Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Should we still gate quality content? Or should we release it for free? No matter what side you side, the answer is never easy in SaaS today.
Raul and Toni debate the pros and cons of gating and how to think about your content strategy to get results in your pipeline.
Raul and Toni debate the pros and cons of gating and how to think about your content strategy to get results in your pipeline.
Creators & Guests
What is Revenue Brothers?
What happens when a VC and a CEO come together?
– They nerd out about all things revenue. And they don’t always agree.
Raul Porojan of Project A Ventures and Toni Hohlbein of Growblocks are the Super Revenue Brothers. In every episode they dissect and debate current issues in B2B SaaS, and offer solutions on how to solve them
No matter if you’re an early-stage startup or a scaling unicorn – you’ll always learn something new.
Introduction
---
[00:00:00]
Raul: try to get away from this kind of, Duping the customer, and trying to scam your way into their email address. 70 80 percent of B2B companies still have a lot of ways that they try to scam themselves into your email address panties, somehow. I think this doesn't really work anymore because even if you get the email address, it's not a really solid one. It's not a really strong one.
Raul: Hello and welcome everyone to the Revenue Brothers. I'm here with Toni, sadly, again, digitally. And I'm saying this because Toni and I actually met so the brothers got together on a, in Berlin. And that was really fun.
Berlin Event Recap
---
Raul: Toni, tell us about that.
Toni: you just flew in from Thailand or something like this. I think you just landed, basically right? And then we had a get together in Berlin with Kramansky and artist And Torque Partners. I think those three plus some put together a really nice little event in Berlin for, [00:01:00] I want to say C Level, who is revenue oriented.
Toni: I I think that was the setup. And yeah, who knows Michael Jäger, who knows Julius from ARR, I don't know the TORC guys who knows them then you also do know that they're putting together quite a nice event and setup. So we actually jumped on a boat, right?
Toni: A weird boat on, on, on the Spree went to some kind of a distant place. I don't know where it was. Had a nice boathouse experience there which other people I learned used for weddings. So this is a wedding venue, basically and then I don't know we spent some good time there was it like 100 people 150 people was quite full, right?
Toni: It
Raul: uh, the island thing was really interesting. So it's actually, I didn't even know that these things existed. There's some islands in the middle of the lakes and in Berlin, and you're quite secluded there, or they seem like islands at least. So that was nice. And.
Raul: But it was still kind of an event thing, right? So people were there to connect with others, network with everyone. It had the [00:02:00] same woes that every event has, what do you get from there, right? What do you do? You come back from these events with all these connections.
Raul: And I, I said that it's To me, it's like online dating, right? You have a lot of matches, but nothing happens. And so this is something I really thought about. It's okay, how do I at least get away with a friend, right? Or at least someone who will be like, okay, maybe I'll see this person again or remember their name.
Raul: And that was something I really tried to focus on this time. Not yet. Not yet.
Toni: So what I think what was funny and I'm going to give a shout out to Janis from Weflow, from the Weflow guys out of Berlin. Him and I, we were actually like in London just the night before and we didn't realize that we were going to be at the same event in Berlin the next day. So that was weird, was funny.
Toni: And then there was this moment where we were on this boathouse thing. And it was like either there's a ferry going home now or there's another ferry kind of continuing the party for three hours And I still remember the three of us standing in the circle. It's yeah. Yeah, we're totally gonna do this Let's go.
Toni: Let's go on the boat. Let's let's do this and then you and I turned around [00:03:00] and suddenly Janusz was gone and I met him last week again And it was like, yeah, I know You know I'm a dad and Thanks You know, I felt like going home. So basically that was the story there. But like a really good guy that, Janus and team from reflow, they're doing pipeline management, sales forecasting, stuff like that, really cool team though.
Raul: It's like when you become a parent and I'm not one, but you are you have earned the right to not explain yourself anymore when you just leave the party.
Toni: Yeah.
Raul: That's basically what you've earned. You're like, Nope, I'm not doing this. And I'm not trying to explain this to you. I'm going now.
