Co-registration is the new Green.
May 10th, 2010Over the last year, the online marketplace has seen a rapid decline in continuity programs. These Goliaths of the online ad spending arena have taken a huge hit and seem to be falling fast. I recently asked myself how this shift in the market would affect publishers.
The continuity model has always been an area of great success for online publishers: large CPAs, quick guaranteed payment and for the most part they were protected from chargeback’s. When I think of continuity programs the first one that comes to my mind is the Acai Berry weight loss program. This campaign exploded over the holidays and into the New Year. It seemed that everywhere you looked you saw the ads – “Lose 7 pounds in 14 days,” next to a ripped six-pack and some really good-looking fitness models. Every publisher had a version of these offers and banners; inboxes and links were being pushed out to the masses.
So how does this relate to turbulence in the marketplace? Merchants were sending out cheap free trials and then billing a large sum on the back-end. The problem with this model emerged when merchants had to pay their affiliates for traffic and sign-ups but were then hit with massive chargeback’s because everyone started cancelling their subscription to the products.
As a result, a few shifts quickly happened:
1.) Traffic from publishers was considered “questionable” due to the large quantity of chargebacks
2.) Merchants still had to pay their affiliates regardless of chargebacks
3.) Credit card companies quickly saw returns exceed 3%, causing merchant accounts to be blacklisted
What seemed liked a certain moneymaker quickly turned upside down, leaving merchants in the dark and publishers without large campaigns to consumer inventory. My next question became, “What can publishers do to make up for this loss of spending and monetize their traffic?” The immediate answer is co-registration. Co-registration is a simple ad-serving solution (usually just a line of code or an i-frame) that allows a website to monetize users after the registrations processes. The technology can allow anywhere from one to 100 “offers” or “campaigns” to be shown on the thank you page after sign up. Since the ad-server is displaying campaigns after the user has entered their registration information, it allows for extremely accurate targeting capabilities based on gender, age, address or even additional custom qualifying questions. Depending on the exact campaign, price points can range from $.25 to $25 dollars per opt in.
Although the eCPM of a coreg page may not be as high as the once mighty affiliate continuity programs, the co-registration solution is a solid, sustainable model founded upon permission-based marketing. With the ability to quickly rotate offers based on eCPM, easy campaign implementation, and complete customization, the co-reg platform is a solid revenue stream for publishers looking to make additional money on their websites. Additionally, this technology does not affect any other facet of the site, so CPM or CPA initiatives that were already in motion will not be affected in anyway. During tough economic times for website publishes who wouldn’t want an easy additional source of revenue for their site?
by Michael Gerpe
mike@ifficient.com
Ifficient Welcomes Shopgala.com to our Network
March 31st, 2010Ifficient would like to welcome our newest site partner Shopgala.com to the Ifficient Lead Generation Network.
Shopgala.com reaches approximately 27,476 U.S. monthly users. The site attracts a slightly female slanted, skewing older audience.
Please view more information on Shopgala.com by clicking the link below to quantcast:
http://www.quantcast.com/shopgala.com/lifestyle#demographics
Got Advertisers?
January 27th, 2010Ifficient is pleased to welcome Skinnywishes.com and Herenity.com into the ifficient publisher co-registration network. Very similar to Goolge AdWords, ifficient gives its publishers a few lines of code to insert into their confirmation/thank you page. The code makes a simple call to our system to pull relevant advertisements to be shown to your websites users.
The process works as such:
1. Consumer sees an advertisement
2. Consumer opts-in and provides the data the advertiser requests
3. we validate consumer data
4. we transfer the data to the advertiser
5. Advertiser and the consumer start a true 1 to 1 relationship
Example:
Holiday Consumer Acquisition
November 13th, 2009One of the most pivotal times of the year for online retailers is the holiday season. A strong Q4 holiday surge can make or break their financial success for the entire year. Although overall retail sales are expected to show no gain this holiday shopping season, online retail sales in the U.S. will reach $44.7 billion during the holiday season, an eight percent increase over last year, according to a new report by Forrester Research. That same report surveyed more than 4,000 U.S. Consumers and found that 94 percent of those who made a purchase online within the past three months plan to continue to buy line this holiday season.
The process to engage and capture consumer’s attention is vital to driving revenue during the holiday season. So how can retailers drive as much traffic to their sites and gain profits? Here are three easy ways for retailers to help win the battle.
