Thinking Different about Registration Forms and Personal Email Addresses

As a voracious reader, I tend to download and consume a lot of content such as reports, whitepapers and eBooks. Often, I’m looking for good research, but also for creative ideas for developing and distributing this type of content that I might adopt for my clients.

In the past, I’d use my work email to complete the registration forms – trading my contact information for content. Typically, I’d get added to a newsletter or email distribution list, and sometimes I’ll keep these subscriptions to see who is pitching what and how they pitch it.

However, whenever I changed roles or organizations, my email would also change.  This meant I’d no longer get that content – and the organization is suddenly left with out-of-date data.

A few years ago, I tried to solve this problem by creating a separate and personal Gmail address solely for registrations and email subscriptions.   It allows me to be process-oriented about reading and staying current.  It also keeps me in touch with those organizations to which I’ve given my contact information…for life.

As it turns out, I’m not the only one that takes this approach. In fact, most C-Level executives do as well, according to a study by NetLine Corporation and MarketingSherpa:

“C-level executives at companies with at least 5,000 employees used their personal email 51% of the time, with business emails used the remaining 49%. C-level execs at companies with 1-5,000 employees leaned a bit more heavily on their business emails, inputting them 59% of the time.”

I’ve noticed, however, that some businesses might be missing an opportunity.  These organizations decided they won’t accept personal emails on registration forms.  They are using data validation technology that prevents would-be registrants from using personal email accounts for gated content.

Perhaps it makes sense for some businesses as part of a data quality or lead qualification project.  But let’s challenge that marketing assumption: what if businesses are instead giving up the chance to communicate with a C-Suite executive for life in exchange for a narrower list of MQLs?

What is the lifetime value of a relationship versus a shorter list of names and emails that can be passed off to a sales development team?

Thinking differently about marketing in the New Year doesn’t have to be a major exercise in transformation.  Sometimes it just requires paying attention to the little things and improving the routine.

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