Toni: I think I had this also before people called me the Houdini because like at some point in the party I just, just vanished. I was
Toni: just gone And I, I have the same thing now, but no you're right no one is upset anymore It's like, oh no, I mean, you know when it's when it's 9 p. m People kind of know it's like it's actually past Toni's bedtime.
Toni: You know that he's still around kudos to him it's good. It's good You
Raul: Yeah. [00:04:00] It's I've seen this with with at Project A it was the same thing. It was, it turned more into admiration that they were even there in the first place, right?
Toni: Yeah, like a slow clap, you know,
Raul: I had like 75 kids like this guy does, seemingly I wouldn't even be here in the first place. How does he do that, right?
Raul: And yes, he left at 10, but like, how does he even do that in the first place? So I think you've earned that, Toni.
Toni: see, there you go. There you go. Amongst other things that we're talking about today what is it? What is the other topic we wanted to talk about today? Actually, Raul. I forgot.
Gated vs. Ungated Content
---
Raul: So this actually comes out of a discussion we had at a table at the dinner which was, funnily enough, it seems really old school, but people really like this topic right now, and are really wondering, and I know you're also struggling with this right now, is gated or not gated content and should you actually use both?
Raul: Should you use just one? And if so, which one? And I think there was a lot of ideas at the table, but there was no consensus at all for such a seemingly innocuous question. So where are you standing with that, Toni? I know you're, this is a question you're asking [00:05:00] yourself right now for your own company.
Toni: Yeah. So let's just explain the concept one more time. So gated or not really means on the marketing side, are you going to ask for an email address or not? So let's just say you put out a piece of content and for someone to actually consume it, they would need to submit the email address or even more information.
Toni: And that would be a gate. There's several other gates as well that are softer and some are more, more clear. But that's the idea. So the downside of gating something is, as we all know fewer people will convert, right? So if you have, just as another example, if you have a demo request with 10 fields you will convert fewer people than if you had a demo request one with five fields.
Toni: And you can even see that if you have a demo request form with a phone number, that will create like a 15 percent drop off or something like that. So this is this is just a general idea, right? Now that you understand if I put some friction in the process, fewer [00:06:00] people will actually walk through the gate or get through the gate and consume your content, right?
Toni: And then in recent years, And some of this has to do, I think, with Chris Walker and Refined Labs. Basically, we're hey, you should un gate everything. Everything should be un gated. Really the consumption of your content is what you want to have. That should spark something in their brains to then come inbound and say hey, I want to talk to you.
Toni: That should be the idea, right? And I think and then I guess this is what we're discussing is, While all of this sounds great in theory there are a couple of issues with this I think But before we go into this actually what is what's your because you have a position on this I'm, just exploring
Toni: you have a position on this role.
Toni: What's your thinking?
Raul: I don't know if I would call it one position, but I don't know why everyone wants just one answer for this So this is what I'm struggling with and this might already tell you where I'm falling with within this I would also call myself exploring for that question, but I'm trying not to be very dogmatic about things so I'm just trying to be like, [00:07:00] okay, what is good at what given time and in which situation and what's going to make you money.
Raul: And there's pros and cons to both and maybe let's go deeper into those and then you know when you can use those, right?
Pros and Cons of Gated Content
---
Raul: For example and this is one of the biggest cons obviously of ungating everything is, okay you feel like there's no control over what you're doing. And basically there's, it's feels like you're doing radio advertisements with your website, right?
Raul: Where previously you had something to measure and you had something to hold on to and some data coming out. Now you're like, okay, what is even happening in the first place here? In the case of PLG, this might actually even be what you're looking for. Just create a lot of movement around things and then upsell what what goes further down the funnel.
Raul: Or even sell what goes further down the funnel. But in the case of just having a normal brick and mortar B2B SaaS I'm not even sure that's where you're looking, what you're looking for, right? You don't just don't want a lot of buzz. You want more concrete things to hold in your hand and actually concrete leads that you can work with.
Raul: So I think this is the number one issue that I have with that, [00:08:00] obviously.
Toni: it's pretty easy to work with. It's the number one thing that I have to start off with. I'm marketing and my job is to deliver leads, contacts to sales, right? And why was this so important? Put yourself back 20, 30 years ago there was no LinkedIn, you couldn't just look up, oh, what is that guy's job in, that company and, who's probably his or her boss or that just didn't exist, right?
