 | Co-Registration & Affiliate Marketing |
The last few months have seen a rise in the number of co-registration competition merchants. These program work by enticing the user to the site via a prize draw. The user enters their details before being invited to wade through an endless stream of co-registration offers that include loans, competitions, cashback sites and newsletters. Once they’ve done this, they’re then entered into a prize draw.
As an affiliate we promote Co-Reg competitions from a number of networks, but I have to admit to being increasingly concerned about the quality and standard of the merchants involved in this sector. Furthermore, comments from our userbase indicate quite strongly that they are far from impressed by the quality of the competitions and this has led to less promotion and diminishing revenue.
Here’s just some of the problems we’ve encountered:
Example 1. A co-reg competition is launched to cash in on a seasonal event, for example Halloween. Affiliates are encouraged to promote the offer as it’s topical, yet the closing date for the offer is 12 months away.
Why don’t I like this? Firstly it’s capitalising on the fact that a lot of people will not check the closing date. Secondly, and most importantly, the offer only has a limited promotion time, but it’s a full 12 months before the competition actually ends. By that time the competition may be forgotten, the winner not picked, the winner uncontactable (e.g. moved house, changed email) - anything. Not good quality!
Example 2. Affiliates are encouraged to promote a sporting event (e.g. Wimbledon) at the time it’s running - but the closing date is a long time in the future.
Again this is capitalising on the event, but it’s misleading to a user saying “Win Tickets to..” only for the prize to be offered for the following year’s event. If it’s clear that this is the case then fine, but when a closing date for a competition is given as 4 months after the event takes place (and this has happened) then you have to be seriously concerned about quality.
Example 3. Affiliates are encouraged to promote a big prize. E.g. £100,000 or a flat!
Why don’t I like this? Again there’s the element of time delay involved (long closing date), but there’s also the “do you actually have this prize to giveaway” factor? Now it may well be that these companies have £100k just to pay out - but judging by the quality of the websites involved one does wonder and again will the prize actually be paid out?
Example 4. Affiliates are encouraged to promote a competition where users end up with forced sign ups.
This is pure and simply wrong! I’ve noticed this on a number of competitions run by the same company and am concerned because of a number of issues. There’s no terms and conditions associated with the offers and a user could unwittingly sign up to not 1 but 3 offers without being able to opt in or see terms for that offer. Those offers include competition sites, insurance and mobile clubs. Given that these program are then running on networks that promote co-registration for affiliates and require affiliates to act in a specific way, makes the fact that these programs are promoted on that network even more hard to understand.
Now, there’s possibly a place for these kind of competitions in the market place, but the networks need to check and assess the quality of sites and companies involved (including taking a long hard look at themselves if they are also a co-reg merchant).
The co-reg path ways should also be checked regularly (we tested one on Saturday and found PHP and MySQL errors) and they must also be prepared to remove sites or not accept programs.
More also has to be done to make sure they don’t just appear as portals to glean marketing data from users, who are treated as nothing more than potential pound signs. Respect needs to be attributed to the data being collected by these companies.
Quality control is a vital part of affiliate marketing! It can be done easily by affiliates (who bother to be concerned) by the levels of promotion they offer programs, but it needs to be done by networks too. The quality of programs a network offers reflects the quality of the network.
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on November 15, 2006 at 6:08 am Cost Per News » End of Co-Registration Craze in CPA Marketing? wrote:
[…] The simple “yes/no†opt-in platform has morphed into a very lucrative model. The leads produced in the co-reg model are now much higher quality than other channels such as email, banner or pop. Whereas many advertising networks kept registration path offers separate from their email counterparts, many advertisers and publishers are re-examining the co-reg and finding it a very successful model. The hotness of 2004 is beginning to wear thin with consumers and advertisers (lead quality lagging). Is the platform still valid for CPA networks and affiliate marketing? The UK blog One Little Duck (Ze Frank homage?) makes a very good post about this issue. Jason there includes four examples of issues that he has with coregs within the scope of affiliate marketing… As an affiliate we promote Co-Reg competitions from a number of networks, but I have to admit to being increasingly concerned about the quality and standard of the merchants involved in this sector. Furthermore, comments from our userbase indicate quite strongly that they are far from impressed by the quality of the competitions and this has led to less promotion and diminishing revenue. […]
affiliate marketing competitions promotions