Affiliate Classroom Blog

Spam: Out to Lunch

Matt Van Atta — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:59:46 +0000

Perhaps you’ve just cleaned out spam from your email (again). Messages promising a certain type of enlargement, or requesting help with stashing cash from a foreign prince, or other such things can drive us crazy.

Given that, it’s hard to believe that “spam” meant something else to people before computers came along. It’s also unimaginable – at least to me – that some people like the taste of spam.

A few generations ago, spam referred simply to canned luncheon meat. It’s been produced since the 1930s by Hormel Foods. SPAM the food (Hormel insists on making “SPAM” all caps) consists of chopped, spiced pork shoulder and ham. It is perhaps the quintessential “mystery meat.”

Today, in our computer-driven world, most of us think of spam as the devil’s work. (I’m not talking about deviled ham, either.) SPAM refers to any commercial communications sent to recipients in mass quantities that are unsolicited and usually unwanted.

How did spam evolve – or perhaps, mutate – into its contemporary meaning? The most common explanation involves a famous Monty Python skit. The skit takes place in a café in which spam is served quite generously with every entrée. A group of Vikings in the skit drive the point home even more by singing ad nauseam about spam. Twice they are asked to stop because their singing drowns out the dialogue nearby….the same way electronic spam can “drown out” our daily activity.

Other explanations also exist. Some of them contend that spam is merely an acronym with a particular meaning. Those meanings range from “Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages” to (my favorite) “S— Posing as Mail.” But the Monty Python explanation is closest to the truth. Not the luncheon meat itself, but the word’s overuse and ability to interrupt normal discourse, solidified “spam” as a nasty word in the electronic lexicon.

Spam is most popularly associated with email, of course. But it also applies to postings in forums, blogs, chat rooms, and other electronic venues. It also applies to search engines. “Spamdexing” is the intentional altering of web pages through underhanded SEO techniques to boost the pages’ rankings in the search engines, artificially and unfairly.

The tip to affiliate marketers is obvious; don’t spam. However, it’s not easy to avoid the accusation of spamming, particularly given that individual definitions of spam vary greatly. My next post will cover this topic and the best practices you can implement to send email without ruining the recipient’s appetite.

Are You a Reseller, or Affiliate Marketer?

Matt Van Atta — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:19:54 +0000

If affiliate marketing is based on a single thought, it could be this:

Lots of successful businesses didn’t succeed by relying solely on direct sales to customers. They outsourced at least some of the sales process to other parties. This enabled a wider product distribution in a cost-effective manner. Hence, we have affiliate marketers, and we have resellers.

Reseller programs, like affiliate programs, promote products made by somebody else. Both programs provide a great service to the product manufacturer by getting the word out about a product to an ever-growing target audience.

This leads some to think that the two are synonymous. But don’t be fooled. Resellers and affiliate marketers act on vastly different scales.

Marketing a merchant’s product is an affiliate marketer’s only job. An affiliate attracts the buying customer to his/her site, but then shepherds that customer to the merchant’s website. From there, the merchant handles everything related to completing the transaction. Resellers do more than that – they try to persuade that customer to purchase directly through them.

Resellers work with merchants under a business-to-business wholesaler relationship. Under this relationship, a reseller purchases the product from the merchant at a greatly reduced price. The reseller then sells the product to customers, usually at a discount from the retail price.

The reseller receives all the profit from the product sales. And the reseller handles all the transaction and customer service details, including credit card charges, product support, and product returns.

Many businesses use resellers – including, for instance, computer software manufacturers. (I oughta know; in a previous life, I worked for a software reseller.) And make no mistake – in terms of potential, reselling can be more lucrative than affiliate marketing.

But reselling is also riskier. Once a reseller buys the product from the merchant, that reseller is under pressure to sell it, or risk eating the cost. And once the product is sold, it could be returned by the customer. Or the customer could initiate a chargeback (a refund of the purchase price through the credit card provider), for which the reseller takes the hit. Affiliate marketers usually face none of these kinds of risks.

So, are you a reseller? Or are you an affiliate marketer? Whichever you are depends on what your goals are and what you’re willing to accept in terms of risk and reward. Given where you’re reading this post, I think I know your answer.

