You can read more about keeping (newsletter) content relevant here and great ideas for content here.
The process of setting up progressive profiling questions might involve a little bit more PT, but there is no doubt that it allows you to develop a strong online relationship with your customer, even if it is over a longer period of time.
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