The From Line

Part one in a three-part series

The majority of email marketers are missing a significant source for quality leads in the form of co-registration. It is a cost-effective, efficient way to encourage readers to opt-in to a variety of lists while still giving them the opportunity to personalize their selections—a major demand among readers.

Co-registration is when the recipient can subscribe to multiple lists at one time. Typically, marketers brand a “thank-you” page with check boxes of other electronic publications that the reader may opt to join before a recipient completes the subscription process.  The seemingly simple process has many advantages.  

• It can increase the number of subscribers.
• It promotes your lists to readers outside of your typical sphere of influence. 
• It is inexpensive (although we recommend researching services and costs from different providers).

Co-registration can also open the door to other industries and potential partners.  For example, you may be able to work with an established publisher to add your e-zine to their co-registration list and radically increase your subscribers.  There are a few warnings about setting up a co-registration process.  First, is to make sure you have room in your budget for it. It will not make a big dent, but you should understand the costs before venturing into the process.  Also, be sure that the auto-responder feature of your e-zine will accept new subscribers via this method.   

Stay tuned for information on other methods to build your list organically in the next issue of E-ssentials. 

If your email marketing system transmits email in MIME format how do you know what format (HTML or Text) your recipients are reading?  Most systems will calculate open rates however this is only regulated for HTML formats.  In addition most systems will calculate clicks however they do not distinguish between a text click or HTML click.

If you're fortunate enough to have an email service provider like Gold Lasso that calculates unique opens and unique clicks that distinguishes between HTML and text formats you can easily calculate a rough distribution between the two.

Here are the formulas:

HTML format = Number of recipients who requested HTML formats + (Unique Opens - Number of recipients who requested HTML formats)

Text format = Number of recipients who requested text formats + (Unique Text Clicks - Number of recipients who requested text formats)

MIME Format = Number of transmissions - (HTML format + Text format)

The reason why you need to subtract the number of recipients who requested a specific format from the Unique stat is because you do not want to count them twice.

Hint:  Over time if you see your text versions start to increase it is probably because your recipients are reading your email from a mobile device.  Many of our B2B clients are observing the text stat increase.