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.

One such service that we’ve used ourselves in the past to get free email leads for our email marketing newsletter is run by a very successful internet marketer. His service allows you to build a list with free email leads by swapping “thank you” page real estate with other list owners.

With this method, you agree to put a form on your website advertising the newsletters of other publishers, and they agree to have your newsletter listed on their site. Instead of having to arrange these swaps yourself, however, you are much better off using a service that puts you in contact with a publisher network and automates the process of displaying everybody’s advertising.

If you are not using a reputable service, like the one suggested above, however … *watch out*. Plenty of sites advertise “free leads” as a way of attracting visitors to their site, in the hopes of selling those visitors other products. In most cases, however, those leads are worthless.

Either they have been given away over and over again, or they are “harvested” unethically, or they may be “aged”, which means the prospects on the list of free opt-ins submitted their information request many months ago.

More Sources of Free Email Leads

In addition to using a coregistration service, you can often get free email leads by publishing articles in major article directories, and posting a link back to a page on your site that contains an opt-in form. You can’t just publish one article, though; you need to publish on a regular basis, and keep on doing it.

Another method you can use to get free email leads is to issue Press Releases whenever there is something newsworthy happening in your business, such as release of a new product.

Blogging, tasteful commenting on other people’s blogs, and posting in forums that allow you to use a “signature” field that contains a link back to your web site are a few additional methods of getting free opt-in leads.

The problem with all of the methods mentioned above is that it takes a long time to build up traffic to your site, and only a small percentage of the people who visit your site will actually subcribe to your email list. Meanwhile, you’re still working your tail off writing more and more articles and press releases.

Frankly, when you think about all the work entailed in publishing articles, blog posts, forum comments, and press releases, you will see the value in having the work done for you, and simply buy home business leads from a reputable vendor. In most cases, the amount you pay for the leads is more than offset by the amount of time you save and can devote to other things, like building your business and fine-tuning your sales process.

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.

Another advantage of using co-reg leads is that you know that they are looking for something. If they took the time to check the box on the coreg form, they have indicated they want that kind of information.

Finally, coreg leads are plentiful and easy to get. Few people understand how big the lead generation business is, and how ready vendors are to sell their leads a second or third time as coregistrations.

On the con side, however, are several factors.

First, some unscrupulous vendors use “opt out” rather than opt IN methods to gather coregistrations. An even more unscrupulous tactic is to “harvest” emails by using special software that trolls the net looking for email addresses posted on web sites, or in the WHOIS database, or to simply buy CDs full of harvested addresses and resell them as if they were legitimate coregistration leads.

Another common practice is to resell coreg lists many, many times, even after the list has become “stale”. Be sure that the vendor that you are dealing with clearly states how many times the list will be sold.

At my site that sells co-reg leads I clearly state that I will sell a list a maximum of five times. In practice, though, I generally only sell a lead two or three times, and “retire” the leads when they are more than a few days old.

Frankly, you as the customer have no way of knowing whether these tactics have been used, so it behooves you to deal with a reputable vendor, or risk getting spam complaints the first time you attempt to contact your coreg leads.

One final negative factor to be aware of when using co-reg leads is the fact that the leads most likely will get bombarded with offers shortly after they submit their information, so you need to take steps to “stand out from the crowd”.

More about that in a later post.

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.

Warming up a listinvolves giving out a lot of free information, and going easy on the “hard sell”, especially in the beginning. You need to provide good, but incomplete information. The good information proves you know what you are talking about, and the incompleteness leaves them motivated to buy your product or service.

Research has shown that few people will buy a product until they have heard about it from 5 to 7 times. Similarly, people are unlikely to warm up to your email messages without at least as much exposure.

In addition to the sense of trust and familiarity that develops over time, you can also use the warming up period to “train” your list members. If you include links to more information in even your earliest emails, you are slowly but surely conditioning your list members to click links to get something.

You may even want to offer a few low-priced products in your early emails to get some of your list members used to paying for information. Many marketers follow a�? progression from offering low-priced products, and then offering their higher priced products only to those who bought the less expensive ones, or at least not promoting the more expensive ones until people have been on their list for some time.

You have to walk a thin line between not trying to sell too early and not conditioning your list members to expect everything to be free, and keep in mind that your early emails serve the primary purposed of establishing in the minds of your readers that you are knowledgeable, credible, and a source of quality information.

Warming up a list, especially one made up of [tag]co reg leads[/tag],  is as much art as science, so the only way to learn how is to get started and do it, and keep track of what works.

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.

You have to track and test everything. Split-test various subject lines. Test whether putting the link at the top, middle, or bottom of the email gets you better click through and conversion rates.

Test whether long or short emails work better. Test whether the width of the text in your emails has an impact. Test whether an html email with an imbedded image is better than text only email. In short, test everything you can think of.

Email marketing, especially building a list with coregistration leadsis part art, and part science. What *you* think is a great subject line may be a total dud in the eyes of your readers, but the only way you can know that is to test and track everything.