1.) Co-registration: Co-registration is the easiest and most cost effective way to build a targeted permission based email list. With the ability to gather thousands of “hand-raisers” or consumers interested in promotions and savings, co-registrations provides retails an incredibly easy way to communicate with their audience. One of the most important factors to running a successful co-registration campaign is having a strong call to action, an example of this could be, “FREE SHIPPING when you sign up for the Overstock.com newsletter!.” By including a call to action that promotes savings retailers increase their opt-in and open rates incredibly over other campaigns that simply state, “Click here to find out more and join our newsletter.”
The second step to having a successful campaign is the media placement. Advertisers need to promote their campaigns on sites that are in line with their audience. If client A knows that their target audience are 25-45 year old females that are housewives and do not work, then they must ensure their campaign is running on female only sites targeted towards stay at home moms or wives. By advertising on the most targeted sites you increase your chances of open rates to your email marketing follow-up.
2.) Email Marketing: Probably the most popular way of advertising during the holiday is a large email push. This should always follow a co-registration campaign as quickly as possible either by an auto-responder or by a standalone email blast to a list being produced. It is important to follow up as quickly as possible to maintain the attention of your consumer. Remember, they just actively checked a box that asked the client to send them savings via email, so acting open this as quickly as possible is vital. Secondly, it is important again to have strong copy and creative, keep it simple and to the point. The main goal of the email is for the consumer to click through to the portal and hopefully make a purchase so there is no need to drag out this process or make it complicated for the consumer.
3.) Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate Marketing can give retailers a tremendous boost in holiday sales. The upside is that you are locked into a fix cost per acquisition, while the downside is that it can be very costly to re-market or re-engage the consumers if they don’t buy.
by Mike Gerpe
mike@ifficient.com
Zero Cost Online Lead Generation
November 4th, 2009Have you ever gone to get your oil changed and looked up at the prices above the counter only to realize the prices were higher for the leading oil brands? It made me think (which can be painful), “Why is generic oil less expensive?” After all isn’t oil all the same? Then I realized; all oil isn’t the same. The more expensive oils prevent sludge, don’t breakdown as easily, and are produced through different processes.
Online lead generation (OLG) like oil varies in price. OLG networks differ based on quantity and quality. Typically, higher volume networks tend to charge a lower cost per lead. This is because users (leads) are incented to sign-up for an advertisement. The higher cost per lead networks use content-based sites that are contextually relevant towards an advertisers campaign, essentially being produced differently.
Most online marketers understand the value and return on investment associated with OLG, but fail to have the long-term visual, and budget to pull off a successful strategy. Like protecting your cars engine against sludge, it is important to protect your database against attrition. By not protecting your marketing database you are essentially allowing your organizations most coveted marketing asset to breakdown.
We at Ifficient don’t believe any organization should allow the lifeline of their organization to breakdown, so we created a zero cost per lead online program for all online sites.
How does it work?
Simple. We send you a snippet of code to add to your online sign-up page/registration page (which you probably aren’t monetizing anyway) to display advertisements that reward your users for becoming a member of your site or newsletter. The ad revenue is tracked in real-time via a publisher log-in page we create especially for you. Once the code is placed on your site, you start to earn revenue in which we reinvest into your own OLG campaign.
By Sean McCormick
sean@ifficient.com
Co-Registration is becoming an increasingly important monetization tool for publisher websites
October 21st, 2009As we are still climbing our way out of a recession, Ifficient, Inc.; a Denver, CO. company is helping websites monetize their visitors through their unique targeting and display technology. With over 800 websites using their proprietary technology Ifficient plans on having over 10,000 websites globally using their platform by the end of 2010.
Denver, CO. (PRWEB) October 15, 2009 — Until recently, opportunities to monetize visitors to publisher websites have essentially been limited to display ads. Online lead generation presents a new revenue source because it’s usually incorporated into a site’s registration path, which is often an untapped avenue. Specifically, publishers can generate incremental revenue that scales with their membership growth by showing targeted lead generation offers post-registration. The consumer can opt in to receive additional information on products or services from any advertiser he/she selects or choose to skip the offers. Revenue is generated from the advertisers each time their offer is chosen and the networks hosting the offers will share revenue with publishers based on offer selections.
Co-registration is a great way to monetize publisher content and existing traffic without taking up valuable web page real estate, redirecting visitors from the site, or impacting user experience. It provides supplemental revenue without compromising conversion rates or data quality. Co-registration technology ensures relevancy by matching the right offers with consumers it determines are most likely to convert based on transactional, demographic, and behavioral data. Subscribers to a website have already decided that they are interested in what the publisher is offering, therefore they are in the state of mind to subscribe to additional related items.
