by Sarah Kelleher 
Marketers need detailed data to be able to segment and target their campaigns effectively. But adding all the fields you would like onto a form can be overwhelming for your visitors. How can you collect all the data you need without damaging the customer journey?
Enter progressive profiling. All marketing automation tools worth their salt allow you to gather new data about existing records on subsequent form submissions.
Imagine a scenario where a visitor downloads a whitepaper from your site and then registers for a webinar. Instead of asking them for their name, email and company over and over, you can change the fields on the form each time to gather rich, meaningful and highly powerful data about your new lead.
That data can then be used to trigger automated nurture campaigns with relevant content based on that person’s interests, job role, location and so on.
Then you can sit back and watch the MQLs roll in… or start planning your next successful marketing campaign!
Progressive profiling allows digital marketers to gather information incrementally instead of all in one go. As you have more interactions with a customer you ask for more information – while justifying the requests by providing those customers with value. This could be through the use of discounts, offers or freebies.