Among my customers, the ones who report the best results invariably are avid split-testers. They will often buy a list of coregistration leads for the sole purpose of testing subject lines or some other aspect of their campaigns.

They split the list they bought into several groups and carefully track how well they did with a given subject line. They dump the poorest performing lines, and test some new ones, slowly refining things as they go.

Then they focus on the contents of the emails, trying various sequences and again tracking their results carefully. They know they are going to spend some money in the beginning just to learn “what works” but will make it up down the road once their campaign is fine tuned and in high gear.

These people understand that knowing the long term value of a subscriber is at the heart of successful email marketing. They know that they will make a certain profit every month, on average, for every subscriber on their list, and that as long as they pay less than that to acquire those subscribers, they will turn a profit.

Successful marketers think long term.

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.

In some markets, putting your link at the top of your email will get the highest click-through rate, while in others, the best rate is achieved if your link is closer to the bottom – or even in the P.S.

A great subject line for one market might be a dog in a different market. Long emails may work best for a while, and then suddenly you find yourself getting better results with short emails.

I mention in my email marketing ebook “The Email Profit Formula” that both the late Corey Rudl and the legendary Mark Joyner did extensive testing on which days of the week got the best open-rates and click-through rates.

Both tested carefully – and got different results!

My own response rates are dismal on the weekends, but quite good on weekdays. But a year ago, I was getting good results sending my emails in the evenings, and even on the weekends.

The ONE thing that has remained fairly stable in my own experience with email marketing is the fact that the greatest number of “unsubscribes” that I get from *any* list occur on the first three or four emails. At least in the markets that I write for, and given my style, people seem to stick with me *IF* they get past those first few emails.

Among my customers at Nitro List Builder, those who report the best results invariably are split-testing various subject lines and content sequences, and tracking their campaigns. They also tend to buy leads in large volume, knowing that they need some leads for testing, and others for their campaigns that are already working.

They also apparently understand that it takes a while to “warm up” a list for the best result, and that what is more important is the long-term responsiveness of the list, rather than how much response they get from the first one or two emails.

The bottom line here is that email marketing is part art, and part science. And the landscape seems to change every few months. The only way to maintain your success is to track and test your results, and be prepared to ADAPT when things change.

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.

When sorting through the various coregistration lead vendors, keep in mind that you don’t always get what you pay for.  After all, by definition, coregistration leads are shared leads – people signed up for at least one, and probably several other offers simultaneously.

If you can, try to find out whether the vendor uses serial coregistration, and limits the number of offers that prospects are shown, or, as is sometimes true, shows them literally hundreds of offers at a time – or even worse, does that and uses “opt-out” rather than “opt-in” technology.

As you know, “opt-out” is an especially low quality lead, since the person has to take an action (uncheck the box) *not* to register for the offer.

“Opt-in”, on the other hand, means that the visitor has to at least check the box next to the offer, even if the form itself has been pre-populated with their information when they registered for earlier offers in the sequence.

That one simple step can make quite a difference in whether the coregistration leads that you are buying are qualified for your offer.

Keep in mind also that “live” delivery is quite a bit more expensive, since it entails a fair amount of technology.  Ideally, you should probably test both live and bulk delivery to see what works best with your offers.

And by the way, “best” means giving you the best return on investment.  You may find that “live” leads generate a higher percentage of opt-in confirmations, yet a lower return on your investment, since bulk leads are generally so much less expensive.

Finally, don’t forget that the best results from coregistration leads are often not achieved until you have “warmed up” your list and established your credibility with some good solid information.  You need to evaluate coregistration lead sources over a period of time, and with a variety of offers before deciding which works best for your particular market.

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.

The qualifier “CO” in the word means just that – they signed up for more than one opportunity or information series simultaneously. They might have checked off six “business opportunity” offers on a page, or they may have asked for information on business opportunities, weight loss, and who knows what else – baby carriages, porch swings, whatever.

Because that lead has been sold several times right at the outset, the coregistration lead generation company can reduce the cost to each person purchasing it, and still make a nice profit.

Some leads are sold only a few times, and some are sold again and again, depending on the business practices both of the lead generation companies, and of the coregistration services providers and leads vendors.

At my sites, I tell you right up front how many times I’m going to sell the lead, but not all lead vendors do that. I use lead co-ops to reduce the price to my customers, and openly state that the lead may be shared with up to 4 other customers, after which I “retire” that lead.

What sophisticated email marketers know, and many beginners apparently do not, is that working with coreg leads is a numbers game. They buy tens of thousands of coreg leads knowing that only a tiny percentage will become loyal newsletter subscribers or customers.

They also know a secret that most people seem not to grasp… the bottom line is in the long term return on investment.

If you buy penny leads, and 1% become potential customers, then your net cost was $1 per lead. Perhaps you use pay per click, and pay 50 cents to get people to your opt-in page, but only 25% actually opt in. In that case, your net cost per lead was $2. Or you buy $5 premium leads, and lose half of them at the opt-in confirmation, effectively paying $10 per lead for the ones you retain.

