Infobarter is Dead

It was long ago - back in the days when having a brochure-like web site was pretty much state of the art. Some forms, sure, some downloadable information, but it was a different day. Web sites should be pretty and branding-heavy, for people to look at. We wondered if that Y2K issue would amount to much. And what was this new “Google” thing, anyway?

Into the office came two salespeople from a local interactive company. We’d actually summoned them to talk about a CD-ROM project - because yes, back then, the best way to get digital information to people was often to put it on a piece of plastic and mail it to them. The discussion wandered into their web capabilities, and they told us about their philosophy.

“Infobarter is a key element of your site!” they told us. Infobarter. I understood the concept, thought I’d never heard it call that. The idea: hey, site visitor, give us some information and we’ll give you some. Tell us your email address, and we’ll let you have our brochures! For a phone number, you can have a white paper.

The black-clad designer-DNA salespeople were right. It worked. We put a bunch of white papers and PDF brochures and presentations on the site, and people dutifully told us who they were and answered questions and got to download them. And then, of course, we called them “sales leads.”

That part was never really quite right, and the whole art of turning those raw contact names into actual prospects (or figuring out they would never be prospects) developed as we watched.

The world has changed, of course. Nobody bothers with CD-ROMs. Brown is the new black. Search matters. And infobarter is dead.

Not that you won’t find it out there, of course, but it’s at best in a persistent vegetative state.

This is in part because there’s plentiful free, high-quality information about almost everything available. You don’t even have to tell anybody who you are to find great information on blogs or in wikis. The expectation that information is available has chipped away at the notion that you have to barter any personal information to get it.

Bartering personal information is not inherently a bad thing. If that barter offers you ongoing value, you’d do it (and we often still do). Of course, that was rarely what really happened. If I gave you an email address in order to get hold of your newsletter on direct marketing trends, and then I got future issues with more great information, I’d probably come to regard your organization as a useful resource, share more information with you, and perhaps even do business with you.

Of course, what really happened was that I then got added to a mailing list and got a steady stream of marginally useful and marginally relevant information that suggested that you weren’t paying attention to even the small bit of information about me you did have, and I learned your phone number so I could always send your sales rep’s call to voicemail, and adjusted my spam filters so I’d never have to look at your messages again.

Vendors kept trying to prop up the infobarter economy, and often still do. And if more of them got that right, it would be fine, but that so seldom happens. Here’s an example from just last week: I actually did fill out a form to get a white paper from Forrester Research. I’m willing to do that because Forrester is a well-known, highly reputable organization that does good work. My expectation of value is high - not only for the white paper, but for future communications from them. So I’ll barter.

Here’s what it got me: one white paper, and a phone call. The phone call came while I was out, resulting in a text message from my voicemail while I was on vacation. I didn’t recognize the number, so I called to check it, and heard a canned pitch from a Forrester rep about how he wanted to get some time on my schedule to talk about how they could help me.

Time on my schedule? Are they out of their minds? I wanted a white paper. Just a white paper. Being asked to schedule a meeting less than a week later is like being asked for sexual favors on the first date, and sorry, I’m old-fashioned that way.

And I know opinions differ on this point, but here’s my view: first contact should not be intrusive, and making a phone ring is highly intrusive. The person you are calling is almost certainly doing something else at that moment, and that something is going to be more important to him or her than the phone call. Don’t start a conversation by interrupting. The fact that I was sitting on a terrace overlooking the Pacific Ocean and reading a novel did not make me more receptive to that salesperson’s message.

Now, if I’d been getting useful Forrester emails for a few months, and downloaded some things, and somebody sent me a personal message saying, “I noticed that you’re looking at a lot of our free material on social media; we’ve got a lot of other great resources for our clients, and I’d like to make sure you know about them,” that would have been fine. Even helpful.

I don’t mean to pick of Forrester too much; they’re a good company. But I really wonder how their analysts would critique their own sales process.

So here’s the obituary for infobarter: if you can’t even engage in that barter with a company like Forrester without it becoming annoying, why would you trust lesser-known organizations?

“Show us yours and we’ll show you ours” has been replaced by “You gotta give some to get some.” And I’m trying to practice what I preach. I am in the midst of renovating one of my sites that’s been sadly neglected. On that site I had your basic infobarter setup: fill out a form, get a white paper.

The white papers needed updating anyway, but then I thought: this is dumb. I write more current material for this blog every week, and I put it out here for free. Why am I taking this older stuff and hiding it behind a form?

And in practical terms: who knew that Mickey Mouse and Ronald Reagan were so interested in my white papers, anyway?

So I killed it. When the site is ready for prime time there will be newer white papers there, and they will be one click away from readers. At some point, I have to have faith that if you download something I wrote and you find it useful, you’ll come back, and someday when you need some help, you’ll talk to me.

Or you won’t. But I can’t force the issue with a contact form, can I?

And so infobarter is dead in my world, and I believe it’s on life support elsewhere. Yes, people will part with information for content… but the bar is much higher now. The information had better be compelling, and you’d better not turn stalker once you’ve got the personal data. It doesn’t work as a standard web practice anymore.

Take a look at your own site. If you’ve got any infobarter remnants that don’t create completely positive experiences for everyone involved, it’s time to let them go in favor of a 21st century information economy.

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