This article first appeared October 25, 2007 in the Tatum Marketing blog.
It wasn’t too long ago that technology marketers routinely refused to provide access to white papers, webinars or other free resources to anyone using a “non-corporate” email address. Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail accounts? No thanks.
Countless internet marketing gurus still suggest that you ignore these addresses. I think they’re wrong. Both Clicks ‘n Converions and our clients have acquired excellent customers who began the relationship with a free email address.
The 2007 MarketingSherpa Business Technology Benchmark survey backs up my anecdotal evidence with real data. Take a look at the chart accompanying this post. 44% of professionals are using a personal email account when registering for business content. A technology marketer would be very foolish to ignore this contingent.
What this means is that in addition to welcoming prospects with free email addresses, technology marketers must also pay attention to deliverability to ISPs as well as corporate servers.
Fri, Oct 30, 2009
Conversion Rates, Traffic
Written by: Susan Tatum