New Product Registration

You’ve just bought a new dishwasher for your home. It’s a top-of-the-line model that costs a hefty sum. So, to protect your investment you fill out the registration form and warranty card.

But as you mail it in you wonder something. Is there a reason to send in a new product registration form? Does it really protect my investment? Or is it just another reason to have a company contact me?

Below we’ll go over all there is to know about new product registration.

What Is New Product Registration?

What is a new product registration? Product registration is a customer purchases a product, usually a larger investment like a lawn mower, dishwasher, or even hair dryer, and provides details about their purchase and contact information via a registration form.

Here’s what’s typically included in a product registration form:

Name
Address
Phone
Email
Date of purchase
Location of purchase
Product
Serial number
Optional demographic questions

Product registration isn’t required for customers to complete by manufacturers but may be tied to the product warranty depending on the manufacturer's requirements.

It’s also important to note that some products may not require you to complete a product registration in order to take advantage of a warranty while others may.

We recommend that customers should always complete the product registration each time they buy an applicable product to ensure they're covered.

What Is The Point of Product Registration?

You might have a cynical idea of a new product registration if you’re like most consumers who don’t fill out product registrations. Aren’t they just another way for companies to sell to you? While some product manufacturers treat it that way, not all do. In fact, there are many reasons to register a product.

Let’s take a look at some advantages of product registration from both a consumer and manufacturer perspective.

Benefits of Registering Products as a Consumer:

You may think that giving your contact information and details of your purchase leads to nowhere, but it can actually serve many benefits for customers if the manufacturer has a well-thought-out custom experience strategy for how they’ll use the data they collect from customers.

By completing a product registration form, consumers can:

Get product support fast. Whether you’re a business owner or use the product at home you don’t want to wait. You want to help the moment you notice an issue. Registering a product means you skip answering questions about what the product is and go right into the issue you need fixed.
Stay up to speed with company announcements and updates. Find out how to use the product and be among the first to learn about new product and accessory launches.
Learn about common issues and how to troubleshoot them.
Find out about product recalls when they are announced. Without registering you may hear about them too late or not at all.

Benefits of Product Registration as a Manufacturer:

Product registrations is extremely important to manufacturers. Most manufacturers don’t have a direct connection to their customers if the product was purchased through a retail channel or a distributor network. This means the manufacturer has no idea who is purchasing their product, what stores are selling more of one product compared to others, etc.

By collecting product registrations from customers, manufacturers can:

Let customers know about a product recall before they hear about it elsewhere. You don’t want to have a recall announced by a news source that doesn’t have all the facts.
Capture valuable zero-party data about their customers.
Message customers (if they’ve opted-in to receive messages from your brand) about new product launches and related parts and accessories to drive revenue.

Scenario: You make Bluetooth speakers. A customer has bought a high-end model and registered it. A few weeks in one the speakers in the unit start sounding a little fuzzy. The customer calls your tech support. Luckily their information is easy to find since they’ve registered. Your tech team identifies the issue and arranges repairs. When the customer gets the speaker back it sounds better than ever. Now whenever that customer wants another Bluetooth speaker they head right to your website. They already know your products are well made and that customers are cared for. Why spend time researching speakers when they can just go to you?

How Do You Get A Product Registered?

There are three main ways you can get a product registered. Let’s discuss some of the ways manufacturers can design their product registration process and the pros and cons of each.

Printed Cards

The first and most traditional way is to use a product registration card that is typically included in product packaging. A lot of companies still use this method today.

Printed product registration cards typically do not get completed by consumers for a variety of reasons, whether it be due to a perceived lack of value or a cumbersome process.

With a printed product registration card, consumers have to manually fill out the card and then mail it back to the manufacturer. That’s a lot of effort for consumers that live in a digital-first world.

From a manufacturing perspective, product registration cards are expensive to ship and print. There’s also a layer of purchasing postage for these cards (that often goes unused).

But let’s say consumers do complete and mail these product registration cards, now the manufacturer will need a place to store these documents which usually involves hundreds of filing cabinets. And if you ever need to look up the information on these cards, sifting through these filing cabinets is no small task - that is unless someone has dedicated HOURS to digitizing these forms.

Product Online Registration Via Link

The second method is to use an online registration form. If the company has not provided a link to the form you’ll need to search the company’s website.

This method involves including a link on a piece of paper or product manual. You can also email customers the link to the form too.

Because these forms are completed online, the form is easy to edit and you’ll instantly receive the customer’s information as soon as people submit the form. Plus, you don’t have to figure out a customer's messy handwriting.

