Well well well the golden boy of Major League Baseball is all over the news this week. Why? Because he cheated by using steroids at least from 2001-2003, and then he lied about it. I was watching Sports Center this morning and they said that Commissioner Bud Selig is considering to adjusting A-Rod’s Hall of Fame statistics for those years he used steroids. That is some heavy stuff. It has created a huge uproar among all of Major League Baseball and all other professional sports.

So my question to all of you is, “Is incentivizing CPA offers like using Steroids?” Incentivizing offers definitely has it’s place. Some companies have successfully built their whole online business model on incentivizing.  If the product is widely used and desire able then there is a low risk that the user will cancel their continuity - i.e. Netflix, Blockbuster, Stamps.  When the user is shown a selection of 40 something offers and is told to choose one or 2 the user is going to select something they are actually interested in, thus still keeping the cancelation rate low.

A campaign is incentivized if you offer some sort of reward for completing an offer in the form of money, points, gifts or anything of this sort. If you provide the user with an incentive to fill out a lead form that is not a benefit caused directly by the product, such as “click here and win a free IPhone’, users are given an incentive to complete an offer.

An example of an incentivized campaign would be something like this:

To receive a free Ipod you must (1) Register with valid information, (2) Complete a survey, (3) Complete at least 3 offers, and (4) Refer five friends who also complete steps 1-3.

In short, any time you provide an incentive for the user to complete an offer (outside of whatever benefit the user will gain from using/buying the product), this is considered incentivized traffic.

A poll could easily be incentivized traffic if it reads like many of the ones you see on websites, ie:

Is Obama going to be a good president?

( ) Yes

( ) No

Vote now and receive a FREE* Ipod.

The problem is when you take an offer like a free trial and incentivize it when it is not allowed. 

Why? Because when you incentivize an offer that does not allow that type of traffic it often leads to poor lead quality and scrubbing. Lets face it the public is always going to be attracted to getting something for nothing i.e. “get paid to try offers” or “get this prize for filling out this form”, so they sign up get paid and cancel right away. 

In today’s society if its to good to be true, it probably is. 

What is your take on incentivizing campaigns when it is not allowed?

Talk to me,

Chris Mello

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 4:43 am and is filed under Chris' Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.