Tip for merchants – use your welcome email wisely

Some thing caught my eye today that I thought made a great “teaching moment.”

In addition to managing a number of affiliate programs, my partners and I also operate a blog (not in  a niche we manage programs in) that does some affiliate work.   We’d applied for a program recently and I got the following response to welcome us to the program (merchant’s name removed)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This message is sent in response to your application for the affiliate marketing program of XXXXXXXX.com, hosted on ShareASale.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for your interest in becoming a XXXXXX affiliate.

We are excited to have you on board and look forward to our success.

If you have any questions, please email XXXXX@XXXXXX.com and XXXXX@XXXXXX

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That’s it……

Merchant’s – when you are looking to engage your new affiliates – don’t you think it would make more sense to give them a motivational welcome message and maybe give them some affiliate link codes to work with?   Or maybe give them some tips on what works?

At the very least, I’d go with something like this :

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

!!FIRSTNAME!! ,

Welcome to the Harvest Resources Affiliate Program!  We’re really excited to have you on the team here helping us to empower churches and ministries with great tools for Evangelism from Harvest Resources.

We’ve reviewed your application and you appear to be a great fit, so let’s get you started right away.  Here are some links that you can post on your site or blog, or in your email signature today to get started:

Basic Text Link:

(Basic Affiliate URL )

4 Weeks to Successful Evangelism Text Link:

(code here)

468×60 Banner:

(code here)

728×90 4 Weeks Banner:

(code here)

125×125 Banner:

(code here)

120×60 Banner:

(code here)

To use any of these links, just highlight the code in the box below the title and copy and paste it into your site.  Save your changes and you are all set.

Please always be sure to test your link to make sure it redirects correctly.

There are more links available to you in Shareasale.  You can login at http://www.shareasale.com/ with your username (!!USERID!! ) and the password you selected.

If you need any help at all, please call on us.  We’re here to help.

God Bless,

Wade, Karen and Joel
Affiliate Management Team
Greg Laurie – Harvest Resources
harvest@gtomanagement.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Better yet- get the affiliates a full HTML email with the link code in text boxes under the actual banner or text link itself so they can see what they are placing.

If you put touches like this into place, your activation will improve because you make the activation process for the affiliate easier.

Happy selling!

Wade

Must see webinar for anyone using or interested in launching a Yahoo Store.

Yahoo Stores are an affordable and utilitarian way to start selling your products online.   Getting the best out of them takes some skill though.  I am excited to see that my friend Shawna Fennell, one of the best in the business at Yahoo Store eCommerce Consulting, is offering a webinar that will show you how to customize Yahoo Store to maximize conversion.

Shawna will show you how to take your Yahoo Store from “Drab to Fab” and even how to create a custom logo for your Yahoo Store in 10 minutes or less.

If you are a Yahoo Store or thinking of becoming one,  Shawna’s site at http://www.1choice4yourstore.com should definitely be on your bookmarks list or in your RSS Reader.  You can also follow her at www.twitter.com/shawnafennell

I met Shawna on the Affiliate Cruise on Boston Harbor and she’s good people – I highly recommend that you check this webinar out.

What are you waiting for? Sign up for the free “Customize Your Yahoo Store” webinar – tonight (5/13) from 9:00 – 10:00 EDT.

Little things merchants do that drive affiliates crazy

Trust is one of the key components to a successful affiliate/merchant relationship.  The affiliate is dependant on the merchants tracking to work correctly and track and report all orders that the affiliate is responsible for.  As a merchant – if your tracking and reporting is faulty, you can really torpedo your program or hinder it’s growth in a hurry.    I wanted to point out a pitfall that I have noticed in a number of the programs I have worked with over the years to help merchants avoid endangering their affiliate relationships.  It’s a two words phrase that has caused many affiliates (and me) to mutter some four letter words: Test Orders

Here’s what happens:

• Merchant sees a great affiliate site that has their link live and clicks on the link to make sure all is working – in the process, the merchant’s machine is cookied to the affiliate.
• The merchant then places a test order (with the cookie belonging to the affiliate in question still live)
• The test is successful – and the sale is credited to the affiliate
• The affiliate then receives a notification email or notices a sale in their reporting interface and gets psyched… after all… they just made some money right ?
• The merchant then notifies their affiliate manager that the order for affiliate 1234 was actally a test order and asks the affiliate manager to clean up the mess.
• The affiliate manager slams their head on their desk, muttering under their breath… then educates the merchant on why this isn’t “okay”
• The affiliate sees the order cancelled – with a note saying “test order” and wonders what kind of goofballs they are working with.  Then- they call the affiliate manager  and asks “what kind of goofballs am I working with? “
• Affiliate Manager slams his head into his desk again and apologizes profusely to the affiliate and again mutters under his breath.

