Yes, I am using GMAIL as provider for my professional conversations. I also have a hansdeleenheer.com account which I only use for really really important stuff like bank, leasing, social security, … communication. This means that my primary inbox is gmail. This both for communication with people or application/account registration. And here is the topic of the day with that:

Lead, leads, leads …

I know, I know. I’ve had this discussion dozens of times and it always comes down to these two major reasons:

• We don’t want anonymous competitors downloading our software
• We need your personal information to SPAM you as a new lead

I’ll leave the first reason to you for judgement. Personally if I trust my software, I wouldn’t mind my competitors using a public trial (not beta!). That second reason is where I’d like to focus our attention on for a moment.

It’s not you, it’s me

You do understand that everything is about perception, right? This is what the error message above is telling me: we don’t care about you, it’s about us! Think about this for a second. There are two main reasons why I would register with a free account:

• It really is my account and I would love to get your information through this inbox
• Although I am genuinely interested in the information behind this form, I don’t want your follow up emails

The result of this error message also has a twofold:

• Because I really wanted to have the ad-hoc information, I registered through my business account and immediately unsubscribed after receiving the confirmation email.
• I know that when I do so, you still have my email so I don’t submit the form as my privacy is more valuable to me than the information behind the form.

What is your intent?

By now you probably noticed I like twofolds. Let me give you another one. What is your intent as a vendor to provide me a whitepaper / webinar / free book?

• You care about me and you would love me to come back for more on a future occasion
• You don’t care about educating me and you just want my email address to ‘nurture’ my lead

Guess which one of the two I, as a potential future customer, are NOT interested in?

By the way, have you ever considered that gmail account could stay longer in my inbox than my professional account? If I was genuinly interested in your product, this alone should make you remove the error message.

FOOTNOTE: I know there are dozens of workarounds with alternative email addresses but that only confirms my message that this should not be necessary.