Four Best Practices to Increase Your Product Registration Rates

Product registration is a key component of the customer journey, but many consumers today are not registering their products. In fact, a recent report by the University of Michigan found that only 6 percent of consumers always complete their product registrations. And, the percentage of consumers that complete their registration is even lower when you segment the data by age, with consumers under the age of 45 only registering their product 4 percent of the time. This trend poses a big challenge for manufacturers who want to strengthen relationships with their customers and rely primarily on product registrations to connect them to their customers.

In order to tackle the challenge of low product registration rates, it’s important to determine what’s causing the lack of registration in the first place. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a silver bullet. According to the University of Michigan report, product cost, type of product, warranty activation, length of ownership, and post-registration communications all influence whether or not a consumer will complete a product registration. While you may not be able to control all of these factors, there is definitely an opportunity to take steps to positively influence product registration rates.

So, how should you get started? While there are many potential opportunities, we recommend starting with four key areas to see the most significant and fastest impact on your product registration rates.

1. Make the process easy and fast
2. Earn their information
3. Be clear about the value of product registration
4. Streamline the transition from registration to onboarding

Today’s consumers are busier than ever and have multiple things competing for their time throughout the day. This culture of busyness definitely influences product registration rates, with 48 percent of consumers stating that product registrations taking too much time or being inconvenient impacts their decision to complete one. And, 78.2 percent of consumers would ideally like to have automatic product registration. This is why it’s so important to make the product registration process as easy and fast as possible. This is where a consumer’s love of mobile devices actually comes in handy! With U.S. adults spending an average of 3 hours and 17 minutes daily using a mobile device, brands have an opportunity to connect product registration with a device that’s likely already in their hands. Providing product registration using a mobile device via a QR code, text, or near-field communication (NFC) is an easy way for consumers to register their products at the time of installation or first use. It allows the consumer to interact with your brand right away and doesn’t require them to fill out and mail in a postcard or type in a lengthy web address.

You can even get creative in how you present the QR, text, or NFC information by including it as a callout on the product box or as a special welcome card when the box or product is first opened. Using one of these three activation methods for product registration makes it easier and faster for consumers to register their new products and capitalize on a device they likely already have closeby during their first experience with your product.

Have you ever filled out a form and felt like you were being asked way too much information? That’s how many consumers feel about the current state of product registration, especially when they’ve purchased a product from a brand for the first time. We like to think of collecting consumer information as a marathon and not a sprint. Brands should ask for basic contact information during the initial product registration process and continue to gather more information throughout their relationship with the consumer. This is known as progressive profiling and can be used on standard web forms as well as product registration forms.

In progressive profiling, forms are dynamically populated based on what information you already knows about a consumer. Progressive profiling also can be used across both product registration forms and other digital properties to enable you to collect the most information possible as a consumer interacts with your brand throughout the customer journey.

For example, during product registration you could ask the consumer to provide their name and email address and then use progressive profiling to collect date of birth, address, phone number, demographics, etc. This allows you to gather consumer information over a period of time rather than asking for it all upfront and provides your brand with an opportunity to earn the right to collect more information as the consumer continues to interact with you.

One of the best opportunities for increasing product registration rates is clearly stating the value product registration provides to a consumer. According to the University of Michigan report, 38 percent of consumers said they didn’t register a product because they didn’t feel it was worth registering or saw no benefit in doing so while 24 percent stated they did not understand the benefits of registering. Additionally, 58 percent of consumers were concerned that completing a product registration form would lead to unsolicited communications from the brand. This data proves the potential impact brands can see if they are clear about the value of product registration upfront.

The best approach is to clearly state what consumers can expect from your brands after completing a product registration form. This should include information regarding the benefits of product registration such as recall notices, warranty activation, product updates, maintenance alerts, etc. By providing this type of information upfront, consumers can easily determine if they believe 45% of people have registered their product on a mobile device when available Initial Progressive Profiling Form Name Email Address Second Progressive Profiling Form Phone Number Mailing Address Date of Birth — 3 — lumavate.com the value of product registration outweighs the inherent cost of spending time on completing it. It’s also vital for your brand to be transparent about the frequency and type of content a consumer will receive as a result of product registration. Many consumers have experienced situations where completing a form has resulted in being automatically subscribed to content they didn’t wish to receive. This can lead some consumers to be skeptical of providing their contact information. However, brands that are more upfront about their communication plans will likely see an increase in submissions since consumers know more about what to expect postregistration.

First impressions are everything. That’s why connecting product registrations with the onboarding experience is a great strategy to engage consumers with your brand for the first time. This approach enables you to not only have more control of the first time user experience, but also provide consumers with another benefit of product registration.

When connecting the product registration process to the onboarding experience, your brand can better control what information is provided to the consumer to streamline the onboarding process and ensure the consumer has easy access to only relevant product information. Since you’ve already collected product information as part of the registration process, you’re able to provide a highly-personalized onboarding experience based on the specific product and role the consumer plays in using the product. This allows your brand to create an onboarding experience that contains product-specific content such as instructional how-to videos, installation and troubleshooting manuals, live chat, product ratings, and more. By implementing this best practice, your brand is able to not only increase product registration rates, but also decrease customer support costs because consumers are able to access information they need without having to reach out to the customer support team.

While there is no silver bullet to increase product registration rates, the best practices we’ve discussed are definitely the best way for your brand to quickly increase its product registration rates. That’s why we strongly encourage you to simplify their registration process, utilize progressive profiling, clearly state the value of product registration, and streamline the transition between registration and onboarding. Brands that take advantage of these best practices will not only see an increase in product registration rates, but also will develop a stronger relationship with their customers, ultimately resulting in increased brand loyalty and customer lifetime value.

The Future of Content: Rethinking Content Consumption, Rapt Media, Inc, May 2016.
Consumer Preferences Regarding Product Registration, U of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, 2015.
2017 State of the Industry: Consumer Trends in Product Registration, Registria, 2017.