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Ask any multichannel marketer about the biggest challenges in e-mail, and growing their lists will certainly come up somewhere in the conversation.

Enter e-mail co-registration. When the tactic first came along in the early part of this decade, it was considered a fast and relatively effort-free way to grow an e-mail file.

The process involved simply putting an offer on someone else's online e-mail registration form and paying for the names of each person who checked the box. Very quickly, though, it became apparent that e-mail co-registration could be a sure-fire way to load a file with garbage names, and marketers grew cold on the subject.

Then a few years later, the topic got hot again and today, co-registration is in widespread use — but not necessarily always done well.

“Co-registration these days is really common,” says Stefan Pollard, director of consulting services for e-mail service provider EmailLabs. “Unfortunately, it's most commonly done poorly.”

The results of co-registration done wrong are open, click, and conversion rates that are dramatically lower than those for e-mail acquired through other means, and people who opt out more quickly.

E-mail addresses collected through a sloppy co-registration program can also be a source of spam complaints.

And this last point is not to be taken lightly. Spam complaints are the number-one gauge the large e-mail inbox providers, such as AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail, use to determine whether to treat incoming e-mail as spam by either blocking it or shunting it off into the user's spam folder. A spam-complaint rate of half a percent or higher will result in serious delivery troubles.

But according to experts, e-mail co-registration still can be a good way to augment a multichannel merchant's e-mail list-building efforts. Like most things worthwhile in marketing, it is not effortless; it simply requires planning and some attention to detail. And the dividends can be great.

“There are two key approaches to e-mail co-registration,” says Pollard. “One is the shotgun approach, which is about as effective as buying lists. It's usually some free-giveaway site offering phone minutes or an iPod download. The registration boxes are pre-checked and you just start getting e-mail addresses of people who really don't know why it is you've contacted them.

“If you take that approach, you're begging for trouble because you're putting customers who don't know why they're getting e-mail from you into your database, which in turn will affect your reputation at the ISPs, and in the long run, your deliverability,” he says.

As a result, Pollard recommends taking a targeted approach to co-registration and selecting partners that make sense based on the audiences their sites draw.

“When they're registering their e-mail addresses, they're registering on a topic of interest to them,” he says. “If you're another source of interest related to that topic, they're much more likely to check the box saying they want to hear from you.”

Most companies engaged in co-registration are trying to build a big list quickly, he adds, and that is not the right long-term strategy. “If you're trying to build a brand and a relationship, then picking the right partner means more work,” Pollard says.

A merchant selling Oakley sunglasses, for example, may be able to achieve co-registration success at a Website dedicated to serving the needs of skiing enthusiasts, says Pollard. “If I'm selling Oakley sunglasses, then advertising on a co-registration page where they're selling items that are often worn with Oakley sunglasses, like snow gear, makes sense,” he says. “People who are buying snowboards and bindings are often buying Oakley sunglasses as part of the whole package.”

Pollard also recommends keeping tight control over the whole process. “Always make sure you know the source of your e-mail names,” he says. “You need to be able to physically look at the page where your ad is hosted and know that every lead that comes to you is tagged with a source so that if you have a partner that is generating poor leads or generating complaints against you, you can review the program and terminate the relationship if necessary.”

The merchant should also take the time to co-register on partners' sites using anonymous addresses to see what happens as a result.

“Vet your partners very carefully,” says Stephanie Miller, vice president, strategic services for e-mail deliverability firm Return Path. “It's important to experience what the prospect will experience and know how much other e-mail will be sent as a result of the sign-up process.”

If you can't, she notes, “I would hesitate to use that channel. As a merchant, you want to make sure you associate your brand with experiences that match the quality of your brand.”

Besides monitoring partners to make sure they're delivering quality names without tarnishing the brand, a good co-registration program also entails making sure the registrants aren't surprised when they start receiving e-mail. The merchant must ensure that the people who register their e-mail addresses are clear up front on what they are registering for and with whom.