I may not be a professional marketer either, but I have clients who are. In the past I've had a couple try co-registration leads that they purchased. Of course one of the selling points was that they were double opt-ins. Which may be true. But the point is they were double opt-ins collected by the company who probably promised them a free report or something, and suggested they would also receive an email more specific and to the point where it would address their needs or wants. But they weren't double opt-ins for my client who was using these leads. They didn't sign up for his newsletter or special offers.

So what happens next?

If you're using the autoresponders provided by 1shoppingcart or aweber, they have a limit of subscribers set to 10,000. For each additional allotment of $10,000, you pay extra. One of my clients wound up with a total of 80,000 subscribers which he was paying all this extra coin for and the conversion ratio was so low, that it didn't even cover the cost of the extra list costs.

Lesson #1. Don't add these type of subscribers to your main mailing list without testing the conversion ratio. 'Cause then it makes it hard to separate the freebie seekers from customers who have some life time value.

Lesson #2. Many of these co-registration services that you purchase leads from have a system set-up where they send you X number of subscribers per day. If you have installed AutoresponsePlus or something similar, these leads get added to your list, without having to opt-in. Of course, as previously mentioned, they were all double opt-ins... just not my clients double opt-ins, so asking them to opt-in again means you're going to lose over half of them. And when send to your list, there are going to be complaints sent to your hosting company accusing you of spam. Unless you have a very understanding hosting company, chances are they will be pulling the plug on your website.

Lesson #3. Save your website and import the list to your third party autoresponder like 1shoppingcart or Aweber. 1shoppingcart only allows you to import 3,000 leads in a 24 hour period, and they will have to opt-in again. Aweber will ask you to prove these are your double opt-ins, and they will be sending them a welcome message to confirm these people want to be on your list. Well, they aren't your double opt-ins, so once again, the majority won't bother opting-in again and those that do will be complaining, and for the extra sales you make, the conversion ratio will be so low that it isn't going to be worth the headaches.

But you are right. Safelists and co-registration was promoted quite a bit last year by some "highly regarded marketers." I have business associates who also joined some of the programs just to get the chance to promote their ad to a large list. When you join some of these programs you have to agree to receive some of these messages from your "upline" --which means some of these newer safe-lists are built more on the principle of multi-level marketing. But in each case, these associates were deleting the messages they received from their upline and weren't reading them. What do you suppose their "downline" was doing ? The same thing, no doubt.

Many of these "highly regarded marketers" touted this as the next BIG thing, but the sad fact of it is, it was a re-hashed marketing concept many of us were involved in, in 1996-1997. It didn't work then, and it doesn't work now, although I understand those who are promoting these programs would dispute this notion. In all reality, your time is better spent honing your skills to building your own list of double opt-ins, by providing quality content and adhering to the 80-20 rule, where 80% of the newsletter will be something of value to your readers and the message won't be any more then 20% ads. If you want a good list, there aren't any short-cuts.

Of course, this is mostly personal opinion based on my experience. Your mileage may vary.

Regards,
Steve MacLellan