LockInYourFreeSpot.com A ‘New DNA URL,’ Company Says: Will Members Transfer Their Prospect Lists To MLM Firm?

Data Network Affiliates (DNA) is asking members to drive traffic to yet-another URL: LockInYourFreeSpot.com.

LockInYourFreeSpot.com is at least the third URL DNA has featured this year in bids to recruit members into a multilevel-marketing (MLM) program that purportedly offers everything from license-plate data to cell-phone service and juices.

Why DNA, which says it is launching Aug. 9 even though it actually launched in March, wants members to pump traffic to another website was not immediately clear.

Such approaches have been associated with a controversial marketing practice that is a form of email harvesting — i.e., a company instructs its member database to spotlight a “free” opportunity, and then existing members email their individual databases and prospect lists, in effect transferring their lists to the company fishing for names to add to its database.

The results can be painful:

• Marketing lists of existing customers — whether the customers have big lists or small ones — can become less effective or rendered wholly ineffective because prospects’ names have, in effect,  been transferred to the bigger organization.
• The bigger organization can use the names it gleaned from its own customers to sell against them or get the first “crack” at prospects when something new comes along.
• Marketers large and small who, in effect, transfer their lists to the bigger organization by promoting its “free” opportunity can lose credibility, especially if the bigger organization pounds its ever-expanding database with offers that are not credible or if people whose names have been transferred discover that the “free” offer is worthless or that the word “free” was used to lure them into spending money.
• Longtime relationships can become fractured when a prospect realizes a company or individual marketer with whom he or she has an existing relationship put no thought into a promotion for a “free” opportunity for a larger organization and subjected the prospects to a barrage of email from the larger organization.
• The marketing “noise” level increases and the effectiveness of email marketing decreases — i.e., prospects lured by the “free” offer eventually realize they’ve joined yet another marketing list at the suggestion of someone who put no thought into the action of extending the invitation. Less and less email actually gets opened and read because prospects find themselves in a never-ending state of getting pitched.
• Marketers make less money because they’ve diluted their own lists and angered prospects by effectively transferring their names to a bigger company. The bigger company then brags about the size of its list, positioning it as social proof of legitimacy even through the means of acquiring the list might have been underhanded.

Unlike DNA’s two principal domains — DataNetworkAffiliates.com and TagEveryCar.com — the new LockInYourFreeSpot.com uses a U.S. address in its domain registration. The other domains use an address in the Cayman Islands. DNA  previously explained that the Grand Cayman domain registration was a bid to prevent management from having to put up with “stupid” calls.

LockInYourFreeSpot.com lists an address in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The domain name is registered to Data Network Affiliates Inc.

At the moment, Florida records appear to show no company named Data Network Affiliates Inc. operating in the state. A company known as Data Network Affiliates LLC is registered in Nevada.

In an email to members, DNA pointed out that its LockInYourFreeSpot.com domain is not yet working, but suggested it “should be operational in a few days . . .  if not sooner.”

DNA suggested a number of “SIMPLE MESSAGES” its existing members could send to prospects in their individual databases. Here, in part, is one of them (italics added):

DNA SAVE YOUR HOME PROGRAM
DNA DEBT REDUCTION PROGRAM
LOCK IN YOUR FREE SPOT
LAUNCHES 08/09/2010
100 PRODUCTS @ $19.95 EACH
OVER $12 GOES TO 10 TIER PAYOUT
PAYS 100% MATCHING BONUSES
Takes Only 2 Questions & 2 Minutes
(your username . lockinyourfreespot .com)

In recent weeks, DNA has claimed churches had the “MORAL OBLIGATION” to pitch its purported mortgage-reduction program. It was not immediately clear if the “SAVE YOUR HOME PROGRAM” referenced in the email above was the same program as the mortgage-reduction program.

DNA also suggested that its existing members, when emailing their databases, should tell prospects that LockInYourFreeSpot.com will “PUT 100,000 PEOPLE IN YOUR POWER LEG GUARANTEED.”

At the same time, DNA said LockInYourFreeSpot.com can help prospects “RETIRE BY CHRISTMAS 2010.”

Another suggestion positioned LockInYourFreeSpot.com favorably with “FACE BOOK” and
“GOOGLE” and “WALMART,” describing it as “AMWAY ON STEROIDS.”