Content Gating Strategy

Tier 1 Public content — brand awareness

Thought leadership, commentary, short insights, and preview teasers of deeper content. This is what the world sees. It builds SEO, drives traffic, and establishes NeuGroup as the authority in corporate treasury.

Gradual gate

Skippable pop-up or fully public (no gate)

Who sees it

Everyone — visitors, prospects, members, search engines

Goal

SEO, brand awareness, drive traffic deeper into the site

Content types

Blog posts, opinion pieces, event recaps, preview summaries of Tier 3 content

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Tier 2 Lead magnet content — funnel filler

Research reports, benchmarks, and deep analysis. This is the content prospects will trade their contact info for. The page uses an enforced gate with a Tally form embedded at the top.

Gradual gate

Enforced sign-in gate + embedded Tally form at top of page

Who sees it

Prospects see the tease + Tally form. Members see full page (scroll past form).

Goal

Capture leads — name, email, company → CRM → nurture sequence

Content types

Research reports, survey results, benchmark data, deep analysis (~10/year)

Key insight: The enforced gate teases enough of the page that the Tally form is visible to non-logged-in visitors. They fill out the form and get redirected to an unlisted page with the full content. Members are already logged in, so they see the whole page — the form is there but irrelevant to them.

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Tier 3 Members only — paying members

The premium stuff. Meeting notes, peer benchmarking data, session recordings, full content libraries. Two options depending on how locked down you need it:

Option A

Enforced gate

Only logged-in members can view the full content. Still teases to visitors. Guests with an enabled user for their session/meeting also get access while their account is active.

Option B

Spaces

Only members assigned to a specific space can see it. No teasing, no visibility to anyone else. Guests cannot access this content even with an active account.

Guest access note: Guests who attend a session get a temporary enabled user. With Option A (enforced gate), they can see all enforced-gate content during that period. If you need to hide content from guests entirely, it must live in a space (Option B).

The teasing bridge

How to promote Tier 3 content without giving it away.

Tier 3 content

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Create a preview (key findings)

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Publish preview at Tier 1

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Visitor hits Tier 2 Tally form

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Lead captured

The preview catches eyeballs publicly. Curiosity builds. The visitor explores deeper and hits a Tier 2 Tally form, becoming a lead. The full version of the content stays locked at Tier 3 for paying members only.

Same page, two experiences

The Tier 2 mechanic uses a single URL but delivers a different experience to prospects vs. members.

Prospect (not signed in)

Sees the tease + form

Lands on page

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Enforced gate shows tease

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Tally form is visible in tease

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Fills out name, email, company

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Redirected to unlisted content page

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Lead captured in CRM

Member (signed in)

Sees everything, ignores form

Lands on page

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Already past enforced gate

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Scrolls past Tally form

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Reads full content directly

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No friction, no forms

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Happy member

Critical requirement: The enforced gate tease must show enough of the page that the Tally form is fully visible and fillable without logging in. Test this before rolling out — if the tease cuts off before the form, prospects can't fill it out and the whole mechanic breaks.

Optional UX improvement: Add a small note above the Tally form like "Already a member? Scroll down for the full report" so members know the form isn't for them.

Options we explored

We evaluated several approaches before landing on the recommended strategy. Here's what else was on the table and why we moved on.

Explored Tally pre-fill via URL parameters

Idea: If Gradual passes user info (like email) into the page URL when someone is logged in, we could pre-fill the Tally form so members just click submit — or auto-redirect past it entirely.

Verdict: Not possible. Tally does not support pre-fill in a way that works with our Gradual setup. Tested and confirmed.

Explored Conditional Tally form (hide for members)

Idea: Detect whether the visitor is logged into Gradual and conditionally show or hide the Tally iframe. Members would never see the form; prospects would.

Verdict: Not possible. Tally embeds as an iframe, which means we can't control its visibility based on Gradual's auth state. Gradual also doesn't allow custom JavaScript injection on pages.

Explored Content duplication (two versions per piece)

Idea: Publish every Tier 2 piece twice — once behind an enforced gate for members (no form), once on a public page with the Tally embed for prospects.

Verdict: Viable but unnecessary. With ~10 Tier 2 pieces per year, this was manageable. But the enforced gate + Tally-at-top approach achieves the same result on a single page without maintaining two versions. Duplication remains a fallback if the recommended approach has issues.

Explored Custom nav menu swap (different pages for logged-in vs. logged-out)

Idea: Use Gradual's custom pages feature to show a public "Insights" page to visitors and a different content module page to members. Use the "Resources" content type to separate prospect-facing content.

Verdict: Doesn't hold up. Gradual's custom page filtering only controls the menu/nav — it doesn't control access at the page level. Anyone with a direct link bypasses the menu swap entirely. Since content spreads via direct links (email, Slack, bookmarks, search), this creates a leaky abstraction.

Explored Wrap Tally iframe in conditional logic

Idea: Instead of embedding the raw Tally iframe, embed an iframe pointing to a page we control that checks auth state and conditionally shows the form or the content.

Verdict: Blocked by cross-origin restrictions. An intermediate page in our iframe can't read Gradual's session cookies due to browser security (same-origin policy). There's no reliable way for our page to know if the visitor is logged into Gradual.

Gradual's gating options

A reference of every content access control available on the Gradual platform and how we use each one.

Gate type	Visitor experience	Teases?	Captures leads?	Our tier
Fully public	Anyone can see everything	N/A	No	Tier 1
Skippable pop-up gate	Pop-up appears but can be dismissed. Content teased before gate.	Yes	Soft	Tier 1
Enforced sign-in gate	Native Gradual gate. Must log in to see full content. Shows a tease first.	Yes	No	Tier 3
Spaces (select only)	Content is invisible to anyone not in the space.	No	No	Tier 3
Public + embedded form	Page is fully public but content is behind a Tally iframe that redirects to an unlisted page. Everyone (including members) must fill out the form.	Partial	Yes	Not used
Enforced gate + Tally at top ★	Enforced gate teases the page. Tally form sits in the teased portion for prospects. Members pass the gate and scroll past the form.	Yes	Yes	Tier 2

The gap in Gradual: There is no native option for "show content freely to logged-in members, but require a form for everyone else." Our recommended strategy (enforced gate + Tally form at top) is the closest workaround using existing Gradual tools.