Bad content experiences.
As content consumers, we’ve all had them.
You click on a link for an article about five things to do for a well-organized office. You land on a webpage only to find the content is part of a 60-page guide that must be downloaded.
You hit a proverbial wall and ask: Is this frustrating experience worth it?
You may say yes and download the report. Or perhaps you resume your search for an easier-to-consume format. Maybe you abandon the mission altogether and accept your messy office.
Of course, you don’t take the time to report that bad experience to the office supply store that published the content.
Yet, as a marketer, you want that feedback. After all, a clunky content experience may be all it takes to deter a subscriber or lose a valuable customer.
The CMI community is here to provide that usually unsaid feedback. They share their frustrations as consumers, and we’ll share some solutions in case their examples sound familiar.
Discontent 1: Poor gated content experiences
To gate or not to gate content isn’t the problem addressed here. It’s the user experience with the gating.
Jeremy Bednarski, a content marketing professional who hosts the CMI Slack channel, and Erika Heald, fractional content marketer and B2B marketing consultant, share two distinct examples of gating gone wrong.
No Gmail allowed; prolonged delivery
Like Jeremy shared on LinkedIn, he wanted to read a guide, so he filled out a form with his Gmail address to get it. However, the form wouldn’t accept the Gmail domain. Jeremy pressed ahead, providing a rarely used email to get the guide.
But then, he ran into another — and familiar — stumbling block: The publisher said it would email the guide. Two hours later, the content hadn’t arrived in his inbox or spam folder. “They have my data, and I’ve got nothing,” he writes. Instead, he advises, “Make the experience as easy as possible and have the content available on your website. There are too many risks and points where you can lose your prospect.”
Download link expires
Erika ran into something similar but with a twist.
“I kept seeing some really compelling ads for Fisher Investments’ retirement guide. Since I’m starting a huge project with a fintech client (and worked at Schwab for 10 years), I decided to give them my email to take a look,” she recounts.
Fisher Investments emailed only a link to the guide. But that wasn’t the most frustrating part. Erika discovered later that the link was valid for only four days. After that, if she wanted to read the content, she had to provide her email address again.
Yet, Fisher Investments didn’t disclose that limited access on its sign-up page (shown below). Given the small print in its privacy policy, which is linked on the page, doesn’t indicate that it deletes email addresses in its system, Fisher Investments couldn't really need her email address again.
Fix: Be transparent about gating, deliver content immediately
When gating content, add the user’s email address to your database, but don’t use email as the distribution channel for the downloadable content. Make the content accessible on your site immediately after the user registers, or at least send them to a landing page with the download.
Also, if your content is only accessible to people without widely used domains like Gmail, say that upfront. Don’t force them to discover that after filling out the form. (Or worse, don’t deliver a “submission is invalid” message without telling them their email address is the problem.)
Discontent 2: Failed personalization
Personalization can help the recipient feel the content is more relevant — even when the only customization is the use of their name. But when that personalization fails, the organization likely gets more attention, but not the positive kind.
Bad data in ‘to’ field
Penny Gralewski, vice president of product marketing at Arcserve, shares a bad content experience that was new to me.
She recently received an email with the subject line: “Penny GRA-LESKI (pronounced), your ...” as shown in this image:
“I appreciate that the firm's salesperson had taken the time to document how to pronounce my last name, but they had typed this information in the wrong field of their CRM system,” Penny says. “I'm curious how many other customers received emails with phonetic spelling in the subject lines.”
Questions asked but no delivery on the answers
Emma Lieberman, director of content marketing at Impact Marketing, had a different kind of personalization fail. She visited a newsletter sign-up page through a link sent by a trusted source. It was a simple form. However, after she completed it, she learned that was only the first step. She had to complete a five-question survey before her subscription was complete.
The newsletter has arrived twice — in her spam folder — and has only delivered disappointment. “They literally have exactly one more chance to provide me with real value in the newsletters they say I’ll receive before I unsubscribe forever,” she says.
Fix: Assess the input and use it wisely
Bad data leads to bad content output. That’s likely what happened in Penny’s example. I realize you can’t proofread every personalized email subject line, but you can run spot checks to thwart widespread problems. For a more granular analysis, use a tool to assess missteps in the data. For example, a simple search for “pronounced” would have revealed any recipients for whom the first name field mistakenly included first name pronunciation data.
In Emma’s example, the solution is obvious: If you ask subscribers to provide more information about themselves or their interests, you had better deliver on that. If you can’t, don’t ask the questions. It’s a clear marketing research grab that gives nothing to the subscriber.
Discontent 3: Deliver more than the audience wants
Attracting audiences is the goal of any content marketer. Yet, that mission can often lead to overloaded pages and underhanded strategies.
Lengthy prelude before giving what they came for
Recipe blog sites are some of the biggest contributors to irritating and frustrating visitor experiences. “They make you work so hard to get the information that you went to the post for. I understand they need to rank for SEO, but it’s a bad customer experience,” says Dominic Garcia, solutions marketing director at 1Password.
If you’ve ever visited a site to grab a recipe, you’ve experienced what Dominic describes. Articles start with the history of the dish, then segue into ingredient descriptions, followed by the equipment details and cooking tips. Only then does the recipe appear.
Good thing includes a ‘gotcha’
After surfing through numerous recipe sites (and ignoring all the history about eggs and the “helpful” cooking techniques), I came upon Joy Fun Sunshine, a blog that smartly included a jump-to-the-recipe button, so I didn’t have to wade through everything else.
The site also offered what I thought was another perk: If I provided my email address, the recipe would go to my inbox — what a helpful feature. I frequently search for the same recipe again and again because I can’t find the original page anymore. So, I typed in my email address.
But I got duped. Yes, it delivered a link to the recipe, but I also started receiving an email every day or two when the site published a new recipe or article. I unsubscribed, but the bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth because it required extra work on my part.
Fix: Make it easy for audience to consume what they want
Corporate guidelines, SEO requirements, and other must-have ingredients may require your page to include more content than the visitor wants. But you can still look for ways to make it easy for visitors to find what they seek. Include your own type of jump-to-the-recipe button. Add a table of contents with hyperlinks to the appropriate sections.
Most importantly, be transparent. If signing up for a piece of content triggers the delivery of multiple pieces of content, say that upfront. More than likely, visitors will still provide the email and appreciate the honesty (frankly, that’s likely a great differentiator from your competitors).
Discontent honorable mentions
Given the volume of common bad experiences, I wanted to share a few more so you can avoid making them. Your audience will thank you even if you never hear it from them.
Long-ago dates presented as current
Kristen Hicks, freelance content marketing writer, points to the articles that act like they’re current and they’re not. Think about all those articles that round up relevant statistics. The headline says something like, “The 2025 Statistics Marketers Need To Know.” Yet, the data in the article is from 2020.
Unsubscribe is difficult to find
Then there’s the universal bad content experience — the opt-out. “If you make it hard for me to opt out of something, we are going to have long-term issues. Period. The end,” says Mariela Azcuy, vice president of B2B strategy and executive communications at Carve Communications.
Quiz trickery
Oh, and don’t forget those quizzes that you take only to find out at the end that an email is required to receive the results. I shouldn’t be surprised because it's a longstanding tactic, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated.
Good content experiences share these two traits
Frankly, though the list of bad content experiences is long, most of them boil down to a simple solution: Be honest and transparent. Let visitors know what to expect and what they’ll get. Then, deliver what you said you would.
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