At Facebook Marketing Camp last week, a lot of the conversation was about the new Facebook ads. These are ads that encourage opting in within the Facebook environment, and draw a user into interactions with a brand they are attached to. “It’s a new level of authenticity,” exclaimed our Facebook rep. “This will bring in genuine leads, and will reduce the unqualified lead and scrub rates to almost non-existent.”
I actually do quite a bit of work with co-registration campaigns. It works. This includes working with Q Interactive – better known to the world as Coolsavings.com. Usually, we can get leads from those vendors to convert to sales at a cost per that’s below our allowable. But when it comes to co-registration outside of that one, trusted vendor, we have to watch the stream of leads intently to ensure that our “host’n'post” vendors aren’t delivering us a steady stream of sludge.
The up side of co-registration is volume. It’s people opting in to an offer, to submit their name as a lead, at the same time they are choosing to take part in another offer or signup. Hence, the co-registration term. This is great when the offers are related in some way. With a little bit of appropriate targeting, co-registration works.
The down side to co-registration is also volume. The cost of a co-reg lead isn’t just the buck or two we pay for it. It’s also the cost of the call center that then has to follow up, or the direct mail piece that goes out to the leads who sign up. And even if you have a low-pay call center, they get very discouraged after hours of calling co-registration leads with zero interest in the product – who only signed up in order to get a sample, or take a Quizilla quiz, or get a new plant in their L’il Green Patch on Facebook.
Here’s what I don’t get about co-reg: 90% of the vendors we run it with seem more interested in making a few dollars off the sludge leads than they do in targeting. Why? If the game is changing, and sites like Facebook are leading that shift, shouldn’t these sites be working harder to send leads that won’t clog up call centers and waste client dollars? Are these vendors seriously managing to get repeat orders and grow their business based on sludge co-reg?
Here’s the steps I ask that vendors take before I send an insertion order:
1) NO PRE-CHECKED OR PRE-FILLED BOXES. I want people thinking about what they’re doing and what they are signing up for. And that goes doubly for the offer list. People should have to select those boxes – not sign up because they didn’t unselect one.
2) SOME sort of targeting. Whether it’s a vague offer association – offering info on demo-targeted products – or actual targeting based on demo/geo, something should be in place to narrow down the river of sludge. It may not actually increase the quality of the leads, or increase the lead to sale conversion by much, but at least it will narrow the field and slow the pacing so the call center can keep up and the budget is spread out over a longer period of time.
3) Qualifying questions, if they can be applied. Even if it’s a yes/no, at least that will cut down further on completely non-qualified leads
But what is the future of co-reg, if not everyone is holding their vendors accountable this way? It won’t work forever. That’s why I was so glad to be at Facebook Camp this last week. We’ll need new ways to get people to opt-in to receiving information from brands in the future. Co-reg has lost its efficiency and I think it’s failing to thrive and keep up in a new, more authentic, better regulated Internet.