While product online registration is still a better method than printed product registration cards, there are still some considerations manufacturers will need to think about. Because there’s no QR code or easy activation method, consumers will need to manually type the URL into their device to access the form, which could be a blocker for them to complete the form.

Another potential blocker for customers completing this form is the ability to locate the link. If it’s printed in a small area on directions or another form within the product’s packaging, customers could easily miss it.

Digital Product Registration Experience

The third method is to scan the QR code on the product’s box that’s tied to a digital product registration experience. Manufacturers can simply have the QR code printed on the box itself and ditch the need to print out physical product registration cards.

A customer can easily scan it and be taken right to the online registration form. And because the form itself is online, you don’t have to worry about repacking products when the form changes. The QR code stays the same.

This is the most modern method of registration. Customers scan the code and fill out the form quickly and the information flows directly into your business’s CRM.

Pros of Digital Product Registration Experience:

The form can be edited fast. No need to worry about reprinting physical cards.
You don’t have to decipher a customer's messy handwriting.
You’ll get the forms as soon as customers submit their information.
There’s no limit to what you can include in the form. Have a how-to video you’d like customers to watch? You can include a link to that!
List product accessories customers can buy to improve product use.
You can print the QR code on the product box so customers can scan and go. No need to hunt around your website for the form.
Reduce costs on packing material since the code is printed on the box.

Once a customer completes the product registration, the digital product registration experience could link to another digital experience that properly onboards customers to use their new product with content like:

Installation Guide
FAQs
Tips and Tricks
How-to Videos
Product Overview
Customer Support

How Do I Create a Registration Form?

Here’s how you can create an online registration form using Lumavate.

Sign up for Lumavate - You can either create a free account and start building digital experiences right away, or schedule a demo to talk to an expert before signing up.
Integrate with Salesforce - If you have a Salesforce instance, we recommend integrating it with Lumavate for optimal results. We have on-demand tutorials available to guide you through the process. However, if your business doesn't use Salesforce, you can still store your data in Lumavate.
Utilize the Product Registration Template - Lumavate offers over 40 templates to help you accelerate your digital efforts, including a Product Registration Template. Simply copy the template into your Studio and customize it to fit your brand.
Publish Your Digital Experience - Once you've created your digital product registration experience in the Studio, hit the green publish button to make it live for your customers to use.

Where Can I Create a Registration Form?

There are several places you can use to create a registration form. Let’s take a look at where you can create a registration form for both printed cards and digital product registration experiences.

For Registration Cards:

If you’re still considering a paper form Word or Google Docs is an option. However, you may need to create them manually since they may not have a product registration form template. When creating product registration forms using Word or Google Docs, they are limited in that they do not offer a ton of customization, nor do they instantly update the form if something changes with your registration form, meaning you’ll need to print and ship all of the cards again.

Digital Product Registration Experience

But if you want to create an engaging product registration experience your customers actually fill out, you’ll want to use a digital experience platform (DXP) like Lumavate.

Lumavate is a digital experience platform that simplifies the creation of product registration forms and the seamless integration of data into your record system. With Lumavate, you can seamlessly integrate the product registration form into your product onboarding process, guiding customers to relevant instructions, how-to videos, manuals, and more after form completion.

Using Lumavate for to create a digital product registration experience, you can:

Quickly create a new product registration form.
Edit those forms and have them immediately pushed live to customers.
Associate a QR code that can be tied to product packaging.
Send product registration information to your system of record. No need to hunt it down in hundreds of filing cabinets.
Customize the form fields.
Collect text messaging and email opt-ins. This is perfect for letting customers know about new products or company news.
Get a product registration the moment it’s sent in.
Get a warranty registration along with product registration.
Collect zero-party data.
Have access to customer support to answer questions.
Include links to how-to videos.

Scenario: You make espresso machines. Coffee drinkers can’t get enough of your machine. But there’s a slight learning curve to getting the best espresso shot. People are blowing up your support line to ask how to do it right.

So you open the Lumavate Studio (where you created the online form) and edit your form to include a link to a how-to video. Now instead of people contacting you day and night, they’re watching the video after registering.

Simplify New Product Registration Today

Lumavate can make capturing the zero-party data you want easier than ever with a digital product registration form. Book a demo today to see exactly what Lumavate can do for your business.

Or if you want to see the platform for yourself, take a self-guided tour of our platform or check out our other interactive tours here.