In the world of GDPR gated content the What, Why, Which etc, has got a load more complicated.
In the past marketing was "simple" you wanted to show you had a result from a marketing campaign by putting up a piece of content, gating it, and collecting the emails as people downloaded it. At my last company there was even a meeting as to which fields we needed to capture, of course this was all "inside" data to help where to allocate "the lead" to.
Problem with marketing is that life has moved on. As buyers we are all pretty sophisticated, busy people and we all know what happens if we fill in gated content.
1. Within 20 minutes some telesales person has called you.
2. You are spammed to death.
Then of course there was the 25th May 2018 GDPR rules. To hold my email details you are both responsible for this and accountable for this, with fines of up to 4% of global turnover. US companies still get this wrong, to be GDPR compliant, when I download content there has to be a tick box to say I want to download it, but you won't do anything with my email.
Let's put this another way, under GDPR you cannot force me to register with my email, you have to give me the option to use my email to unlock the content but you won't do anything with the email. I would think, pretty much all European people will vote for this. Like you, we all think being spammed to death is a fate worse than death! Thank you GDPR!
If you are not thinking already, this kind of negates the argument to gate content then think about this.
One of my team did some research on gated content and pretty much each field you ask for data you lose 50% of the audience. Let's assume you have 5 fields and 100 people who wanted the content.
Ungated, 100 people will download the content, gated 3 people will.
It's a big difference.
On the basis that your customers are using content to understand their requirements and decided if to short list you, that you will then get as inbound. Our view is that gated content is cutting your own throat.
We don't gate any content, in fact we don't collect any emails because of GDPR rules.
As content marketers serving clients in the B2B space, we are frequently asked about the appropriate time to gate content on sites selling products and services to other businesses. When developing integrated strategies for our clients, we use this method in nurture campaigns focused on connecting emotionally with prospects in order to build relationships that will convert to sales.
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