Toni: You didn't know how these companies look like. And you also didn't have, Organizations like ZoomInfo and Apollo and Lusha and all of these guys that are basically giving you this lead information. So marketing's job quite literally was to find which person works at which job and, try and give you that information, right?
Toni: So what they did, they do for that, they went to events, they collected business cards, they put stuff online. This was the whole Marketo idea gating this thing, giving you the email address and so forth, right? And obviously [00:09:00] that's how they did it. You don't need to, you don't need to do that.
Toni: You don't need to do that stuff anymore for that purpose. What I do think though is and this is where my thinking comes in. I think if you're super if you're super top funnel, let's just say LinkedIn, you basically want to be discovered. It would be stupid to gate this, it's Oh, you can only see this post if you give me an email.
Toni: That, that doesn't work out. You want to be discovered there. But basically as a next step what you want to do is you want to try and pull in People just one step further and the reason is the following Whatever you're going to put on linkedin or super top funnel. It's not going to be very clear and descriptive of The situation that most of your customers in it's not going to be descriptive of the solution that you're potentially providing the pain and stuff So all of these things You need to teach them afterwards, right?
Toni: So
Toni: meaning you need to find a way to give them that information over time, right? And the thing is, if you do not have their email address, if they do not follow you, and even on [00:10:00] LinkedIn, if they follow you, it's still maybe that the content gets delivered. You have no way of actually reaching them again, right?
Toni: And then the problem is you did all of that wonderful content, you attracted all of those eyeballs. But you will never kind of, you will never have an interface with them again, right? So this is really where I think Some of the idea of the gated piece Just went a little bit too far honestly, and I think it's I think it's I think it's dangerous on that end to be like radically ungating and i'm sure they're like I'm not sure how many marketing folks are listening.
Toni: So I don't think anyone's going to be upset about how I say these things, but I'm sure if you brought this up in your marketing team, some of them, some of those folks might be super upset about, like having a balanced strategy around gating and non gating.
Raul: Yeah. And the question is also what to gate and what not to gate. So let's say you would have a balanced strategy. We talked about this in the episode we did about AI, right? So one of the positions that I [00:11:00] have, again, very uneducated, but Trying to learn and in curious position about what's going to happen with AI.
Raul: But one thing I'm quite sure about is that the value of content is going down and it's going to go down exponentially probably as compared to maybe for the last couple of years. So maybe 20 years ago, it was really special that this company that might be interesting had a white paper that they actually went through all the troubles.
Raul: Now I can actually have access to it. All I need to enter is my email address. That sounded like a sweet deal. Nowadays everyone and their mother has a white paper and everyone and their mother has a podcast, as you see with these two dudes. And and YouTube channel and LinkedIn is posting like they were an influencer with 20 years of experience.
Raul: So the noise is just so loud, right? And what's being asked of you is the same, but it doesn't feel like a same deal, like a fair deal anymore. Now, with the acceleration of AI, that's probably going to become even much worse, because now you're like, okay, the quality is even going down further, and I don't even know [00:12:00] where this came from.
Toni: No. I didn't
The Value of Quality Content
---
Raul: Having said that What I do think still works to this day in some cases, or can still work, is actually producing quality content. Now, you're not going to produce quality content by just throwing some stuff on the intern's desk and saying, hey produce this and put it on a website by tomorrow. This is probably stuff that you might have to go to more effort to get.
Raul: And it might be Something that you actually have to sit down to produce like a video or audio, or it might actually be a study that you have to have a study, not just like one kind of number that you pull out of your ass and be like, Oh, this is what it's like actual studies. On the flip side though, one thing that I have been thinking about a lot lately, and maybe something that Growblocks could even implement,
Toni: That I think
Raul: not just to make money, but I think that maybe there is merit to even Go away from gating or not, starting with actual paid content.
Raul: Even as a B2B SaaS company, not to become a content provider, but to get people with serious intent in there in the first place, who are really high [00:13:00] converting and get those people in the kind of business relationship with you already. And I do think that there is a hunger if you are actually able to produce quality content and people are ready and they're willing to pay content.
