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Affiliate Classroom Blog Archives

Confirmation Emails - Waste Not, Want Not

Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 at 2:37 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

One day as I was testing my Autoresponder system, I thought I had a bright idea. Turns out it it was indeed a bright idea, but not a new idea.

I was setting up my AWeber account to automatically send the download page for an eBook I sell when I noticed there was a place to fill in a confirmation page link. I wondered what this was, so I checked it out.

I found out that after a person opts in to your mailing list, you can have them automatically sent to a page on your site. The alternative is to use AWeber’s generic response. This response takes you to a very white page with a thank you note on it and a link back to your site.

I’ll never use that generic link because it does nothing for me! This person has already been to the home page of the site - it’s where they subscribed to the newsletter in the first place. You need to send them to a special “Thank You” page, with a link to an Affiliate Product (or two). That way they return to your site, see what else you have to offer, and possibly buy something!

There is one more step you need to do to place your upsell in your subscribers email box, and that is to use your first and second emails as another upsell opportunity.

I was using the confirmation email correctly, but didn’t think about using it in my first email because that’s where I give the download instructions for the book. However, think about it for just a second. Those first and second messages (even if they are instructions) will get the customer used to seeing your name come into their email box - and they will open the email because they know it contains something for them.

So get used to using these emails to your best advantage. Don’t just send instructions. Try sending them a few extras. First, be sure to reinforce the fact that the customer has made a great decision by buying your product or signing up for your list. Then, the “extras” might include:

  • An opportunity to try another one of your products.
  • An unadvertised freebie that they can download (possibly a branded eBook with your links in it).
  • A recommendation for an affiliate product that you promote.
  • Anything else that makes your new contact feel comfortable with you as a person or company.

The opportunities to increase your sales using your first emails and confirmation pages are endless. It just takes a little creativity - and a good autoresponder set-up.

How to Create a Great Landing Page

Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 5:12 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

I was going to write a mini-tutorial on How to Create a Great Landing Page.

Not surprisingly, I quickly discovered others had gotten there first. Going beyond surprise into delight, I came across a column by Jeanne Jennings on ClickZ that tells all about it — neatly, concisely, and chock full o’ helpful tips.

Here are a couple of samples out of several:

    Don’t Just Send Them To Your Home Page

“Yes, this is what’s easiest to do. But in most instances, it’s not best. Especially when the product or service you’re promoting in the e-mail doesn’t appear on the home page (I’ve seen it done). Don’t make people search for what you’ve told them is there. Take them straight to it.”

    Match Your Landing Page to Your Call to Action

“A good e-mail engages readers by telling them about something, then setting an expectation for what they’ll find when they click through. If you’re promoting a new product with a link to “learn more,” readers expect to land on a page with more information. If it’s “order now,” they expect to land on a page to begin the order process. If it’s “read the full article,” they expect to land on a page with the full article. Be sure you deliver on the call to action’s promise.”

I recognize a master at work when I see one. So, without further ado, here’s Jeanne…

An Affiliate Marketing (True) Fairy Tale

Friday, February 23rd, 2007 at 2:36 pm by Matt Van Atta

Once upon a time, an affiliate marketer had a website on which he promoted a $25 product via an agreement with a merchant.

One day, a potential customer entered the affiliate marketer’s website and looked around. Reading the website content about the product, the customer was sold. Clicking on the affiliate’s link, the customer purchased the product from the merchant, and the affiliate marketer received his commission. And they all lived happily ever after.

And the next day, it rained.

Okay, that last line may come from a smart aleck (guilty as charged). But it raises the question: “What’s next?” You don’t want the customer to be a “one-hit wonder,” buying the product and never entering your website again. You may have more to offer the customer than just the initial product you sold, or the customer may need to purchase the product again down the road. Plus, your affiliate agreement may allow you to receive commissions for all purchases made by your customer within, say, 30 days.

Regardless, you need to provide enough incentive for the customer to revisit, and to make additional purchases on, your website. Enter the concept of upselling.

