By Kevin Gault
When marketers offer access to white papers on landing pages, they hope that people who download them are qualified sales leads. But because readers often put limited, inaccurate data on registration forms, this type of marketing can be a waste of time and money.
If the reader scans a few pages of a white paper and decides he’s not interested in the topic, the marketer is left with personal data that’s essentially useless. But there’s a new technology that can prevent this from happening.
It’s called “in-document forms” and, combined with a new way of analyzing data provided by readers, it departs from the current trend of using a long list of registration questions to generate sales leads.
Lack of Qualified Leads
“The registration forms that marketers use on landing pages rarely generate qualified sales leads,” says Pat Weilmeier, Director of Marketing and Communications for Docmetrics (www.docmetrics.com), a web-based application from Vitrium Systems that lets marketers embed in-document forms in PDFs, collects data on how people engage in white-paper content and generates real-time reports.
“Leads obtained with these methods aren’t providing the information that marketers really need. With web registration forms, you have no visibility of the reader after the white paper is downloaded. In fact, once the reader gets the PDF of the document, the marketer doesn’t even know if they’ve opened it.”
Sales reps can become frustrated with these “leads” because when they follow up, many people they contact didn’t open the white paper, haven’t read it, or aren’t interested in the product.
A Different Approach
A white paper configured with in-document forms takes a different approach:
* Instead of making readers fill out a long registration form, they can download the document without registering.
* After reading a few pages of a white paper, the reader comes to a page with a few registration questions. Answering the questions gives him or her access to more pages. This pattern continues throughout the document.
* As the reader fills in his or her brief responses, the data is relayed to a company (such as Docmetrics) that sends detailed, real-time reports about readers to the marketer.
“This system gives the marketer data as the reader is engaged in the content of the paper,” adds Weilmeier, “and when a reader passes the document to other people in the company, the system provides data on those people as well.
“Also, the data is very specific. It tells the marketer if the reader read the entire document or only part of it. It tells whether he stopped at a certain page for while or moved quickly through the document and it tells the total time he spent reading it.”
The data that marketers get from in-document forms helps them decide on the length and content of white papers and which combinations of copy and graphics appeal to readers most.
Unique Benefits
In-document forms and the data they provide give white paper marketers these important benefits:
* Marketers get data on how people “consume” content as opposed to limited information from landing-page registration forms.
* The fact that marketers can survey readers in real time as they read a white paper provides richer, more accurate information.
* Data received from reader behavior allows marketers to optimize the content and formatting of their white papers.
In-document forms work because they create a fair exchange of value. As a reader receives value from the content of the paper, she’s willing to give value to the marketer by providing accurate, helpful answers to questions.
The bottom line for marketers: A much better chance of getting highly qualified sales leads.
May 6th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Does this blog lend itself to more commercial participation?
May 6th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Few things anger me more than having my reading interrupted time and again by requests for more information from me. After a few of these in-document delays to my progress and interruptions to my concentration–just how much time do these people think I have, anyway–I develop a very negative attitude toward the company offering the information. I would certainly never pass such an “information traps” document on to a colleague I respect.
Good white papers court customers and develop a long-term relationship. White papers that can’t stand on their own merit enter customers’ names in little black books.
May 7th, 2008 at 6:00 am
I have to say, I am with Charlotte 100%. Having been a former consumer of many white papers, I found it frustrating to have to stop and give up all my info just to read it. What frustrated me more was having to do it EVERYTIME I opened the doc to re-read it! So much so that I would just delete it.
I get the tactic from a marketing perspective but we need to always put ourselves in our customers shoes FIRST and not let our short term marketing gain turn into a long term customer loss.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Hi everybody, this is Pat from docmetrics, just posting to clear a few things up. Charlotte and Terri’s concerns are entirely understandable but I do feel that their comments are based on a general misunderstanding of how the docmetrics technology actually works.
For example, Terri mentions having an issue with providing information every time a document is opened. In fact, our technology addresses this issue nicely: when a reader returns to a docmetrics document, any forms that reader has previously completed in the document are automatically bypassed.
One of our central aims has always been to create a lead generation technology that provides white paper readers with a seamless, positive reading experience. We want to empower marketers to gather detailed, high-quality reader data in absolutely the most respectful way possible.
Currently, many marketers gather reader data by using web forms to control access to their white papers. These forms are often quite long and rather invasive. We find that gathering data in a more interactive way results in a much better experience for readers and – consequently – better data for marketers.
With in-document forms, a docmetrics user can allow readers to preview content from inside a white paper, before these readers even have to provide their names and email addresses. Further qualifying data can then be gathered from short, content-relevant surveys later in the document.
This is just one example of how docmetrics provides marketers with a more reader-friendly and effective alternative to web form registration. Docmetrics in-document forms are 100% customizable, so users have complete control over which pages forms appear on, whether or not they can be skipped and so forth.
I hope this helps to clarify the purpose and nature of our technology. If anyone has any further concerns, I’d certainly be keen to address them. You can either post them here or email me directly at patw@vitrium.com.
May 18th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
This seems to be an example of just the type of whitepaper that Mike Stelzner is teaching us to use. Focus first on the need, then offer a general solution (that your company has the capability of successfully addressing). Some of PatW’s later comments could have been included in the initial article to help reduce the probably anticipated responses.
In my thinking, this in-document form capability would have particular value in moving a student through coursework, or a prospect through marketing, then business case, then technical design/approach, then implementation approach, then operations and maintenance, to solution “certification”. From that perspective I can see using it to introduce, inform, sell, implement, and then gain certified practioners in my own particular public-domain methodology.
May 29th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Roy is right to point out the broad potential of in-document form technology. Docmetrics was originally created to help marketers generate sales leads from their white papers but we now believe there are many practical applications for this type of technology.
Essentially in-document form technology provides a more dynamic alternative to traditional web forms and reader surveys. But there’s really no limit to how companies can deploy in-document forms to gather reader data via an interactive reading experience.
Anyway, thanks for the comment Roy. Vitrium is a young company and we’re always grateful for feedback on our products. If anyone has any more suggestions about ways docmetrics might be used, I’d love to hear about it.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
I think the problem may be that many marketeers try to qualify their leads with their questionnaires. If you have the person’s name with their e-mail address and company website, those are sufficient to check their bona fides and provide contact information. Many (myself included) are not willing to go through a lengthy checklist of # of employees, department, job title, product description, etc.
So the usability of docmetrics’ system depends on keeping it simple (KISS). I’d be perfectly happy to answer the three questions in my first sentence above at some point, but any further interference would be just the sort of annoyance up with which
Charlotte, Terri and I will not put.
cal
December 9th, 2008 at 3:49 am
Can anyone direct me to an example I might be able to download? I am intrigued by all the different responsesand possible uses for this technology. I see this tech being a great tool for internal process docs as well as docs that are meant to be instructive. think how to’s.
I do like the idea of the data mining aspect as well. However, can you please explain how this product combats the statement from above?:
“But because readers often put limited, inaccurate data on registration forms, this type of marketing can be a waste of time and money.”
What’s to stop people from filing out the wrong data?
- Alan
December 9th, 2008 at 5:03 am
I suggest you email patw@vitrium.com and ask your question.