Registration paths are optimized and site specific so the advertisers shown should enhance the website’s overall offering. Publishers have total control over what offers are presented and they can choose to exclude particular genres, styles, or companies. Campaign performance is measured in real time and the website owner has access to a detailed asset and reporting system. Co-registration ads can appear not just on landing pages but anywhere on a site that uses a registration, transaction path, subscription/submission form, or log-on function.
Due to their contextual relevance and immediacy, co-registration campaigns generate high conversion rates and are in high demand. This has quickly become one of the most affordable and consistent methods of capturing opt-in email names online and producing quality sales leads. Everybody wins as advertisers see high response rates and publishers benefit from advertiser demand for quality leads, increased eCPMs, and additional ad revenue. The added source of online ad revenue also enables traditional publishers to compete with search more effectively.
Co-registration advertisers are well known and offers come from established brands, which is yet another reason why co-registration deals can prove highly profitable for publishers. Online advertisers spend more than $3 billion a year on co-registration programs. As a result, publishers who utilize co-registration can expect to exceed their CPM goals and will see an increased ROI from the additional sales vertical provided by co-registration.
The co-registration platform can be integrated within 24 hours via iframe or xml and integration is 100% outsourced. There is no software to install, no set up costs, no ongoing charges. It requires almost no effort by the publisher. Therefore, money is being left on the table when the registration path is not monetized. If you publish a website that obtains regular traffic and your visitors have the opportunity to sign up for a newsletter, ask for more communication, or leave their details when they make a purchase then you should definitely consider co-registration. Get paid for what you deliver and enjoy a consistent revenue stream while barely lifting finger!
by Katherine Lynn
Ifficient, Inc.
klynn@ifficient.com
3 Essential Elements for a Successful Lead Generation Campaign
July 17th, 20091.) Targeting: Who is your audience? Knowing who your target audience is upfront is the single most important step in setting up a successful lead gen campaign. Is your audience college student from Tennessee who love NASCAR? Are they the traveling businessmen who watch the stock market constantly? Or is it simply mothers with multiple children looking to save a few bucks? The more information you can gather on the front end, the more successful your campaign will be on the back end.
2.) Forming an appropriate price point: Everyone knows there is a direct correlation between the price point of a campaign and the realistic expectations of its performance. Choose your price point wisely! Ultimately you need to know the end goal of a campaign: is it simply to grow an e-mail database? Or do you want the user to actively participate in a program? Knowing the goal of a campaign will determine if a $.50 CPL run of network campaign will be better suited for your client, or if you need to set up a $40 CPA program. Additionally, understand the cost benefit of using qualifying questions on your forms to further validate your leads up front. This might drive up the price point by 20%, but your leads might end up converting 30% better.
3.) Smart Media Buying: This final element will ultimately determine how well your program will perform. Having an experienced media buyer who can line up your target audience with the appropriate sites and networks is vital. All too often I see campaigns that would be perfect for site X but the price point is about 200% off from what it would need to be to run there. At some point, there needs to be an understanding that top content sites that match your target audience will come at a premium. Yes I know, people don’t have large budgets and don’t feel they need to pay a premium; however, if your client is SCJonnson don’t tell me they can’t find an appropriate piece of their budget to run on a site entirely devoted to moms with children! It is our job as their digital arm to make sure we are keeping their best interests in mind. If you have a set budget of $50k, spend it wisely. More often than not, less volume at a higher price point will always lead to higher converting leads and happier clients. Happy clients = long term clients.
by Michael Gerpe, VP of Media
Creating Value in a Lead Generation Campaign
July 17th, 2009Strong Call to Action
When collecting users contact information in exchange for something (Lead Generation) a strong call to action will help not only with the quantity of leads generated, but with the quality of those leads as well. A strong call to action is a very simple, make the message clear and compelling message that persuades the user to take the action you desire.
All too often advertisers create campaigns that are not valuable to the consumer, but are unclear as to what the next steps will be.
1. Simple: Don’t confuse people, most often consumers don’t want to think too hard about the offer. An excessive amount of questions will distract and deter users as will excessive rules and regulations. Make it easy for them.
2. Obvious: Make it clear and keep it up front. Let the user know exactly what is going to happen when they opt-in to the offer. This will prevent users from shying away from an unexpected phone call or email.
3. Valuable: Keep the offer appealing and valuable to your target audience. Giving a gift away works, but giving good information on your products or services is a better way to only attract user interested in your company as opposed to the give-away.
by Matt Mockus, Director of Lead Generation
Welcome!
July 17th, 2009Welcome to the brand new Ifficient website and blog! Check back often to hear about all of the exciting things currently occupying the Ifficient team’s time.