Upselling involves offering a higher-priced product or service to a customer who has already purchased through your website. Other sales circles define upselling as the act of convincing a customer to purchase a more expensive product than the one the customer originally considered. But that definition focuses on hard-selling new customers and, in my opinion, potentially turning them off.

Upselling in affiliate marketing involves selling a low-price product now and a higher priced product later. However, it’s more than that. Beginning with that initial sale, you are developing a sense of trust with the customer through the effective delivery of content and services. You are building a relationship.

Through that one sale, you receive information about that customer that could help in developing upsell possibilities. It could involve the customer’s interest in information related to the initial product. Or, you could discover the customer’s potential willingness to receive that content from you in the future. That content could take the form of a follow-up email or a viral report, for example.

In order to keep your customers interested in and willing to spend money on what you have to offer, upselling the affiliate marketing way is a great approach. For more about upselling and how to apply it successfully to your affiliate marketing efforts, I heartily recommend Anik Singal’s article on the subject in the October 2005 issue of Affiliate Classroom magazine.

Outlook 2007: Not All Bleak

Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 4:47 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

With Microsoft’s change in Outlook 2007’s rendering engine from IE to Word, the appearance of email’s in the Inbox will change.

No more CSS or animated GIFs or Flash. No more background images and colors. But the outlook, so to speak, may not be that bad.

Despite Microsoft’s indifference to the complaints of an important body of its users — i.e. email marketers – the change is now set in stone. But email will still be an important venue for delivering messages.

Already, email marketers have had to contend with the possibility that images wouldn’t make it through. Smart ones adopt a practice of including a good text caption, so that even if the image doesn’t appear, the message is still intact. That isn’t great, but it isn’t so bad, either.

After all Google AdWords ads still do pretty well without images. For a comparison, see the difference between this and the snazzier version. While most would agree that the latter is nicer, the former still delivers the message clearly.

And, though it isn’t the type of change anyone wants to deal with, there’s still plenty of time to adapt. Outlook 2007 may see good corporate adoption in the next year or two, but the average target for affiliate marketers is individuals. A lot of those Inboxes we’re aiming for belong to those who read their email at home.

Many of them are still on Outlook 2000 (if they use Outlook at all; I don’t and haven’t for over two years). Many that are using Outlook 2003, even in the workplace, won’t switch over to Outlook 2007 soon. The rate of implmentation of new versions of Microsoft products has been declining for years.

Even with deep discounts, companies are looking ever harder at whether the new features are worth the cost. As a security feature, most will be indifferent. Such things are always more or less forced on them from the IT department convincing a senior manager of the need.

Change in computer technology is inevitable, and not all of it good. But one of the typical affiliate marketer’s most outstanding characteristics is adaptability. That’s part of what keeps him or her in business year after year.

Heads Up For Google’s New Quality Score

Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 at 5:41 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

The next time you check your Google AdWords account, look for the new Quality Score column (or an option to activate it). The new column was scheduled to appear next week, but it may be released earlier. Google has been letting people know this is coming, but the information they provide is still vague, in my opinion.

You may have received a letter from Google outlining the new quality score criteria. It explains that they are trying to improve the quality of ads served to users by making improvements to the way the Quality Score is evaluated. (The Quality Score is important because it is used to set the minimum bids for keywords.) This new system will apparently give the advertiser the benefit of the doubt when the AdWords system does not have enough data to set the minimum.

According to Google, this is a good thing for advertisers – well, for some advertisers. They are expecting complaints from advertisers that see an increase in their keyword bids (and it looks like a fairly large number of keywords will be affected). But, they state that some keyword minimums will actually decrease. (These would be the ones that are new in the system, and will most likely go up when more information is received about the performance of the keyword.)

Google’s advice to advertisers is “Please keep in mind that you should always bid the value of your keyword to you - if your keyword becomes inactive for search, consider optimizing or deleting that keyword before raising your bid”

How’s that for words of wisdom!

The good thing is that advertisers will now be able to see their Quality score, where it was invisible before.