Raul: Cause this is on the flip side, something that's different from 20 years ago. 20 years ago, maybe people were like, Oh, this is just a white paper. Why would I pay for that? But now it's okay, whatever. Content is content. Doesn't matter if it's a book or a video or white paper.
Toni: yeah,
Raul: so yeah, all kinds of aspects to that, but I do think it all revolves around the value of the content you're actually providing.
Toni: So I think so too, right? And I think this is especially so the case in the top end of the funnel, right? And I think charging for content is obviously super bold. Lots of solopreneurs are doing this, right? On Substack, you have a paid subscription and stuff. So when we talked with Udi from Gong, he was like, Hey, we want to produce content that people want to pay for, but obviously they didn't charge.
Toni: I think as the worlds of solopreneur on real entrepreneur, like VC backed on they start [00:14:00] colliding a little bit like in a good way. So for example, many people on LinkedIn think that I'm just a solopreneur doing consulting stuff. But I'm actually, you know, a CEO of a VC backed company and I want to sell you my product, right?
Toni: So it's so as those two worlds come closer together, I think you can probably start, creating this other revenue stream. I think you're right. But for our conversation, it's almost like the the charging is just an even higher barrier. It's just a higher gate, right?
Balancing Gated and Ungated Approaches
---
Toni: And what I actually also wanted to bring here, so I think you need to think about the gating versus non gating from Almost two different angles. What, what's the state of mind for the person on the other side? If you have someone that is just barely scratching the surface in terms of awareness of you, you need to find a way to pull them down into understanding the problem, seeing the pain, and then actually wanting to take action on that.
Toni: You need to take, pull them down the funnel. And an email is a great way to try and achieve that. By the way, that's what it is, right? So our sub stack has I [00:15:00] think a An open rate of 55 or 60. That's pretty actually great. And we're educating people like clearly, right?
Toni: um the other way to think about this is especially if you're in a competitive environment where people have the problem are clearly educated around it already. You want to think about You know the researcher So someone has a I don't know they want to buy an abm tool or something, whatever You know who's going to be researching that it's probably going to be You know the revops person the marketing ops person or something like that And then when they want to decide between you and someone else You don't want to create barriers to that, right?
Toni: You want to make that if someone is searching out that kind of information You want to make it super simple for that person to find it Have access to it. So like a comparison between you and the other competitors or something like that you don't want to you don't want to necessarily gate that stuff right because it's just That would just be silly To lose some people that suddenly don't get that information That really is your battle card [00:16:00] basically that you want to get into their hands, right?
Toni: So thinking about it like that and then on the flip side let's just say you have someone Requesting a demo that kind of It you know, how else is that going to work without you giving the email address? That's pretty straightforward by now, but also for a trial. Yes, I need a login So here's my email address that makes sense.
Toni: And then there's sometimes those videos, right? Which is the step in between kind of you can click around but it's not really the real product you could choose not to gate and I think the kind of thinking from our side was they're really um and it's it's inconclusive yet, but If it is a educative piece of content that kind of explains people, what they can do, how they can use the platform and so forth, we're not gating this, or we're trying not to gate this, but if it was a live demo, like a clickable live demo where there's like real value to it and people like, ah, I get it.
Toni: Then we basically would get this thing probably, and the reason why I want to obviously gate this is someone is so [00:17:00] deep in their consideration in the funnel. Fuck me. Yeah, you want to reach out to them tomorrow, today actually you want to hey what's up?
Toni: How can I help you? How can I how can we do this more? And I think this is how you probably need to start thinking about the gating versus non gating because otherwise it's otherwise you're probably going to run in circles all the time, which parts of the funnel or which piece of content you're going to get versus what you're not going to get.
Raul: I really liked that thinking. And I would also add now to my mental model after you said this kind of the where are they in their buyer journey, right? In their consideration however you want to discuss that customer journey, buyer journey. And add that to the, what is the quality of that you're actually providing?
