CoRegistration Project Update
May 25, 2007
So here’s the latest on the CoRegistration project.
We finally got all our materials together for the coregistration project. Here’s basically how it’s supposed to work.
We have a series of 5 email messages that we loaded up into an autoresponder (AutoResponse Plus). Then we researched and selected a Co-Registration records provider. We talked with a couple and eventually selected a provider called CoReg Media. Supposedly they’re a pretty big player. What they do is provide records from other websites. You’ve probably seen coregistration if you’ve ever signed up for an account somewhere, and then before you “checkout” or finish the registration you get a screen that says something like “Hey, are you interested in any of this other stuff?” and if you are, you check the radio button and click continue.
At that point the surfers information is passed to the coregistration company and they probably do some scrubbing or validating and then post the record (lead) to my autoresponder and we start sending the emails.
The first email is sent immediatey, the second email is send the following day, and so on.
All the emails are basically a “pitch” that points the potential customer to a landing page where we put the hard sell on for the product.
So far, we’ve been delivered a little over 1100 records from CoReg Media and we haven’t had a single conversion.
We have a couple places to look and see if we can make improvements. We’ve already tested two versions of the initial email we send out. The first email we sent was a pretty long pitch and I suspected that it might be delivered to spam folders, we tried a really simple email, and so far it would look like the stats are about the same.
The next place to check is basic deliverability. We might try using a third party email provider like Intellicontact to deliver the email and track open rates. Although, at this point, other that poor conversions and clickthrough rates, I don’t really have any reason to believe the ARP program isn’t working.
Of course after that we’ll start analyzing the actual records to make sure they’re not incentivized or pre-checked or something like that. Those are issues that are difficult to figure out.
We have had a pretty low unsubscribe rate (24 unsubs out of 1108 records provided). I don’t know if that means that the messages aren’t being delivered properly so people aren’t opening or unsubscribing. Or it could be that the records are incentivized or pre-selected in some way, and the recipients are expecting “spam” on their journey to win an ipod or something.
Either way, we still have collected about 1100 emails so far, and we fully intend to continue sending messages to that list until they unsubscribe or die 
Seriously though, I do intend to send a personal email message to a handful of the records and ask them where they coregistered and to make sure it wasn’t incentivized or pre-selected.
I’ll keep you posted!
Posted in Uncategorized
May 27th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
What about open and click rates?
You should look at Opt-Intelligence.com
May 27th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
I’m not sure exactly. From what I hear, tools that track open-rates usually give numbers that are 10% of the actual opens. Things like firewalls, image blockers and stuff like that can prevent open tracking tools from reporting accurately.
Also, from what I hear, it’s common to get about a 50% click-through rate from email to website, and it appears that’s about what we’re seeing.
I’m skeptical though of the records that are being provided, since conversion rates are so poor. In fact, we haven’t had a single conversion yet, and we’ve been delivered close to 2,000 records so far.
First of all, the records are supposed to be non-incentivised (meaning that they don’t earn points or an iPod or something for signing up for offers), and they’re not supposed to be pre-selected in anyway. Sometimes what happens is that a co-registration provider will give several screens of offers, and have everything pre-selected. So if someone is quickly trying to get signed up for something, they may end up subscribing to things they had no idea about.
With CoReg Media, we specifically asked for non-incentivised, non-preselected records. This means that suppossedly, people actually have to read the offer, and then manually select that they are interested in the offer. So in theory, only people that have expressed interest, and taken action on that interest should be getting our initial email.
With that in mind, I would really expect that the click through rate to be really, really high. And I would expect a pretty decent conversion since we’re not targeting general users, but people who are specifically interested in what we’re offering.
What does all this mean? It means I’m suspicious of the records we’re being delivered.
I’m planning to take a selection of subscribers (and unsubscribers) and sending them an email asking them a couple questions about where they saw our initial offer, whether they got the initial email, if it was delivered to a spam folder, etc.
We’ll get to the bottom of it for sure!
Thanks for the comment!