ClickZ News talked to Nicholas Fox, senior business product manager for ad quality and here’s the explanation received:

This is a change to the algorithm itself, updating what we call ‘prediction confidence’ to improve the accuracy in determining quality score in cases where we have less data,” Fox said. In effect, Google is becoming more lenient with ads that it knows nothing about, but could become stricter with ads once it has gathered some data.”

They also stated that it was the advertisers who asked for more transparency. I don’t remember begging Google for more changes, but I guess I’ll wait and see what the numbers show. . .

Reap First, Sow Later

Saturday, February 17th, 2007 at 4:31 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

Search marketing spending hit almost $9.5 billion last year. Since 86% went to paid search ads, there’s a lot of life in that old horse yet.

That means revisiting some of the basics, such as measuring ROI, tracking conversion and other elementary best practices.

But, it’s time to add to that basic toolkit some of the newer income generating methods. Video is an obvious choice. Google paid $1.65 Billion for YouTube, a company that hadn’t even been in business two years earlier. Maybe they know something about how to make money online.

eMarketer predicts that video ad spending will increase almost 90% in 2007. They also predict that 1 in 10 Internet ad dollars will go for video placements by 2010. Spending doesn’t equal income, but very rarely does anyone gain it without investment. Not spending almost guarantees no return.

You gotta spend money to make money, the old saying goes.

Download February 2007 AC Magazine Now

Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 1:45 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine

“Conversions” - that’s the theme of the February 2007 issue of Affiliate Classroom Magazine. Working affiliates explain how they increase sales through proper site development, powerful copywriting, and adding new revenue streams to existing sites.

Cover Story: Conversion Fundamentals
Get a new appreciation for how things like usability can really affect your conversion rate!

AIDA and Affiliates
Good copywriting can really raise your conversion rate. This article shows how you, as an affiliate, can apply a tried and true copywriting formula to increase sales.

Adding New Income Streams
Got some sites where you just can’t seem to raise the conversion rate? Check out these ideas for adding new income streams to existing sites.

Plus Tips from Managers
In this issue we’re starting an ongoing series of tips straight from merchants and managers. Debra Rabin, manager of one of the Web’s most successful life insurance affiliate programs, offers advice on what to do when you’re applying for a new program.

Remember, you can also brand the magazine with your affiliate links and give it away on your site. AC pays monthly commission on two tiers, so it’s easy to generate recurring income with our program! Click here to sign up as an affiliate and get the branding kit.

Download the February 2007 Issue of AC Magazine now.

Guerrilla Marketing, The Right Way

Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 4:54 pm by Matt Van Atta

Maybe you’ve heard about the bomb scare in Boston that resulted from the placement of electronic devices throughout the city as a promotion for Cartoon Network’s “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” program.

Opinions can vary on whether the promotion was well or poorly thought out, or whether the Boston authorities may have overreacted. Regardless, the case serves as a perfect example of what guerrilla marketing is – and perhaps, what it isn’t.

Guerrilla marketing’s purpose is to achieve maximum return in terms of exposure, at minimum cost in terms of money and resources. It’s geared particularly toward small businesses with limited budgets, although major corporations such as Sony, General Electric, Citigroup – and Cartoon Network – have used the approach.

Some guerrilla marketing efforts have led people to question the ethics of its practitioners. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino even called for a citywide ban on guerrilla marketing campaigns, calling it a “nitwit technique.” It makes me wonder if Cartoon Network and other large corporations are giving guerrilla marketing a bad name, but that’s another story.

Guerrilla marketing does not follow traditional marketing guidelines, which emphasize white space, short and snappy copy, and “sizzle” over “steak.” Its often unconventional tactics cost little if any money and stress the importance of imagination and hard work – taking time and effort to understand one’s customer base and creatively marketing to that base.

Sound familiar?

