November 15, 2001
How To

Co-Registration Know-How Part III: How to Profit Selling Co-Regs Online

SUMMARY: Web site owners and email newsletter publishers have found a brand new revenue stream -- selling co-registrations online. This means publishers ask site visitors and new opt-ins if they would like to sign up for other email lists at the same time. Big buyers, including Readers' Digest and several major consumer packaged goods, are testing buying co-regs. And smaller email list owners swear by them. Read this article to learn how to sell them yourself.
Barbara Feldman of 'Surfing the Net with Kids' says, "I bought
co-regs for years, but I never realized that I was at a
significant enough volume that I should start selling co-regs.
After reading Part I and Part II in ContentBiz [links below], I
started. I'm up and running and have a few more clients waiting
in the wings to start very soon. I think this will be a fabulous
additional profit center."

Lisa Cohen of online ad network L90 (who sell co-regs on behalf
of large volume sites) agrees, "As a Web site, co-reg is a no-
brainer. If people are going to register on your site, why not
monetize that process?"

What's a significant-enough volume to begin selling co-regs? If
you plan to sell them directly to buyers yourself, that number
may be less than you think -- remember: you are selling by
acquired name, not by thousand impressions. So you don't need
zillions of pageviews or subscribers, you just need a steady
stream of new site registrants or opt-in subscribers who you can
convince to also check another offer box.

Cohen told us she's seen 30% of new site or newsletter
registrants also check co-reg boxes that L90 implements on sites
in their co-reg sales network. Allen Weiss, publisher of
MarketingProfs.com (who currently only barters co-regs), has been
able to jack that average up to 57%. Here's how:

- Rather than simply sticking a third party offer on your
registration page or thank-you (confirmation) page, add an
endorsement headline highly recommending the offers.

- Make signing up easy by just checking a box. Don't require
that visitors enter their email or other information all over
again.

- When you have more than one offer, pick complementary offers
versus competing ones. Weiss notes, if he can get someone to
click on one, they'll usually click on several.

- Set up a good reporting system to track which offers are being
clicked on, and if you can do anything on the page (changing the
headline or page design) to enhance your conversion rate.

As with all media buying, the larger B2C and B2SB (business to
small business) media buyers and ad networks are only interested
in doing co-reg deals with sites that can provide a large number
of new names every month because it's not worth the admin work
for them to do deals with a bunch of smaller sites when they can
dash off an insertion order to a single large partner.

John Ferber, online ad network Advertising.com's Chief Internet
Officer, says he's very interested in working with larger volume
co-reg sellers. L90's Cohen notes while they are also looking
for deals with high volume co-reg sellers, L90 is most interested
in B2C niches such as women's sites, "It is all about targeting,
if you have a targeted and attractive audience, advertisers will
spend $$ to reach them."

There are also a growing number of eager co-reg buyers almost all
vertical B-to-B niche you can think of. Jason Hundt who handles co-
reg sales for about 100,000 email newsletter publishers of all
sizes through SparkLIST's program says, "We have found the
hardest orders for us to fill are ones that are targeted
campaigns, usually in various business categories."

He adds, "We want to develop our business publishers network.
The amount of money we would pay these people would depend on
traffic on their site, and the amount of information they have to
offer."

Ready to start selling co-regs? Andrew Bein of Reader's Digest who is a heavy co-reg buyer, and is now looking into selling co-
regs on RD.com to top automotive and health advertisers, says the most important thing for you to remember is that the visitors going through your registration process are usually new to your site. It's their first experience with your brand. Your relationship is still new and tender. So choose the brands you sell co-regs to carefully, because their offers affect your own site's credibility in your newbies' eyes. Also don't pile on too many offers. "You don't want to envelop people in a rush of offers. You could disenfranchise your audience."

Advertising.com's Ferber adds these two co-reg sales tips:

- Don't sell them for less than what they are worth! We see a
lot of people selling names for less than they would be worth if
they mailed to the names themselves.

- Clearly set expectations with the client in advance. Most
deals that wind up with issues result from poor expectation
setting initially. Make sure the client clearly understands what
they are receiving as a part of your offering.

Useful Links:
Part I: Co-Registration Tips for Magazine Marketers
http://www.contentbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1846

Part II: Co-Registration Tips for Email Newsletter Publishers
http://www.contentbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1862

Source Links:
Surfing the Net with Kids http://surfnetkids.com
L90 http://www.l90.com
MarketingProfs http://www.marketingprofs.com
Advertising.com http://www.advertising.com
SparkLIST http://www.sparklist.com
Reader's Digest http://www.rd.com

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