The Inbounder (And The Limits of Conversion)

I’m pleased to announce I’ll be speaking about Mass Persuasion: How To Get Members To Do What You Want to 1000 marketers at The Inbounder in Valencia, Spain on May 19 – 20.

If you’re in Europe and looking for tactical ways to influence members, this event might help.

Many of the best tactics we’ve acquired in the last year come from inbound marketing.

It’s a conversion game. You have a steady stream of traffic and you work to optimize every possible pixel to get the most clicks. If you want to sell things, conversion is great.

But there are limits to this. Conversion and community don’t usually co-operate well.

Conversion usually focuses on single, limited, short-term changes to behavior.

Community focuses on influencing behavior of a group of people over the long-term.

Conversion changes actions, community changes minds.

The tactics that gain the highest conversion rates often solicit the lowest participation rate.

You might dangle the prospect of a free eBook (worth $793.55!) to get people to sign up, but they will forever associate your community as a site to passively receive freebies. If you’re getting high registration rates and low participation rates, this is probably why.

The secret then is to influence the drivers of behavior in your favour. This is going to mean working at the belief, social norm, environment, and habit level.

If you’re in Europe, I hope you will join us to learn how.