Raul: I think they probably should correlate, right? So the higher quality should maybe also come where they're ready to implement a bit more. And funnily enough, I have my pros and cons with that, but this is something that PLG really has. Stuck by quite strongly. And even maybe not by design, but PLG in itself is this very [00:18:00] aware or unaware, but at least adhering to the buyer journey and getting more and more buy in and getting more and more temperature gradually, which that's the nice thing about it is I can do this whole process with you.
Raul: Not staccato in now sign up, now give me your email address. Now we have the first call. And every single one of these steps seems very awkward and it seems very contrived. As compared to PLG where it's like, Oh yeah, of course I've been using this tool for two days. No problem here. I'm going to upload a data set.
Raul: Oh yeah. Now I've been using this tool for two weeks. No problem. I'm going to have a call with them and ask them some questions because now I actually have some smart questions to ask. So that's the beauty of it, right? And what I always wonder about is how can we get the power of that into PLG? And what I mean by that is try to get away from this kind of, Duping the customer, especially in B2B, and trying to scam your way into their email address.
Raul: And the reason for that is, I think actually 70 80 percent of B2B companies still have a lot of ways that they try to scam themselves [00:19:00] into your email address panties, somehow. But, I think this doesn't really work anymore because even if you get the email address, it's not a really solid one. It's not a really strong one.
Raul: What I am quite for is the
Toni: gets people
Raul: people to actually want to talk to you or to actually have something to talk to you. And that is the difficulty, right? So how do you do that without a PLG motion where it's very natural and it's very, it's fluid? This is the difficulty. And to me, obviously, the longer you have a relationship with them, even if it's just from content, that is something that smooths this quite a lot, right?
Raul: If I've been looking at this, these people's stuff for a couple of years, or I've heard about the product before, it's a much more fluid interaction in the beginning and it's a much more fluid jump up.
Toni: of times that it's the best way to interact with them. I just have no clue why. Because people have maybe read my content or kind of have listened to a show this show maybe I [00:20:00] think there's a lot of hey, he clearly knows what he's talking.
Toni: I mean He seemingly knows what he's talking about. And that translates also to To the product and the company that we're building here, right? So I think for folks that are super early on I think this can be extremely powerful to you know, nurture this along but at some point and this is what kind of pisses me off with podcasting we see how many downloads we have and people liking this and so forth but there's there's no way that I can, reach through the screen and tap someone on the shoulder and say like, Hey uh, do you want a demo by the way?
Toni: If anyone's listening, want the demo, like let's go. Um, But uh, but otherwise , you don't have the trigger. That's a thing, right? And I think to degree from a company perspective, that's annoying. So you don't have the trigger, you do not have a way to reach out. But I think actually for consumers, like that's exactly what might make this so interesting for them on not interesting, but so convenient.
Toni: It's like, when you give your email address somewhere, you're being added to something, someone is going to be in your inbox and
Toni: someone is maybe even going to give you [00:21:00] And we've all now lived with this and we're okay with it and and it's that's really the gate That's the price you pay, right?
Toni: And and I think some of the other content Mediums out there. Podcast for example, they obviously don't have that and I think this is sometimes even an upside but what other piece one other hot take I wanted to say the thing You know with the white paper download Is a little bit It's it can very easily be clickbait, right?
Toni: It can be absolutely that because the thing is it's like on youtube the thumbnail and the title It's oh, wow, that looks fucking interesting. Let's click it And then you start watching and it's like, ah, you know, not that interesting actually kind of you you leave again, right? It's the same thing actually with the white paper, though if you have the right title and and the thumbnail looks great Then you give your email address And then, honestly, the marketer's job is many feel the job is done, right?
Toni: It's
Raul: that's exactly the thing, right? The marketer's job, if they really think like that's what's fucked up, right?
Toni: [00:22:00] Yeah,
Raul: email collector company of sorts. But the job of the company is not to collect emails, but sell to customers.
Toni: Yeah, of course. And but then you have the email and then you can do something about it. But it's this is the so we were actually discussing this internally. If you had a breakout best ever piece of content on this fucking planet, right? You shouldn't gate this because that will have this accelerator effect It will take you places you get 100 million views and so many people will see you great you shouldn't be gating this but honestly thinking through this like this if you have a mediocre piece of content Maybe it's a good idea to gate it because it's not going to take off anyway, right?
