With a title like that and the words “Learn how your character flaws could give you some real advantages in the workplace.” right below, how could I possibly resist clicking on the link that would help me “Get the full 2006 Careers Guide, free“?
I was then met with the usual marketing tool of signing up before I actually get my hands on the goods.
While filling in my details, I noticed something strange at the bottom: I had been presented with what could be called a Hobson’s choice - I could either get the guide and then receive email from the publishers, or nothing at all.
Being the sort who generally tries to get only that which I want, I de-selected the check box and clicked “submit”.
Oh. That’s very interesting. It reads (click on the image for larger version):
The form was not submitted because of the following error(s).
Please correct these error(s) and resubmit.- The following required field(s) are empty :
I wish to receive relevant information from New Scientist and Reed Elsevier in the future:
To cut a long story short, I was interested in the guide so I went ahead and clicked “yes” and submitted these details.
After that I was redirected to an online copy of the guide. I would’ve preferred a downloadable pdf that I could read whenever I wanted, but hey, that’s not the point.
The point is, was this permission marketing? If we check with the wikipedia, we find that
Permission marketing is a term used in e-marketing. Marketers will ask permission before they send advertisements to prospective customers. It is used by some Internet marketers, email marketers, and telephone marketers. It requires that people first “opt-in”, rather than allowing people to “opt-out” only after the advertisements have been sent.
Why would people offering me a “free” guide want to know my email address and then send me “relevant information”? I think it’d have something to do with marketing their products at a later date. If so, why wasn’t I given the opportunity to opt-out at the very beginning?
I mean, what would Seth say?
March 26th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
I think the expression “You don’t get nothing for free” applies here. The “Career Guide” is clearly labelled “New Scientist” on the website, so a better title for it would be “The New Scientist Career Guide”. - Of course they wouldn’t put that on the linking hyperlink since most people would be less likely to click on it as “New Scientist” is a weekly paid for science publication similar to the monthly “Nature”. Aditionally they intentionally keep the guide as html since they can keep track of who is reading the article as some of the images will need to be downloaded from their server therby ip adress is logged each time. Even if you save the html on your drive some images will not i bet be saved they will be the tagged images.
Hop this helps even a little
March 26th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Well as they say “nothing is free in life” (or the internet). If they called the link “the New Scientist career guide” less people would click on it I bet since New Scientist is a science magazine which you need to pay for. The guide is in html format since they can track which ip adresses are reading their pages ( this is done by tagging certain images on the page ) even if you save the html to your drive I bet some of these images won’t be saved as these are the tagged images. So you get your guide they get free advertising ( New Scientist is plastered all across the guide ) and also get an idea of who is intreasted in this kind of thing by you having to tick that box.
Hope this helps.
March 26th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
i think in this case it was probably an error rather than an intentional restriction. though one cannot be sure . usually in this kind of form opt out is accepted without any problems.