«Return to Blog List Give Away Your Story!
I’m all for using stories to connect with audiences in direct marketing. So I was pleased to see a “case study” email land in my inbox from a vendor.
The email teased the customer’s story and then displayed a prominent link to “Download Now.” That’s where the momentum – and I – stopped.
When I took the link, a page asked me to fill out 12 fields with my name, contact info and various qualifying information.
Wait. I just want to read the case study. It’s too soon to enter into a relationship by providing so much information.
Moreover, I believe that vendors should give case studies and success stories to prospects for free (without asking for info). I know that companies are trying to collect leads, but case studies are not best vehicle for that. They’re innately a feature story about the product or service’s success, not like a research report or white paper.
Since case studies do capture the attention of busy prospects, perhaps bring them back to a page with the full case study with offers along the side to download a white paper or report, subscribe to a newsletter or blog. Then you can continue the conversation, if the person chooses.
If anyone out there has seen success with case study-for-contact-info usage in lead gen, please let me know. Any other ideas for using case studies in early parts of the sales cycle?
Casey, this is very interesting. We’re trying out different marketing techniques using the many success stories that we have gained over the years. Right now we have an email list called Stories From The Profit Process that interested people can sign up for on the website. We were also toying with the idea of using AdWords landing pages with the the start of a story and then the customer would put in their name and email to subscribe and hear the rest of the story. We decided not to do that though and just have the opt in form on the website. We’ll see how it goes. In the past these stories ran in a column in the Sacramento Business Journal and that drove quite a bit of traffic to the website, but now with the weak economy the Biz Journal is stripping out many of their column features in favor of advertising so we are trying to different things with the stories to replace that traffic stream. If you are interested, we would love for you to read some of our stories to see what you think. Also, feel free to email me and we can continue this conversation! Thanks!