Wow, so Google has effectively killed AffiliateWeb’s search engine rankings with their latest algorithm update, sending us from number 3 for the term “zip submits” to… get ready for it… number 46 (as of this writing). I’m annoyed, but that’s not the point of this article.

Many forums and message boards (www.wickedfire.com, www.sitepoint.com, www.digitalpoint.com, for example) are starting to make threads and comments about how shady zip/e-mail submits are and how they aren’t experiencing any conversions with them anymore. From an affiliates perspective it is probably quite frustrating, and I get that. Truth be told, I’m not running half as many e-mail/zip submit campaigns as I used to simply because there are a lot of them that aren’t converting anymore.

But, the real question here is, “why aren’t they *converting?”

It’s can all be answered in one word: scrubbing. Think of it like this: you’re an e-mail/zip advertiser, and over the last year and a half you’ve ran one or two field submit campaigns that just about every active affiliate on the planet has run. You’ve shelled out millions of dollars to acquire a database of millions of e-mail addresses. Now, an advertiser may take several months to actually profit from paying an affiliate $X.XX per lead, so you can imagine why they’re going to start scrubbing.

“Scrubbing” is when the advertiser takes the e-mail or zip leads that the affiliate has generated and compares it to what they already have in their database. If it’s a new e-mail or zip/IP combo, you get credit for the lead. However, if they already have it on file you don’t. This is why zip submits that were once converting at 40% or more are now converting at 10%, and this is why a lot of affiliates are having a hard time with them and maintaining profitability. I know, I get that.

The affiliate now has to find a lower to lower their bottom end if they ever expect to maintain profitability.  If you’re running PPC (as most are) you’re going to have to find a way to keep your quality score high so that your CPC remains low.  This means hosting the campaigns on an established domain with decent PR and with quality content.  Other forms of marketing, such as e-mail or social networking, should still remain viable… for now.

So, if you’ve noticed a distinct drop in your profits and conversions from zip submits, this could very well (and likely is) be the reason.