Saturday 13 January 2007

Co-Registration companies/brokers

Co-Registration Brokers are the "Middle Men" in the online lead generation world. They have access to sites and networks to post your Ad to.

Before you decide to work with a (or more) broker you might want to concider a few things. You know your business best, so take your goals into concideration when you ask these questions:

  • How are the leads/records delivered to you? Are the Leads delivered via email, FTP or in Real Time (offten the best solution)
  • Are people being offered a free gift when they sign up? This is called "Incentivised" and could be positive (when you want to create brand awareness) and not so positive (these people might not really be interested in what you have to sell), depending on your goals.
  • Are the boxes pre-checked? This is called opt-out in the online world. It means that the visitor to that site might find a page with offers, all already checked with "yes" and just clicks on OK. He/she might not even know that he/she has to uncheck the box if not interested in the offer. These records/leads are often the cheapest, as it does nt require much input from the prospect. Opt-in means that the visitor has to actualy check the box to receive your information, and is therefor much more likely to be really interested in what you have to offer. The double opt-in is the "secure" way to go, but also the least productive. With double opt-in the visitor has to actualy check the boc to receive your information, then gets an email from you in which you asks to confirm the registration. This method is really the most secure when it comes to spam complaints, but the least productive for your business, as most people will not confirm, for whatever reason (maybe they forgot that they requested the info or are just not willing to send this extra email)
  • Can you decide on demographics? You might be interested only in Men from the US, age 40-60, with a certain houshold income. It will not be usefull then to have your ads display on a women-only site.
  • Are you able to track your ads? The broker will most likely not reveil on which sites your ads will show, running the risk that you will try to go directly to that site, but he might be able to let you call it site 1, site 2, network 1, network 2. Like that you can do some testing and remove one of the sites or networks if they do not bring enough profit.
  • How many records/leads can the broker deliver? Eventhough you would not want to go to the max straight away, you will need to know if you can build up on your current campaign.

One more thing you might want to think about is your budget. It does not really matter for most brokers if you need to start small (most serious bokers don´t might, that is). You will need to tell them though that if your budget is $500 for the month, not to spend it all in one day. Ask them to spead it out over the month. Like this you can do your testing and mak some addustments if needed.

One company I can recommand is Topica.

What exactly is Co-Registration?

Is it strange that the last few days, everybody in the online marketing world has been talking about Co-Registration, also known as co-reg and pay-per-subscriber service?

Not really! What is a little strange, though, that they started talking about it only now!

Co registration has been around for a while and is designed to increase product and company awareness in the online market and generate leads for direct sales. You can use co-registration to generate prospects for e-newsletter subscriptions, memberships, loyalty programs, catalog subscriptions, new product launches and more.

Co-registration helps you to:
-Understand your customers and markets
-Build a comprehensive database of interested consumers
-Maximize ROI
-Increase customer loyalty
-Build brand awareness
-Drive traffic to your website
-Improve the effectiveness of future marketing campaigns

Big companies like Wal-Mart, Universal Studios and GM have been using co registration very successfully for years. Still it has been rather unknown to the "small Business" online marketers.
Co registration is about placing an advertisement (usually three to six lines of text) for your company or product on high traffic websites. The short advertisement allows readers to request additional information about your product (could be your own or an affiliate product). Those who are interested in your service ”opt-in” to receive more information through an e-mail newsletter or other type of direct marketing campaign. When a visitor checks the box, you as a marketer, have permission-based access to potential customers who have requested information about your product or service. Due to this opt-in, you will have no issues with spamming them when sending your emails. Co registration allows you to build targeted databases of consumers interested in your products, services, company, brand or special offers.

The information collected by the co registration service typically consists of a name, e-mail address, date/time stamp, IP address, registering URL, and telephone number, if desired. Of course, the more info you request, the more you pay. Just to give you an Idea, the Industry average is $0.21 per lead for fist name, last name, email- and postal-address. Prices can go up to over $1 for a full record (as the brokers call it), including level of debt or health insurance etc.

Co registration services are often offered by "brokers" who will display your add to a network of sites. Depending on your budget, you will be able to get as much as 10.000 leads a month, all opted-in to your newsletter or service!