Marketers spend a lot of time on content creation, really thinking through what they want to offer the audience to educate them on products or services. More time goes into a catchy or succinct title and promotional copy that will act as the hook to reel the leads in. Everything in place, great content, strong title, informative copy and then…there is the “Registration” page. It can be a marketer’s best friend or worst enemy.

Demographic questions are typical and most respondents are used to providing answers to them in return for content. In addition, many sites have pre-populated registration pages for return users. But what is your strategy with additional qualification questions? On the one hand, qualification questions can give marketers a large amount of information about their prospects. It can help them bucket the leads for their sales teams - offering the hottest ones first and highlighting leads that need more nurturing. However, it’s important that you have a sound strategy behind each question asked.

In our experience, people collect qualification data in several ways. Some options include:

• • Make questions mandatory
• • Make questions voluntary
• • Ask questions in steps, as prospects download more information, ask more questions
• • Don’t ask any questions until your sales team or telesales contacts them

If making questions mandatory, make sure that the question asked is deemed important for qualifying leads for sales. Having mandatory questions increases the rate of abandonment, so the quantity of leads will decrease, but valid responses can lead to a quicker sales cycle. Keep in mind that our recent Google/TechTarget study revealed that only 30 - 40% of respondents provide valid information. They are more likely to share valid qualification data the further along they are in the buying process. Bottom line, be sure you are asking the questions for the right reasons and have a sales strategy in place that will make the most use out of this information. Do not use registration questions as a survey or if the lead is going to be called on regardless of the answers.

Making qualification questions voluntary is an effective way of collecting reliable information with decent conversion rates. In this Pardot blog there is a case study of a company who tested this option and had some surprising results.

Asking questions in steps, as Adam Blitzer of Pardot outlines in his blog, can help build a greater trust between the marketer and the prospect. Also called “progressive profiling” this strategy allows an interaction or relationship to build between the vendor and the lead. Prospects feel they are offering their information, but also getting something in return be it a white paper, webcast, case study, etc.

Another option is to not ask any qualification questions. This option would increase conversion rates and would use a lead nurturing strategy to truly qualify the leads further.

Therein lies the question - Do you put a strategy in place in which marketing and sales work together to define what is a “HOT” lead or if a lead is a lead is a lead, do you collect as many leads as you can and call them all?

I first heard of Twitter about 3 weeks ago and was immediately intrigued. Twitter is a tool whose original use was a way to keep in touch with contacts en mass and at the same time.  Groups are formed by signing up at http://twitter.com/ and a person is either “followed” or is “following” someone.  If you are followed, any messages you send out will be received by members of the group that are following you. The messages are limited to 140 characters, however this is just enough to keep contacts updated on what is going on at any given moment. In terms of Social Networking, this is an excellent tool to get in touch and stay in touch with a large group at the same time via cell phone, IM or email.

Could this new media format and technology have other uses as well? Companies such as Woot.com, Amazon.com and Dell Outlet think it does. These companies are sending messages about hot deals that require quick response times. This is a way to immediately reach customers FREE of charge with hot deals or fire sales. I signed up for woot.com and Dell Outlet and receive deals via my cell phone. As an example from Woot.com I received “woot: $49.99: SanDisk Sansa e260 4GB Media Player http://www.woot.com/”

Dell uses Twitter not only for sales, but as a PR tool as well. In one particular message they released information about an award they received as well as sending out a link to a survey to find out more information from clients to better serve their needs:
“DellOutlet: Cool! We were honored with an award by http://sncr.org/. Thanks for the support. Pls let us know what you want > of: http://tinyurl.com/25db33”

In this survey Dell Outlet asked questions like “What kind of Tweets do you want to see from Dell Outlet?”

• Twitter-only discounts

• Other Dell Outlet offers & promotions (not Twitter exclusive)

• Dell Outlet new product arrivals

• A way to provide feedback on design/usability of Dell Outlet web site changes

• Other (please write suggestions in comment box below)

This quick delivery of the message and the ability to quickly turn around a response could be a very valuable marketing tool for retailers.

Could this also work with the launch of a new product? In combination with other media outlets, this would be an effective and efficient means to communicate the release of a new product to a large audience all at the same time and very quickly.  Would this be something that could be used in your company? Is Twitter the next big thing? What other uses could it have for e-commerce?

For more information go to: http://twitter.com/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter