I have written about how most people would love to just gather information – just in case they need it sometime. As marketers – realising this basic human psychology helps get more customers, more leads or what have you.

So I end up buying a larger jar of my favourite coffee which has a free mug with it, rather than the one without the mug. Why? I might need the mug someday…..and with the coffee there’s hardly any cost to it and I would anyway consume the coffee so the larger jar is not of much consequence. So I end up gathering one more mug and end up buying more coffee than I needed to. I have gathered many such items in my house because smart marketers bundled things which I wanted to gather even though a lot of times I didn’t want the base product.

Books get consumed because we have an insatiable desire for reading. Again I am a ready example of buying the next book referenced by someone. I would like to have that book in my collection on my kindle. Almost 40-45% of the books in my collection have not been read at more than 10%. Since Kindle has made it so easy for me now to go and buy any book and get it delivered on my device instantly, I end up “scratching my itch” much more than I would, if I had to go out and physically locate a book in the book shop.

What does this mean for marketers. Different people have different “itches to be scratched”. You can increase the propensity of buying or reading in the specific set of people by offering this – so a mug with the larger coffee jar or a free book / report if they are willing to give their email id.

Obviously there’s a value that is attached in the transaction – if the person sees value, she will give her email id, if she doesn’t see value, she won’t. I attach value to the mug hence I am willing to buy the larger jar of coffee.

Identify the items that people in your category may be interested in gathering and use that to increase the opt-ins into your site or increase the sale of whatever you sell.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!