This is a guest post by Tom Harris, Your Marketing Coach. Tom helps entrepreneurs and small businesses develop and execute marketing plans. He specializes in website usability and effectiveness.

If you have a business website, the information in it is free to whoever wants to come read it. Maybe you have a blog, and everyone in the world can read your blog posts for free. But it bothers you that you never know WHO is reading your site content or your blog posts. If you did know, then you could market to them. And you certainly want to build up your email list.

So, you have this great idea – you’ll come up with a document containing a generous amount of detailed, valuable and really useful information (an e-book, a whitepaper, a whatever), and you’ll give it away for free to promote yourself and your business, BUT you’ll ask for a person’s email address in exchange for letting them download the information. How logical – they get the information, you get to add a new contact to your email list. Good trade, right? Why wouldn’t everyone want to take you up on this offer? I mean, you’re just asking for their email address, not their name and phone number and detailed driving directions to their house!

Well, a number of studies suggest that merely asking for someone’s email address will result in about half as many downloads as not asking for any information at all. And don’t even think about asking for MORE than an email address, as many companies still do.

How good an idea is it to say, “OK, I’ll give you something, but you gotta give me something first.”?
Here’s the big question: Which would you rather have – (a) a number of email addresses that you can send unsolicited/unwanted messages to, or (b) twice that many people who now have your information in their hands? If you think the most important thing is to simply “get your name and message out there”, then consider making the information really, totally free.

Think about all the ways we have available to us to contact or interact with someone. Telephone, internet, fax, instant message, text message, twitter…what happened to good old letter writing? We were considering the ways that we communicate and came up with some interesting conclusions. Are our personalities different based on the different ways that we are sharing our information? Do you have a different personality online than you do in person? What about emailing versus letter writing?

I can cite the experiences I have had over the years. I have had a pen pal for over 22 years now. We started writing when I was in third grade, and we have always written letters. A few years into our relationship we (I) thought it would be cool to talk on the phone. It didn’t go as well as our letters. Even when the internet and email became more popular, we still stick to letter writing. Anyone who knows me knows that the quickest and easiest way to get ahold of me is via email. So why don’t I connect with my penpal online? Our relationship began on paper, and it is still very much the way that I prefer to communicate with my pen-pal. We have met in person, once a few years ago when I travelled to attend her wedding. We literally met moments before she walked down the aisle. We did have a little bit of time to connect, and it was a fantastic, life changing experience for me. Yet here we are, back to letters. I enjoy getting one in the mail, and I am sure it is the same for her.

How are our new methods of communication changing our relationships? Do you have different methods to connect with different people? Do you have favorites? Or do they all seem to have their place in our lives that have so many dimensions and different areas to interact?