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Comment by GordonS | Hacker News Reader

Not sure how I feel about this level of tracking TBH. I can see how the data might benefit some sales teams, but mostly I think it'll be hoovered up, stored and nothing done with it.

Have you put consent mechanisms in place to allow readers to opt out of tracking, while still letting them read the document/slides?

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It provides more visibility into the funnel. Seems valuable. Whether it's ethical or not is something different.

Examples of the value it could bring:

Did the prospect drop off because they never even opened the presentation, or did they at least consider it?

After it's been opened, was it opened a bunch more times? Shows that it wasn't ruled out or glazed over.

How recent was it last opened? If it was today then we know it's still under consideration. If it was a month ago, seems like the lead has gone cold.

To me, it seems like there's a mismatch. If the sales channel justifies slide deck type presentations, reliance on analytics smells way too hands off. Slide decks are at the phone call layer not the $10/month SaaS layer. A slide deck doesn't have a "call to action" button that starts the process of charging a credit card.

I don't think it's either or. You can use the analytics to check on the level of interest following a call. You can see the dwell time on particular slides to know when something is of interest or concern.

I'm probably biased. But using slide decks as a stand-alone marketing artifact seems like a poor choice of alternative. Better analytics probably makes it better, but still leaves stand-alone slide decks as a poor form of marketing. A web page, video, email, phone-call, brochure, etc. all seem like a better focus of attention.

It's not that I don't appreciate the product. I just think it is likely to leave the big problem intact in the cases where it is used.

What makes slide decks stand out as bad among web pages, videos, email, calls and brochures?

Inherent low information density. Inherent lack of interactivity. Incidental lack of call to action buttons.

Hey Gordon, I’m pushing a patch in early Jan to address this exact issue.

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