What Are Email Gates and How to Use Them to Convert
Are you giving away all of your content? Learn what are email gates to convert more visitors. Today, such a large amount of content is available and given away for free that many business owners believe their leads will turn to their competition if they do not give away content. While this line of thinking has become commonplace, it does not take a number of factors into consideration. Certainly not all content should be gated, but your highly valuable content should always be gated.
What Is Gated Content?
What exactly is gated content? What are email gates? Gated content refers to any content that a visitor must provide an email address in order to receive something valuable in exchange. The key to using gated content is to encourage visitors to enter an email address to receive the content they want the most. Different types of content can be gated, including case studies, testimonials, datasheets, brochures, and more. Basically, anything you can convert into a word document or PDF. Videos can also be gated, when using providers like Wistia and their turnstyle feature. Web pages can also be gated by using engagement popups with solutions like Lead Liaison’s SiteEngage™. Your marketing automation provider will help you gate all of your valuable content. First, start by creating a marketing content map to take inventory on what’s valuable, which you’ll inevitably gate.
When Should You Use Gated Content?
Not all content should be gated. It is particularly important to make certain the content at the top of your sales funnel remains open. You want people to find your business and your products/services to be interesting. This content often serves as an effective icebreaker to encourage visitors to take the next step. There is a time and place to use email gates, and you must ascertain the correct time to position those gates based on what is best for your business.
Throwing up email gates on all of your content will usually have the exact opposite effect that you desire. While you might get a lead by having a visitor enter his or her email, if the customer is not yet ready to buy, you still won’t get the sale. The last thing you want is to bombard leads with emails they do not want. This is why it is essential to determine the best time and place to use email gates. The goal is to make the determination between those leads that are ready to receive your emails and those leads that would be alienated by your emails. Doing so can help you achieve the desired balance between whetting the appetite of a lead and converting those leads that are ready to buy.