Toni: It's not going to happen. And when you then put a gate in front, at least you get a couple of email addresses that you can do something with, right? So there's almost this adverse incentive or behavior that comes out of this, which I think has killed this whole gating thing.
Toni: And again my point still remains. Yes, you need to look [00:23:00] at, the different, places where they are in their buying journey But especially when they're high up you need to find a way to pull them down Meaning you need to touch them at least six seven more times And if they're coming in from the side and are super ready um You actually also, you know, you want to ping them again.
Toni: It's like hey, you know, let's let's make this happen Let's go because we know even though someone is ready It doesn't you know, it doesn't mean that they don't need a sales nudge sometimes, right? It's like I have come to the conclusion that it's dangerous to have a non gating approach in, in your marketing.
Raul: I'm actually not sure I agree with the mediocre piece thing because I think mediocre or not is not that I mentioned. I would think, and I would think more about specificity. And as you actually said before already yourself the buyer stage and the buyer needs, and so the killer piece of content that is going viral on LinkedIn is typically.
Raul: Not a very specific piece of content. It [00:24:00] is not one number and that, not that one number is specific enough, but it's not just one single question that is being answered, there is some either hype element to it or some comedic element or some social element or something like that is going, that is making it go viral or that is making it have a lot of reception.
Raul: What I do think is what you can do maybe with your website is not the medium part, but the specific. Piece, right? Because so on LinkedIn, people are typically not looking for a specific kind of information that they need for their task at hand right now. They're not like, Oh, I need to do a research on this and that, and I need a number.
Raul: Let me go on LinkedIn and scroll for 17 hours and see if I can find something. No, they're going to Google obviously. And they're going to maybe ask some people and maybe they're going to go on some forums, maybe something like that. And this is where you want to be found. And this is where maybe you can have that specific information.
Raul: Specific piece where it's like, Hey, we actually have a study here. And this study answers these kinds of 10 questions. You're Googling for two of them or one of them. Here's where you can find it. And this I think is actually quite good candidate, quite a good [00:25:00] candidate for gated content, right? Because it's the need and it's the quality at the time.
Raul: If you provide it in the right quality, where someone is like, clearly, this is a good deal to me. I need this for my job right now. I need this number for school or whatever, probably for my job. That's a good deal to me.
Toni: But the thing is actually, um, again, it depends on, on, on where the buyer journey they are, because this is a typical SEO example, right? So someone has a question and you want to have them, land on your blog to get this question answered basically. And that depends, right?
Toni: You can do something super top funnel in your blog because that's gets a lot of search volume, for example. And that's how you catch those folks. There you shouldn't gate this actually, because it's it's it's super competitive, Google is not going to index you high enough if if you gate basically all the content, it needs to be on the website itself, in, in turn, if it's something I sometimes compare this to.
Toni: When we all went to university and we had some research papers, we need to find to get in and yes, we had all the access because we're part of all those universities [00:26:00] had paid access already, but they're all those publishers that you then need to pay 50 for a like a research paper, for example, right?
Toni: Yeah. And that's the same thing actually the excerpt there this is what's inside You know now pay me 50 to get the actual thing if you have something like that, obviously, I think that would be pretty that makes it a little bit different for me right because it's such a I need to understand this now.
Toni: I need to see this now. It's like I need to have this benchmark I need to you know, I have a very specific problem That is super close to what you're doing where you know It would make total sense for me to you know, give up my email address. Fuck it. Yes reach out to me Maybe i'm even ready, but I need to understand this now And I think there are so many and this is what makes this whole thing so difficult by the way and the next thing is also. One piece of content can have many different purposes in your funnel, right?
Toni: It can be, it can feel like a top funnel thing, but it can also be a really great signal for a bottom funnel piece. having even that conversation in your team will sometimes lead to radically different, no, we shouldn't gate this, or we should gate this. But I think this is how I would approach it.
Toni: Kind of ask your [00:27:00] marketer why aren't we gating this? Or why are you gating this? And then at least here a little bit, what's the rationale behind this? And I hope Maybe today's session educated you a little bit on having that conversation, right? Because that can truly, I believe, this can make the difference for you to hitting your pipe gen targets versus not, tweaking these things a little bit and getting 1, more opportunities suddenly out of this thing.
