Free Content With Or Without Email Required?

Hey everyone, Matt the Intern here. Today I learned about the difference between free content with or without an email, and how they compare to each other when trying to capture leads on a website.

What’s the difference between requiring an email, or not?

Let’s say that a website offers free content such as white paper, eBook, or a free software trial. When you go to download the content, you are often required to enter your email. This is the “Email Required” tactic. When the content is available without an email requirement, it’s called the “No Email” tactic.

The “No Email” tactic can often get 10x more downloads than the “email Required” tactic.

An example of where “No Email” and “Email Required” would be tested is on a website. Let’s say that over the course of a week that 1,000 people come to the website. At the website they offer a free ebook. If the “Email Required” tactic is used, typically 1-2% of the visitors will enter their email to access the content, reaching only 10-20 people. If the “No Email” tactic is used, and they give access to the free content without having people enter an email, then the percentage of content downloads get multiplied by ten moving the amount of downloads to 100-200 people.
In the “old days” of internet marketing Ten Golden Rules always recommended the email required strategy because once someone left a site they were gone forever. Today we can do remarketing (Here’s a blog about remarketing) and show them a banner to bring them back to the website to make a purchase or fill out a lead form.
So, in order to determine the best results you need to test email required, vs no email required combined with remarketing.