Follow the Bouncing Email…

Matt Van Atta — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:35:32 +0000

Your content masterpiece is ready to send to your email opt-in list. Perhaps it’s that first newsletter issue, information about a new product, or a special limited-time offer. Whatever it is, you know in your heart that this content will lead to increased interest and, hopefully, sales.

You hit the “Send” button, and within minutes, replies start coming in. At that point, you might enjoy one more brief moment of euphoria. More likely, however, you think to yourself, “Oh, no, my email’s not being delivered.” (You might say something more emphatic, but I’ll leave that to you.) In other words, your email has bounced.

A bounce, or bounceback, occurs when an email is returned to the sender undelivered.

An email that bounces back because an existing Inbox is full is called a “soft bounce.” In this case, you can at least hope that your email will eventually reach that destination. No such luck with the hard bounce, in which the destination email address does not exist.

How can this happen, when the recipient opted into your mailing list?

Mailing lists can be somewhat fluid. People often change email providers, and thus email addresses. And some intentionally enter a bad email address in a registration form. That way, they obtain what they want without having to give any personal information in return. (We live in a world of increasing suspicion, after all.)

Spam filters can also lead to bouncebacks. Even if they opted into your mailing list, some max out their spam filter settings to avoid spam. If one proverbial hair is out of place in your email – the wrong word in a subject line, or the omission of an opt-out link – the spam alarms can go off. The consequences of that can go well beyond the bounceback.

The following suggestions will minimize bouncebacks and make them easier to manage:

Regularly clean your lists of email addresses that consistently bounce back your emails. It sounds mundane, but it’s necessary. And an autoresponder service (such as AWeber.com) can handle it for you.

Maintain high-quality content in your emails, and avoid items that could label your email as spam.

Limit email deliveries to those who opted in to your mailing list.

Bouncebacks are a bummer. But if you maintain an opt-in list, it’s a daily fact of life. And the financial rewards of an opt-in list will always outweigh the bounces.

Cloaking, Good and Evil Explained

Matt Van Atta — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 19:45:53 +0000

Intrigue and espionage play a role in Internet activity, including affiliate marketing.

It may not exactly be James Bond trying to get the goods on the the bad guy. (Although when I saw the movie “Casino Royale,” I couldn’t help but notice 007’s deftness with the laptop.) But, the world does have white-hatted good guys and black-hatted bad guys. Always has, always will. The Internet does nothing to change that. It merely provides another venue for the classic good-versus-evil struggle.

So what does that have to do with marketing?

Enter: cloaking. The dictionary definition is “to cover or hide with.” In the Internet context, cloaking prevents content or HTML code associated with a web page from being accessible to visitors. The term contains both bad and good connotations – sort of a double-edged sword.

Cloaking’s “evil” edge pertains to search engines. Those on “the dark side” can program their web server so that ordinary visitors see one kind of page content, but Google and other search engines receive entirely different content. These bad guys thus can distort search engine results to their advantage, lure unsuspecting web visitors into their traps, and take somebody else’s commission – possibly yours.

Cloaking techniques prevent Google from accurately providing legitimate search results. That’s why Google bans sites it catches using cloaking. If your marketing efforts involve Google, it’s best not to try this.

Now let’s focus on the “good” edge of the cloaking sword: link cloaking.

Take the affiliate links on your website. They contain your unique affiliate ID, given to you by the merchant and enabling you to be paid on sales emanating from them. But the resulting URL can be long and complicated.

Some customers will copy and paste only the first part of the URL into their browsers (leaving out your affiliate ID). Dishonorable affiliate marketers can substitute their ID for yours and receive credit for the product’s purchase. Either way, you lose commissions.

But cloaking script helps by disguising the affiliate link. It replaces the original URL with a redirected URL that is streamlined and protects your affiliate ID. Many merchants provide cloaked URLs as part of their affiliate arrangements. Some websites (including EHosting4U.com, recommended by Affiliate Classroom) offer free or low-cost link cloaking options.

Search engine cloaking is unmitigated deception. But link cloaking is simply an act of self-defense – protecting you and your hard-earned commissions from the clutches of the dark side.

Guerrilla Marketing, The Right Way

Matt Van Atta — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:54:21 +0000

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.