Toni: I think this can have an impact actually, right? So this is also why we chose a fairly Marketing specific dry topic like gating and non gating. And one of the other reasons is full funnel, right? It goes throughout almost down in the sales side. So really figuring this out from from a full funnel perspective, usually a good thing to, to think through this.
Raul: And just as a, as in classic marketing schooling, maybe this is even something, if you had the means, and if you had the traffic that you could actually go and A B test or whatever kind of test you, you want to use there But it might actually be that [00:28:00] there's different answers for different kinds of contexts and you might want a more differentiated answer than it's cool or it's not cool.
Raul: But be like, okay, for this kind of thing in this kind of funnel and in this country, this is working quite well. We didn't even get to that, by the way, just one more piece from me. I think regionality makes quite a difference and willingness to engage with this kind of content or not, but also the legality of things.
Raul: And so one of the things that. I said this before we talked, as we talked about this topic before if you live in Germany, unfortunately, or mostly in Europe, unfortunately, maybe not that interesting to you, but maybe soon how important is the email address anyways anymore? And why am I saying that?
Raul: Because as we speak, more and more providers are popping up and they're becoming more and more sophisticated at offering you solutions that kind of identify visitors to your website, to your landing pages. Even to some point, people are trying to engage to tell you exactly who engaged with your content on the whatever content platform you're using.
Raul: And giving you that on a platform, and if that's the [00:29:00] case, if you know that actually grow blocks people were on my website, is it even that important to know the email address of Toni anymore? Is it even that important to know the number? Because you could probably find that through another website anymore.
Raul: I would say, in a lot of cases, 80 percent of the use case, is that I know that He's looking currently at this kind of solution and I should engage with him right now. That's what matters. And the phone number I can probably find or some way to engage them on LinkedIn or email or whatever.
Toni: them.
Raul: If you have access to something like that, or if you live in a region where you can even do that, important is really the gating either anyways. And my position would be that if you can employ that well, and some companies are doing that maybe not so much anymore.
Toni: Yeah, I think that's BS, actually. And maybe that's the different kind of conversation altogether. Sure, you can do some IP tracking and figure this out. But just knowing that I don't know, BMW is on your website, Microsoft is on your website. Sure. That's not helping you. I'm sorry.
Toni: [00:30:00] It's not. And it might help you maybe with below a hundred people or something like this, but otherwise it's really difficult. And yeah, you wanna talk to the person, you wanna find a way to get the permission to pull them down the funnel almost, right? And otherwise it's like a now it's now it's a sales conversation, right?
Toni: Because through GDPR and stuff, you can't just add that person to your email database. It needs to be a person reaching out with tooling, obviously. I think this is a little bit kind of the line between sales and marketing actually try What are you trying to achieve? Yes, there's some tooling that tries to identify the person now It's apparently a big GDPR no in europe basically so you can't do it there But still it's still not the same thing, right?
Toni: But wrapping this year up because I think we're coming to the end of this. I think it's You know, for many of you, it might seem like a little bit of like a side topic. But I can tell you in the marketing teams, it's probably really hotly debated, and I think you as a CEO or founder I think you should just have a, just ask them what's our approach here actually.
Toni: And it might very well [00:31:00] be that they have figured this out. I doubt it. I don't think anyone has figured this out. But you now with a little bit of a, Hey, in the interest of the company, we're not just collecting email addresses, but we also need to, bring people down the consideration funnel.
Toni: Maybe have some good pushback and feedback to the team to maybe adjust some of that stuff. And honestly, I think this is one of the easiest ways. So you can add some additional strengths to your pipeline next quarter, raul, um, really nice to chat again. Hope to see you again soon.
Toni: And you're right, right now you're in Romania. You said,
Raul: It's just a family visit though, but I'm, I would say more in Berlin right now.
Toni: yeah see you there hopefully soon next time. And then thanks everyone for listening and have a great day.
Raul: Have a great one. Thank
Toni: Bye bye.