Sandvine: Restricting white paper appeal

The way registration is used to control access to content needlessly restricts the indirect marketing benefits.

The Site

Sandvine is a Canada-based supplier of network equipment to broadband service providers , and uses its website to introduce its products and “solutions”. One of the options from the Solutions section menu is a Download Center where visitors can choose from lists of Whitepapers (8), Brochures (4) and Case Studies (1). Content can be viewed only in PDF format, and all bar one of the white papers (a single-page “trend analysis”) require registering with the site before even that can be done. Access to the case study and one of the brochures is similarly restricted.

Some Solutions pages, Worm/DoS Traffic Mitigation, for example, feature an invitation to “read” a relevant white paper. However, the link leads directly to the Download Center lists.

The Takeaway

Sandvine is following the example of many technology companies in putting free white papers on its site as a way of demonstrating its technical and strategic ‘savvy’ about the hot issues in its sector. But the way it uses registration to control access to content is needlessly restricting the indirect marketing benefits.

Sandvine’s insistence that people become registered users (and thus hand over a contact e-mail address) is driven by its desire to harvest ‘prospects’ from the Whitepapers collection. However, many will balk in the absence of anything of any substance by which to judge the value of the content – especially if their expectations have been raised by the “read” invitation. Sandvine should at least provide freely available executive summaries of the white papers (preferably in more user-friendly HTML alternatives for easier online reading), or unrestricted access to a more substantial ‘sample’ than the current Trend Analysis offering.

While this might still reduce the quantity of contacts Sandvine can add to its marketing directories, it will almost certainly produce a better quality selection.

First published on 05 August, 2004