Having paid in the past to get my personal credit check report in the UK (and they’re not cheap either!), I have just stumbled across a completely free credit rating agency.
And it’s not just free for a month (and then you pay through the nose) it really is free for life.
The company is called Noddle and it’s part of the Callcredit Information Group who I guess are offering this free personal credit checking service as a loss leader in order to attract new business customers.
And that means it’s a fine and dandy plan for everyone in the UK who needs to check their personal credit rating on a frequent basis (the recession’s not over yet, so this really is a good thing).
In business I’m often told there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but is that correct?
Yes it’s true someone else will be paying for the free lunch somewhere along the line with this model, but it’s not going to be you for once!
I’ve just signed up and here’s the process:
From a business perspective this ‘squeeze page’ is perfect.
If you are offering something in order to get a lead you won’t go far wrong copying this style.
There’s not an Email address field in sight, so it doesn’t put people off, and once you’ve clicked the Apply Now button you’re already saying ‘Yes’.
And here is the all important email field.
This type of optin is called ‘Two Step Optin’ because you need to click the button BEFORE you get to the optin form.
It works incredibly well and according to sources such as Lead Pages it beats the old model of displaying an email address right on the optin page (which most people are becoming blind to).
The other downside of asking for an email address right from the get-go is that subconsciously people intrinsically know that it’s a direct swap of contact info for something that ‘may’ be useful, and that can now be a major turn off.
The address form is simple enough and because you know this is all about getting your personal credit rating score, it makes sense they are going to need this.
The screenshot above shows the VERY tricky part of this form: they are asking for your credit card details.
At first you may baulk at this, but they make it very clear why this is required, and when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense (if you didn’t ID yourself in this way, anyone could go and grab your details!)
This is a straightforward form. You can see they already know a lot about you as each question is tailored to your financial history (that’s why I’ve had to block out some personal bits!).
And when you submit the above details you’re done – and you’ve just saved yourself a lot of money!
At the foot of the above form you have the usual ‘send info’ checkboxes.
If you leave these ticked, Callcredit have just got themselves a very valuable lead (that seems fair in that you are getting a very valuable service that would normally set you back over £100 a year with other services).
I heard about Noddle via Virgin Pioneers, the Entrepreneur portal set up by Richard Branson.
From there I discovered he has set up a startup loan service to help small businesses get going.
I took a look into that and my local Enterprise Agency (which is what they used to be called back in the Business Link days) got back to me with a whole bunch of information, including the news about Noddle.
So here’s a thank you to Sir Richard and NWES for helping to give the UK army of Entrepreneurs a leg up.
Thank you.