Ratcheting Up Commitment

One of the most important things to remember when you're trying to get people to respond to your marketing efforts is that commitment should start small and grow. (Not unlike relationships!)

In practical terms, this means that when you ask for a commitment from a customer - giving you their email address, registering on your site, handing over a credit card number - you need to make sure you've built an appropriate relationship with them. How do you do that? By talking to them, giving them what they need to be comfortable with you, showing them how they'll benefit from doing business with you, and by never coming on too strong.

A good example of the wrong way to do it is a site called eMusic. I've heard it mentioned on several blogs as a great place to buy interesting music in MP3 form. I'm a potential customer.

But eMusic comes across like the guy who shows up on the first date with a wedding ring. My first question about them was, "Okay, what music do you have?" And the only way to get an answer is to sign up.

Yes, there's a free trial. But so what? I don't want to sign up, pick a plan, offer a payment method, and download software until I know they have music I want. So the whole process ends at step one - no eMusic for me, I'm just not ready to commit to them (even for a trial) until I know what the product is.

It would have been easy for eMusic to let you browse their catalog of songs and see what you'd get when signing up. The site itself would become a great sales tool. (It would also keep people who really aren't interested from signing up and then cancelling their accounts.)

I'm not a commitment-phobe - I just want to know what I'm getting into. By failing to tell me, eMusic has short-circuited their sales process and possibly lost a customer.