Chris Hackett
May 29th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Chris,
Many products aren’t right for simple co-registration (or single opt-in co-reg). For example if you’re selling medical supplies or legal services you must obtain answers to very specific questions. These additional questions will raise the cost per lead and lower your total volume of leads but will also make the campaign worthwhile. I’ve run co-reg campaigns with coregmedia and continue to do but always with namebrands. A site like: globalsurveygroup.com is typical of where your offer probably was. It is not incentivized in that the consumer does not receive anything for signing up ut they do need to at least check yes or no to be elgible for something.
-Jon
June 1st, 2007 at 12:48 am
Yeah, I would agree that not every product is right for co-reg. Our product for the moment is a weight loss product, and I believe there are a number of successfully launched weight loss products that got a good start with co-reg.
In my mind one of the beauties of co-reg is that you actually get to keep the email address, and hopefully if they’re delivering legitimate records, you can continu marketing to them and building a relationship with them.
We’ve still not had a single conversion from the records provided by Coreg media. We’ve been delivered about 3,000 records so far.
We were sending the initial AR message via my in-house installation of Auto Response Plus, but now CoReg Media is going to deliver the first message and we’ll see what that does for open and click through rates. They should give me an update in the morning.
Thanks!
Chris Hackett
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:34 am
Do you think your low response rate is a result of the co-reg system or the company you hired? What were your expectations going into this?
June 18th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Hrm. I don’t know exactly. Are you asking me if I think my problem is that co-reg in general doesn’t work, or that just this round of cor-reg, or this particular provider doesn’t work.
In theory, I really do believe that co-reg can and will work. I think the real problem that we’ve been dealing with so far is that our records provider is either not being truthful with us about the records they’re providing, or the websites that are providing the records to CoReg Media are not being truthful.
It’s clear to me that the records are coming from places where the records are incentivized or pre-selected in some way.
We’ve gotten somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 records so far, and not a single conversion. Not one person has actually purchased the product. Keep in mind, that these records are supposedly presented with several other offers, they see our “pitch” along with a radio box and a submit button. They’re supposedly taking an action and requesting to see more information from us about this product. I can’t believe that 5,000 people have specifically read our offer, made the decision to request more information, then received that information, and not a single one of them has decided to purchase? If we had just one conversion now, our conversion rate would be .02%
Combine this with the fact that we get unsubscribe requests from people with notes that say things like “Who are you, please stop sending me this stuff.” or “I never signed up for this, please take me off your list.” “I don’t need to loose weight, take me off your list.” These are not the kind of records that will convert.
Plus you gotta figure that for every one person that ubnsubscribes and actually takes the time to say “Hey get me off your list, I didn’t ask for this.” there are hundreds of others that just clicked the unsubscribe button.
I know the coreg brokers are kind of middlemen and are at the mercy of the content sites where they buy the records, but ultimately it’s their responsibility to manage the properties from which they purchase records.
We’re currently interviewing and searching for other records providers.
Thanks for following our journey!
Chris Hackett
July 17th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Chris,
Sorry for the late response but having run many broadcast email campaigns I wanted to chime in.
Even though you’ve tried to get the cleanest clicks possible, IE no incentives or prechecked, your volume still isn’t high enough to get a valid result. You’re dealing with luck at this low of volume. You will find that when your volume gets up to the neighborhod of 20K your conversion rates will come around to maybe .005 percent.
At least that’s the math I’ve experienced with focused consumer email offers. I don’t think I’d blame your brokers quite yet.
good luck
Rick
July 21st, 2008 at 10:51 am
Hey Rick, Thanks for chiming in. I played around with this coreg for a while, but I was not impressed or pleased with the result. I’m not saying that it wasn’t my fault, maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t.
Rick, would you mind giving us a quick re-cap / overview of your cost structure? How much do you pay for a click, how many do you get per day, what is your onversion rate, and profit margin on your item or action?
If you’re really pleased with the result and like your coreg company, feel free to name names
Thanks for the input Rick!
Chris