Archive for February, 2007
Confirmation Emails – Waste Not, Want Not
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Marketing, Design, E-mail Marketing Wednesday, 28 February 2007 14:37 10 Comments
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
Posted by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine in Affiliate Marketing, Design, E-mail Marketing Monday, 26 February 2007 17:12 1 Comment
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
Posted by Matt Van Atta in Ad Placement, Affiliate Marketing, Best Business Practices Friday, 23 February 2007 14:36 1 Comment
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
Posted by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine in Affiliate Marketing, E-mail Marketing Wednesday, 21 February 2007 16:47 3 Comments
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
Posted by AC Editorial Team in Affiliate Marketing, Tracking Tuesday, 20 February 2007 17:41 2 Comments
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. . .
