Educated Advertisers Hold the Key
By Lindsay Mure
In response to Scott Rewick’s article entitled “When Direct
Marketers Attack”. It is unfortunate that he, as an ODM
(Original Direct Marketer), feels that the CPA/CPL industry
is failing to produce quality leads in an ethical manner. It
is also unfortunate that as a Marketing Director for a lead
generation company I agree with Scott’s claims. However, I
disagree that this “fraudulent” marketing will cause a
“consumer revolt”. I think it will and should cause an
advertiser revolt.
https://www.lynxtrack.com/signup.php
Over
the past six months I have seen more than 20 new
co-registration / lead generation companies start up. The
problem is, the majority of these companies resell the data
of the registered consumer 20 times, send it to 30 list
managers, and then sell the data to the advertiser. By the
time the advertiser follows up, the consumer will have
received dozens of “affiliate” emails and won’t remember
what offer(s) they signed up for. Not only is this annoying
to the consumer, but the lead is now useless to the
advertiser.
Why do
marketers do this? The answer is simple… the more money they
make off the initial registration the more they can pay to
market their offer leading to higher traffic and increased
revenue.
Recently it has become common for many direct marketers to
trade the quality and value of the consumer’s registration
information for increased revenue and volume. This problem
will undoubtedly get worse before it gets better, and I’ll
tell you why. Most advertisers have no idea that the data
they are receiving has been sold to 20 other companies OR
that consumers are FORCED to opt in to their offer. These
problems will continue to get worse until advertisers stop
working with these companies. Advertisers need to start
asking relevant questions before agreeing to work with these
CPA/CPL marketing companies.
Here
are some questions EVERY advertiser should ask before
working with a marketing company:
1.
How many companies manage your list of registered
consumers? (be wary if it is more than 2)
2.
Do you resell any of your registration data to other
marketing companies? If so how many? (be wary if it is more
than 2)
3.
Do you force consumers to opt in to any offers? (Go
through the registration process and double check that they
don’t)
4.
What is the “freemium” (sweepstake or free offer)
attached to the registration that incentivizes consumers to
sign up?
5.
Is the consumer required to perform an action in
order to partake in the “freemium”? If so what is that
action? (Knowing this will help you gauge if the company is
fraudulently having consumers sign up with no intention of
actually providing the “freemium”).
Should advertisers wait around for the FTC to
set regulations limiting these unethical practices? No! Even
the least savvy direct marketing companies will find loop
holes to get around the regulations.
Advertisers need to take an educated stand against working
with these companies. Eventually the marketing companies
deemed unfit to work with will go out of business and the
quality and integrity of the online direct marketing
community will be restored.
On a
positive note, I know from years of CPA/CPL buying
experience that there are plenty of ethical direct marketing
companies to work with. These companies can provide
advertisers with high volumes of data without sacrificing
quality. They often have excellent data scrubbing systems
and provide great customer service. In addition they promote
reasonable offers and services to entice consumers to
register and are known to fulfill what they promise the
consumer. These companies monetize consumer data in an
ethical way by selling that data ONLY to the advertisers
whose offer(s) the consumer expressed interest in. By
working with these types of companies advertisers will get
what they pay for: high quality, responsive data that works!
Lindsay Mure
Permission Data
