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Having an opt-in e-mail list is an indispensable tool for affiliate marketeers. To expand this list faster beyond your own traffic you can use the technique of co-registration.

Building an e-mail list is worth an investment, as your subscribers will eventually make you money in return. But how do you get people to opt-in to your e-mail list when they previously never heard of you ? Not only is this possible, there’s even a cost-effective way of doing this, and it’s called co-registration.

Co-registration takes place at other websites than your own. You locate websites with the desired traffic, and find a way to get listed on the site or in their newsletter. You can for instance find an incentive for people to subscribe to your newsletter such as a sweepstake, which is a form of content to the website of your choice, and even pay the website for every subscription. Be creative; the more original your offer, the cheaper you will be able to place it.

The advantages of this system are that you can target a specific public outside of your own website(s), that the list is built on an opt-in basis, which means the lead lifetime is guaranteed much more than when you just buy a bunch of e-mail addresses, and that you only pay per actual e-mail address. You can even combine your co-registration with that of others, to lower the cost of the e-mail addresses even further.

The value of a subscription to your list depends entirely on what you are going to offer to the subscribers. Some products or services are so expensive or so specialised they are only relevant to a very limited amount of people. These leads are worth more than when you are selling some regular product and are looking for volume over anything else. Therefore you have to define for yourself what your ideal cost per subscription is before you can start making co-registration offers.

Also make sure you know what information about your subscribers you want to collect.
Be transparent in the whole co-registration process. If you eliminate surprises, you will have lesser people unsubscribing afterwards. Also keep track of your subscriptions vs. the source they subscribed from. Like this you will know what sources work best , or generate more valuable leads.

The most important thing is this : put yourself in place of your recipients. Co-registered subscribers need more attention than others, especially the time period just after they subscribed. If you don’t remind them soon after their co-registration they now also are on your list, they will forget why you contact them, and end their subscription.