User registration for radio?
Posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 1:32am. #
Mark Ramsey suggests in a recent blog post that:
One of the capabilities baked into the digital environment is the ability to efficiently target by matching consumers to the messages that are most relevant for them. [But] the vast majority of radio companies are surrendering this [...] because they are not requiring registration to their websites and/or streams.
Mark says, as a ‘reality check’, that 100% of Pandora’s listeners are registered, and asks: “how many of yours are?”
Well. The real reality check is that Pandora offers a user something better than the offer of slightly more relevant advertisements, of course. There’s a damn good reason to register to Pandora, because it needs to remember your information in order to work. Pandora asks for email/password, plus birth year, US ZIP code and gender, incidentally.
Mark’s claim that 100% of Pandora users are registered might as well also claim that 100% of Hotmail’s users are registered – it’s not comparable. And just like you don’t need to register to listen to radio on any other platform, I’d hope you’re not thinking about hiding your radio station behind a registration wall on the web. It’s madness to hide the prime product from people who might be trialling it for the very first time.
However, Mark probably has a point hidden in his madness. You see – websites shouldn’t bully people to register. Instead, websites should encourage listeners to sign in with a ton of great reasons (preferably premium reasons).
So how are we doing with this encouragement to register? Here’s two large UK broadcasters telling us why I should sign up to their website:
(Station 1): If you haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet then you’re missing out on bundles of exclusive comps and offers. We’ve already announced some exclusive Elton John news and are giving away a Blu-Ray disc player.
(Station 2): You’ll have an exclusive opportunity to purchase tickets to our events before they go on general sale. You’ll receive our newsletter, containing all the latest station news and exclusive event information, cool competitions and credit-crunch beating special offers! Plus all the dull form-filling will be done for you when you enter a competition.
Wow. Hardly excitement-inducing; mind, the BBC doesn’t even seem to bother to want to sign anyone up at all (though, being fair, I know it has interesting things planned in this area).
In fact, there are only a few stations doing registration well.
Absolute Radio have a raft of good reasons to sign up (and, after all, their site offers a ton of interesting content opportunities). However, their registration process is fairly invasive; it asks a lot of rather detailed questions, including how many children I have at home, what business I work in, and what my job title is. I’m signing up to a radio station website, not a bank.
My favourite – though I’m hardly in the target demo – is KISS, which has a good, content-rich page with lots of reasons to register; much of their premium content looks like it’s hidden behind a registration wall, though certainly not the radio station itself. The ‘upgrade’ concept is nice; the writing is nicely on-target, and unlike Absolute it’s not asking for the name of my first-born, or my girth measurement.
If we are expecting people to sign up and register, perhaps we should bully less and encourage more. But you can only encourage people if you’ve some damn good reasons. And much though I like vague news about Elton John, or the opportunity to spend my money faster, that’s not good enough reasons for me to spend ten minutes registering on your site.
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(Small bit of honesty: I coded the silly demographic questions as part of my original work on the sign-in code now used by Absolute Radio; although I made them optional pieces of information, and pushed the marketing team back from asking even more silly questions. Perhaps I should have pushed back harder.)
