I hate zip/email submits…there I said it. I know some people who have done really well with them but I hardly ever run them, there are just better campaigns to focus on. I do have one exception to this rule though and that is when you can pre-pop an email submit.
Pre populating an offer is when you send someone to a form (in this case an email submit) with their email address already filled out on the forum. All they have to do is hit submit! There are a few reasons I like pre-pop so much:
- The offers usually convert much higher (they're already filled out, duh!)
- You can keep the email address yourself and pre-pop so you get the best of both worlds
Below is a case study of promoting an email submit.
Step 1 – Offer Selection
Ok so obviously we need to pick an offer that can be pre-populated. Most of the time, your CPA network will have a way to search which offers can be pre-populated. The way the offer is pre-populated is by adding something at the end of your affiliate link. For this campaign I chose the BrandGiveawayCentre – Free $500 Grocery Gift Card offer from Neverblue.
I know this can be pre-populated and find out how to do it by looking at the campaign details:
This offer is pre-poppable! Please add &em=test@aol.com to the end of the link.
For example: http://adserve.brandgivewaycentre.com/DefaultPage.aspx?c=5811&em=test@aol.com
If you load that URL you will see that whatever you add at the end – &em=enteremailhere gets pre-populated.
Step 2 – The Landing Page
For this strategy we need a landing page. Just like the offer page, ours should be simple and have a clear form to enter their email on. I'm not going to get into all the technical specifics of setting this up because 1) It would be beyond the scope of this blog post and 2) There would be a lot of question and I spend a lot of time answering questions in the forum already lol
If you have some PHP skills you can do this yourself, or hire a programmer to do this for you for a minimal cost. What you need to do is build a landing page with an opt-in form on it that collects the email into your autoresponder (like Aweber) and then sends them to the affiliate offer with their email pre-populated. This way you get to collect their email which you can market to over and over, and possibly get a commission also.
Step 3 – Collect Targets
For targets I chose keywords and URL's. Some of the areas I focused on were:
- Recipe sites
- Parenting/baby sites
- Food stamps/aid sites
I started with about 300 sites but only kept the ones that I needed a very minimal bid on.
Results
Without any optimizing:
$250 adspend
$165 in conversions
about 315 email addresses collected
So on the surface this campaign doesn't look profitable. That's ok though because I look at any conversions I got as just offsetting the cost of collecting email addresses. For this campaign I collected email addresses for about $0.27. 315 email addresses is a REALLY small list but I can market to them over and over, and with much higher paying offers. With only a few commissions from marketing to my list, I could be in positive territory on this campaign.
So instead of just promoting email submits for a $1.25 commission, get a little creative with pre-populating and see what you can do!
hey, can you do a follow up with how you email market to them? Ive never been able to make that work, so i would love to see how you do it.
Solid post dude.
Great Post as Always! My question that I don’t think has ever been answered is: I like the pre-popping aspect to collect the email addresses great way to build a list. But, no one ever goes into what types of offers to send to this list in follow up emails. I mean, they are initially opting in for what they perceive to be something Free. So, are you supposed to just follow up with other Free offers, or do you cater your follow ups to the nature of the initial offer?
What PPV network did you use? Great post, great blog, as always.
Wow actually slick idea as far as marketing through PPV. I have some stealth marketing campaigns going on right now that I have yet to shoot offers to, but I’m preparing mwuaha.
This offer is pre-poppable! Please add &em=test@aol.com to the end of the link.
So does that mean I just add &em=test@aol.com and that will do ? Or do I add &em=enteremailhere
what is the purpose of test@aol.com ?
dont understand it.
Yeah I do plan on doing a post about how to market to these customers through email.
@Albert – you just add &em=then put the customers email here
Thanks David, as always you will come through!
Hi David,
So to understand what you are saying, all we add is “&em=” correct? Once the customer puts their email address then that will add the rest of the “&em=test@aol.com”, correct?
As far as marketing to these people is concerned, I have a few thoughts on that. Let’s say that your offer is for a free Louis Vuitton bag. You could send them offers for free lipstick, free pair of shoes, etc. Just make sure on your landing page you have a disclaimer saying that you’ll be sending them other offers.
You could also become an affiliate of a store like Bloomingdales or Macy’s and send them e-mails when sales are happening in those stores.
The possibilities are really endless when it comes to how to market to them. I just have to figure out the prepop thing now. 🙂
So you got a ‘Send email’ button that collects the mail and sends the visitor to the offer. Acording to this, you’ve got 315 visits to the offer(emails submitted) and 165$ in conversions?
Awesome post.
But does this scheme works for Prosper Page Redirection style?