What works best? Putting a gatekeeper in place when you offer free downloads, or giving them away without asking for anything in return?
This is one destined to run and run and there are exceedingly sound arguments for only parting with your goodies in return for an email address because then you've got something concrete to measure. But personally I'm in the other camp and I think New Rules of Marketing and PR author David Meerman Scott has got it right when he argues that allowing unfettered access to your material is more effective in reaching more of the people you want to reach — even if you can't measure the impact in an structured, ROI, way.
And yesterday I experienced the "just click to download" effect at first hand when my co-author promoted our new ebook to his list. Within the first hour we'd had more than 1,000 clicks through to the PDF, and — although this was emphatically not the point of the exercise — received the first orders for our forthcoming book. Perhaps we'd have got those orders even with a registration requirement, but I'm more inclined to think not — or not as many. They clicked, they downloaded (or read online), they liked what they read, they ordered. What if the process had instead been: they clicked, they filled in a form, they waited for their opt-in confirmation email, they clicked on the link, and only then arrived where they could download? How many might have just parked the process and got on with their day job?
We've also already got several bloggers on board who perhaps would have been less willing to give us their space were their readers being called on to leave us their details.
Early days for us with this one, but I really like what I see! There's a good reason why this blog is called New Rules! Thanks, David!
Oh, and the ebook? Here you go...
