Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Sounds a little flaky to me.

The opt ins really ought to be driven to a landing page
that you control or that you manage.

Sounds to me as if the list isn't optimized to respond to
the kind of offer you're sending out.

The best thing to do here (which will take time), is to
promote your own offers and drive traffic to your own
sites and landing pages.

The lack of conversions might be a result of the offer,
the messaging, the desire to respond, or the warmth of
the list. As I've said, if the list's not keyed in to the offer, you're probably not going to see much by way of
responses or opt ins.

If the vendor supplied the list and you didn't specify in advance that you needed the names/email addresses of the respondents, then you got what you ordered.

And it's impossible to tell whether 1% CTR is good, bad or about right -- unless you have experience with similar lists, similar copy, and similar offers. Some people get a fraction of 1%, others get 5-10% (or more). There is no "normal."

As for why the conversion rate was less than you wanted, there are so many factors that it would be unfair to suspect click-fraud only. Have you gotten better conversions from other campaigns using the same landing page and a similar list? How do you know your offer and copy are optimized for the list?

While I don't know the vendor and certainly can't vouch for their ethics, it is premature to suspect irregularities just based on the information you provided. You might want to talk to the vendor and share your concerns.

If you want a considered third-party assessment, let me know via private email. (Use the contact info in my profile.)

There may be a good reason for sending from his domain/IP address - his address may be white-listed by various email spam programs, and he knows they can get your message delivered.

The bottom line is ignore the 1% - focus on the results. Did you get the conversions you wanted? If so, they it doesn't matter how they arrived. If you didn't, then you have a bit of research you need to do (as others have noted).

I would say your service provider is correct. Most tracking systems would record the referring incoming traffic based upon the domain name sending the traffic. For example, if your service provider was Mail Chimp, you would see referring traffic coming from www.mailchimp.com

There are other email programs out there. Why not install PHPlist on your own server and ask your service provider to import his list into your own email service?

Also, why can't your service provider provide you access to the email system so you can check and see what's going on. Seemed odd that you are locked out of vital parts of the process.

Darcy Moen
Customer Loyalty Network.

I suggest working closely with your vendor to better understand the Why behind the What. This may be an expensive educational opportunity. If the vendor is reputable then they want you to be successful. If they aren't then you need to go back to the drawing board.