Last week, we introduced the concept of Podcast Tools Direct. The idea was, you could either get the “traditional” Podcast Tools show with the standard opening, explanation about the show, commercial insertion, etc.

Or, you could sign up at Podcast Tools Direct to get the “no fluff” version that was just the content.

But, I get your name and email address in the exchange.

The trade-off will thrill some and scare others. The question is a simple one, how many opted into this process?

Since we only have 1 show right now (about to publish the next one - after I write this), we have a decent take on our conversion (after 1 week only).

3.4%.

Yes, multiple access to this offer will increase the take, but we’ll have a lot more downloads - so this will be harder to track.

Am I happy with 3.4%? No. But I don’t know if this is the right audience to measure this kind of thing up against. This is an audience of people looking for Podcast help. They’re the converted. They know the power of anonymous subscription.

What we’ll do next is a A/B split test and see if (requiring) a name and email for the Podcast feed does anything to conversion.

Additional Thought: We aren’t requiring the opt-in at Marketing Online Live so this isn’t a perfect comparison. But, … I divided downloads of most recent episode by amount of people on the list. That’s at a 12.8%. Much nicer.

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