If your business model is such that you would have to pay more per lead for direct opt-ins than for the customers generated from coreg leads, then it makes sense to do some or most of your lead generation via coregistration. Otherwise, it does not.

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.

So if the “conversion” question is how many will take a double opt-in, the answer is “a lot fewer than the 50% or so you get from an opt-in form on your own site.”

I always tell my customers who buy coregistration leads that they need to consider their net cost per lead.  If you buy leads at .01 each, and convert 10% to subscribers, then your net cost is .10 per subscriber.  At 1% conversion, your net cost is a buck.

The other issue that most people overlook is the long term value of a subscriber or customer to your business.

If you make $X per month, on average, for every subscriber on your list, you can afford to pay at least that much, or more, to get those subscribers, and you can still turn a very nice profit over time.  The key is to focus on long term customer value.

The other “conversion” issue is how many coregistration leads will turn out to be customers and buy your product.  That is impossible to predict, since I don’t know your niche, your product, your business, or how effectively you market.

I can tell you, though, that in general co-registration leads need to be “warmed up” before you can effectively sell to them.  You need to give them what they expected when they signed up.

If they signed up for a free newsletter or free report on a given subject, give it to them, and don’t be too quick to fire off a series of “hard sell” emails.  On the other hand, if they responded to a targeted ad about a specific product, then they probably expect a sales pitch, and might even be surprised if you did anything less.

The real question is not how well the leads convert, but how effective you are at getting good conversion rates with coregistration leads.  You need to test what works in your market – you may find that what works for direct opt-ins on your site does not work as well with co-reg leads, and vice versa.

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.

The site visitor fills out a form, asking for more information.  Upon completing the form, instead of immediately seeing a “thank you” page, the visitor is presented a series of additional, related offers.

Let’s say Joe Visitor signs up to get football scores delivered to his email inbox once a week.  As part of the coregistration process, he might also be offered a subscription to a newsletter about his favorite teams and players, a magazine subscription, and information about where to buy sports memorabilia.

All of those latter offers are being made by vendors other than the one whose site he is on. How is that possible?  Simple.  The portal site owner has signed up to be a coregistration publisher.  He has an agreement with a coregistration service provider to be part of a large network, and gets paid for every lead that he generates from his coregistration path, which is provide automatically by the coregistration service.  These networks consist of hundreds of high traffic sites, and can literally generate hundreds of thousands of coregistration leads per day.

The other common coreg path is for the site visitor to be presented a page which contains multiple offers, each of which has a checkbox next to it.  The site visitor checks the boxes next to the offers of interest, fills in name and email address (and sometimes also physical address and phone number) and upon clicking the “submit” button is simultaneously registered for all of the offers he or she selected.

Sometimes these multiple offer pages are presented as part of the “thank you” process after the primary registration, and sometimes they are presented as part of a forum.  Joe Visitor starts at web site #1, clicks a link to get more information, and is taken to web site #2, which not only presents him the form for what he initially asked for, but also displays the page with multiple related offers.

In both cases, the site visitor is shown multiple offers he/she can register for.  That is the essence of co-registration – signing up the site visitor for multiple related offers simultaneously.  Another way of thinking of it is “cooperative” or “shared” registration.

Whatever you call it, coregistration lead generation is big business.  A co-reg network can easily generate tens of millions of page views and clicks per month.  Just one that I know of generates 45 million clicks on a monthly basis.  People have no idea how vast the internet is, the size of these networks, and their traffic-pulling power.

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.

Frankly, that’s part of the reason that my own email leads site where you can buy coregistration leads even exists.  It makes coregistration available even to people with relatively small budgets, by using the concept of a co-op and group buying power.

Turning the clock back a few years, though, there was a time when co-reg was hot stuff among internet marketers.  In those days, they would buy a large co-reg list, fire off a few emails, and rake in a nice profit.  But the landscape changed with the coming of the Can-Spam law, and the declining deliverability of email.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Fast forward to late 2005 and mid-2006.  All of a sudden the changes in the Google Adwords program put coregistration back in the limelight as marketers scrambled for an easy way to get website traffic and newsletter subscribers.

Take my word for it, as an insider.  The coregistration market is *huge*, and the number of leads and traffic that can be generated in one day is mind boggling.  For those who have entered the marketing world just in the past few years, this all may seem new and mysterious, but in truth co-reg leads and traffic are a lot less fickle than PPC, natural search, and even article marketing.

Co-registration leads are easier to generate than falling off a log.  You write an ad, describing your offer in very specific terms, and the leads start to roll in a few days later.  What could be easier?  The cost is comparable to, and often better than what you would pay for PPC clicks, but the difference is that you don’t just get a click – you get an opt-in email lead.

And you never have to worry about being “slapped” by Google, which is just as well.  I hate when that happens.