It should, because that’s what affiliate marketing is about. Affiliate marketing ventures should never draw the attention of Homeland Security. But through effective, substantive content and targeted promotions, many of which cost little money to produce, such ventures fit the guerrilla marketing definition to the proverbial “T.” In fact, guerrilla marketing guru Jay Conrad Levinson, in “The Myths of Affiliate Marketing” offers many pearls of wisdom about this. One in particular stands out:

“Affiliate marketing educates, informs, announces, enlightens and influences human behavior. Because it does this, affiliate marketing has an obligation to offend nobody, to present its material with taste and decency, to be honest and to benefit customers. If it does that and earns profits too, it is true guerrilla affiliate marketing.”

The more value you offer your target audience, the more effective your affiliate marketing efforts will be. Viral marketing reports, email newsletters, and other creative will do more for you than can traditional marketing methods – and more than distributing devices that might resemble explosives.

What’s Pogo-Sticking?

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 at 5:52 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

Affiliate Classroom was one of the first companies to introduce readers to the “scent” of a web page. (See “What Odor is your SEO?”) And now here’s a new term you may run across. It’s called Pogo-Sticking! I always wanted a pogo stick when I was a kid, so this one had me curious.

How many times have you performed a search and didn’t find what you were looking for? Or visited the same page of a web-site several times to get back to the main page, or search results page? Well, when you do this you are pogo-sticking!

Anytime there is back and forth activity it’s called pogo-sticking. This can happen within a web page, when a person goes back and forth between individual product pages and/or home pages looking for their desired information, or between SERP results pages.

Basically, pogo-sticking occurs when a person jumps back and forth between different pages. This usually occurs when something is searched for and the search engine results page (SERP) displays. The searcher then selects the result that looks like it will give the best answer and solve the problem. If the answer isn’t on that page the person hits the “back” button, goes back to the SERP and trys again.

So, why is it important to recognize this new word?

Because it could skew your back-end statistics!

You see, each time the visitor goes back and forth to pages within a web site, the statistical software on your server counts it as a page view. Sometimes it’s good to get a lot of page views, and then again, sometimes it means that the visitor is not finding what they are looking for.

So, the next time you jump for joy when you view your statistics and see that your page is sticky, do a double check. If you have a lot of pages views from a small amount of visitors, you might want to take a look at your site’s design and see if it is as user-friendly as it should be.

When visitors don’t find what they’re looking for in a reasonable time, they just pogo-stick back to the SERP and go elsewhere. Unfortunately, you get the page views, but someone else gets the sale!

Conversions: Reading the Fine Print

Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 1:23 pm by Matt Van Atta

My last post focused on the conversion rate, and I looked at some factors to consider when selecting a product to promote. A high conversion rate alone does not necessarily translate into high commissions, particularly if the product being sold carries a low price point or a low commission percentage.

When you identify a potentially lucrative product (and carries both a decent price point and commission rate), the prospect of high conversion levels can dance in your head. However, it’s a mistake to jump in and sign that affiliate agreement without at least thinking about other possible factors.

For instance,

The merchant’s commission payment structure can reveal more than just the commission rate. The merchant may insist on paying commissions only quarterly, when you might prefer a monthly payment.

They may also insist that you bring in a certain level of sales before you receive even one commission check. And, once you bring in a new customer, the merchant may insist on “claiming” that customer for all subsequent sales, paying you for only the first sale.

Not all merchants do these things by any means. But the preceding examples illustrate the types of issues you may have to address when you become an affiliate for that lucrative product. There’s also the possibility that the merchant may be a general pain to deal with. (The conflict of personalities is a daily fact of life, after all).

So, you should ask yourself:

    Do I have to jump over one or more of these merchant-induced hurdles.

    Is the conversion potential of the merchant’s product worth dealing with those hurdles?

Answering those questions requires more than determining the degree to which a product is a “perfect fit” for your affiliate business and your target audience. It also requires research on the affiliate programs associated with the product and the merchants who run them.

Blogs, discussion boards, and other Internet resources could reveal both good and bad experiences with programs and merchants. That information could sway your decision on whether or not to sign up for a program.

Please don’t get me wrong – conversions remain the most important factor in an affiliate marketing business. But the environment in which you obtain those conversions should never be discounted because it can impact your conversion ability, for better or worse.

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