While our focus in the directory is on inexpensive coregistration leads, we recognize that not everyone has the resources to pay to build an email list. Coregistration is a way to get free opt-in leads for your list by cooperating with other publishers who also want to grow a list this way.

As you probably know, coregistration simply means that a prospect has signed up for more than one offer or type of information at the same time. You can list your newsletter in free ezine directories, but frankly, this doesn’t work very well. You are much better off hooking up with a network of other marketers through a coregistration site.

Coreg leads are among the least understood and most underused tools available to the email marketer. Many have simply never heard about co-reg leads, while others are simply confused about what they are.

Ironically, coreg leads are used by some of the biggest businesses, yet small marketers are reluctant to use them, often because they mistakenly think that using co-reg leads is tantamount to spam.

Probably the best thing about coreg leads is their low price. Some vendors sell coregistration leadsfor anywhere from .10 to $1 apiece, but you can actually get them for as little as 1 cent per name. Buying in volume at extremely low prices allows you to convert only a small percentage of a coreg list and still turn a profit.

I’ve recently written about the importance of testing everything about your emails, especially when working with coreg leads. You have to test subject lines, placement of your links, text vs. html emails, whether or not to use a postscript, and every other variable you can think of, including time of day, day of week, and frequency of mailing.

Equally important, however, is paying attention to “warming up” your list. Even if they are double opt-in leads direct from your website, and especially if they are “cold” coregistration leads, you need to allow them time to get to know you, and establish that you are credible and trustworthy.

In my last post, I addressed the question of what works best with coregistration leads. Soon after, a customer called me to complain that “something is wrong” with his list.

Duh. If you build a website that does not convert sales, it does not follow that “something is wrong” with your site visitors. It means that something is wrong in what you are trying to sell to them, or how you are trying to sell it.

The same holds true for your mailing list, whether it is your prime double opt-in house list, or a brand new list made up of coregistration leads.

I can’t tell you how many phone calls and emails I get from subscribers and customers asking me “what works best” for getting good results from coregistration leads.

Unfortunately, I have to tell most of them that I can’t really give them a solid answer, and some think I’m being evasive. The truth is, though, there is no one “best” strategy with coreg leads, or even your own double opt-in confirmed subscribers gathered from a form on your website.

Why? Because what is “best” today might not be tomorrow, and what works in one market does not work in another. More than a few researchers have shown this over and over again.

Let’s face it, not all coregistration lead sources are equal.  Some vendors sell their leads over and over again, without telling you, and still charge quite a bit for them.  Other vendors have been known to “seed” their lists with old, reworked, and even scraped prospect information.  Unfortunaltely, that is all to common, so you have to choose your coregistration leads sources wisely.

One place to find quality vendors is my directory of coregistration leads sources .  Admittedly, I have not personally used every one of those sources, but they have been carefully screened, and if I find out that a particular vendor is suspect, I take down my link to them.

I get this question about coregistration leads often, in two forms, really.

People who have bought premium email leads are shocked by the price difference between those and leads generated by coregistration, and people who are just starting out mistakenly think that penny leads should work just as well as leads that cost several dollars and more. So let’s clear up a few misconceptions.

First of all, coregistration leads are, by definition, shared leads.

I get this question a lot.  Let’s start from the beginning.  Even if you run an opt-in form on your website, your opt-in confirmation rate will probably average around 50%.  Some sites get more, some get less, but that 50% average has been my own experience, although I’ve seen it vary from as low as 30% to as high as about 75% at best.

If you lose a significant number of your opt-ins *on your own site* you can hardly expect to do better with co-reg leads who don’t know you, your site, or your offer.

Because coregistration lists have been a tool used primarily by large internet marketers and major corporations, the whole issue of coregistration lead generation and how coregistration lists are built is poorly understood.  I guess we’ve been keeping our light under a bushel for too long.

Coregistration lead generation usually follows one of two primary formats, although there are a couple of additional methods that are occasionally used to build coregistration lists.

The first method is often referred to as a coregistration “path”.  In this method of coregistration lead generation, the potential subscriber visits a general interest web site, or a portal type website related to his or her area of interest.  Upon the visitor’s request for more information, the coregistration path begins.

Wow.  The net has been buzzing for weeks now and the “latest and greatest” thing is using co-registration leads and a frantic search for a coregistration lead source.

Funny thing is, co-registration is *not* anything new.  I’ve used it on and off myself for 3 or 4 years, and been in the business for about half that time.  What continues to amaze me is how much the whole subject has remained under wraps … until the past few weeks.

Coregistration is the old standby of major corporations and large internet marketers.  Perhaps part of the reason that it has not been talked about very much is that it has tended to be quite expensive to get into as a customer.