The lure worked and our six-month target was achieved in 24 days. The true test, however, was the astounding quality of data. Over 97 per cent of it was actionable data. Is that the only way? You'll need to know a little more about this data acquisition marathon before we draw a conclusion.
So what's the catch? Nothing! The site awarded its prize to the winners and is now offering what it offered all along ... brilliant content.
Registration rates are not dropping and neither is the quality of data.Using an incentive is certainly the easiest way to ensure truthfulness. The long-term effectiveness of acquisition, however, can be influenced by how you incentivise. Generally, there are two types:
Promotion Incentive
Content Incentive
The promotion incentive gives you a great opportunity to acquire larger quantities of data. The quality is also high as the fulfillment to winners is commonly verified thus ensuring that the details submitted are valid or the registered user stands the chance of losing his prize. Higher acquisition helps everybody achieve broad marketing objectives, but in the long run there is a high possibility that the database acquired could have a decent number of contest junkies. Data acquired from promotion incentives should then be refined regularly with supplementary information requests not tied to an incentive. When acquired via this method, the records obtained in the initial registration become more robust and valuable. Respondents willing to provide you with more information are often those who value the relationship with your company and have themselves obtained value from your post-incentive offering.
The other option is the content incentive. This is often not the quickest way of building a database but commonly, the smarter more effective method for quality, responsive acquisitions.
"Sign up for a free white paper on wireless keyboards will most definitely get you only registered users who actually are interested in wireless technology or keyboards (for some reason). With this, you can almost guarantee a response when you send him anything about wireless or related technologies.
So the key is that any incentive, promotion or content, should be tied back to the offering of the company. This will ensure that the interest of the registered user is in the area of the company's offering. Finally, there is no better way than an incentive to gather data. It's what the incentive is that matters.