The other scenario here is even worse.  It involves the online marketing manager on the Merchant side sending out an internal email or chat telling everyone to check out the cool placement on the affiliate site.  At which point, the phone sales/customer service department (yep – the whole department) clicks on the link to see what it does and they ALL get cookied to the affiliate.   From then until the affiliate manager and the marketing manager have an end of month chat at which time the affiliate manager is informed that 100 of the 200 orders they placed that money are actually phone orders that didn’t come from affiliate traffic,  a TON of sales are tagged to affiliates.

The process of head bashing, muttering, open cussing out, and affiliate loss of trust in the merchant continue.  The affiliate (usually a top one) quits the program because their trust is completely blown.  It may have been an honest and innocent mistake, but both sides pay the price here.

Break the cycle here ….  please.

Please don’t click affiliate links if you are the merchant.  It will come back to bite you.  If you MUST place a test order, please clear your cookies first, or sign up for the program, get your OWN affiliate link and use that.  Then, any accidental orders will be credited to a dummy account and will cause no damage.

God Bless and happy selling.

How to react to being declined for an affiliate program

Argh – an event that happened this morning has prompted me to write on this topic again.

So – here’s how the story goes.   An affiliate applies for one of the programs I work with – we decline the application after missing a note that he had made on his plans for marketing us.   We have a new part timer on who is learning what to look for in applications and he made a new guy mistake.   It happens.

We got a note back from the affiliate who had been wrongly declined and he took it very personally and implied that if we didn’t want him in the program we were stupid and he didn’t want to work with our client anyway.   He then gave a list of ab0ut 20 related sites that he’d have used to promote our client ( had he listed those sites in the application, I guarantee he’d have been approved)

So – we logged into the network and approved him and got back another note indicating that he was taking this personally and wouldn’t work with our client.

We called and left a message with a personal apology and are awaiting feedback.

Here is the morale to the story.    There has only been one perfect man… and it isn’t me… and it’s not you.  I think we can all agree on that.

We as affiliate managers sometimes make mistakes – I fully admit it.  I’m flawed as are all members of my team.

When we make a mistake (whether real or in your opinion)  let’s talk about it.

A friendly email response like the one below would have been awesome:

“Hey guys, I just got your email declining my affiliate application and I think you made a mistake.  Check out these 20 sites I own in your marketplace and let’s get on the phone and figure this out… because I’d really like to work with you and think there is a lot of potential for us in working together”

Unless the affiliate in question had an inappropriate site, or was known for using unethical marketing methods, I’d have approved him 100% of the time.  To be honest, I even tend to approve the guys who get mad – after all, at least they are passionate.  I love passionate affiliates.

To avoid these situations – please do a couple of things when you apply for a program:

1. If you have the chance in the application to submit specific information that can help us – please do.  Let me know what site you will be promoting on, what marketing methods you will use (Paid Search, Social Media, Twitter. Word of Mouth) and anything else you think will help us out.   Overdelivering on info at this stage is great.
2. If the network doesn’t give you this option – email me (or the other manager) and intro yourself and share the same info.

When mistakes happen – please extend some Grace.

God Bless and happy selling!

Wade

Need advice on how to build a web based business – Ask Jim

I was reading through my new email today from my friend Jim Kukral and wanted to throw a little love his way.  Jim is an all around smart guy when it comes to Internet business.   He wants to help people like you who really want to build an online business and release your dependance on that job, and spend more time with your family and doing other things that you love while your Internet business works for you.

I wanted to get to the bottom of this, so I called Jim up and recorded a podcast where he talks about what his coaching club members get.

(Jim even convinced me that we should offer anyone who signs up through my affiliate link a private call with Jim and I together to help them get their web business on the right track.)

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He’s offered the first 100 people who take him up on it the chance to learn from him for just $1  for the first 15 days.   You will have access to some great content on how to build your business, and more importantly, you will get the chance to pick Jim’s brain.

Jim is a smart and practical guy who will work with you to get you on the path to making money online ASAP – and then work with you on longer terms goals as well.   Whether you are selling your own products, or want to learn how to make money selling for others Jim is a great coach who can help you succeed.

I’ve known Jim for 6+ years and he won’t let you down.

Take Jim “The Biz Web Coach” up on his $1 offer NOW

Beware radical link changes on site upgrades

This is one tip coming from recent personal experience folks and it’s an important one.  It awesome when merchants choose to tweak their site by making improvements that lead to higher conversion and better shopability.  I recommend it to all of my clients as their primary reponsibility in our business relationship (along with producing a quality product, top notch customer support, paying affiliate and networks promptly and paying me on time.)  However, when overhauling a site, especially a retail site with a product data feed in play with the affiliates,  there are some things to keep in mind.

1.  Don’t change link structure if there isn’t a good reason.   Sometimes there is justification – for instance if your old cart used non-SEO friendly link syntax.

2. Warn your affiliate manager with plenty of lead time so that he/she can….

3. Warn your affiliates in time so that they can handle any changes to their storefronts or product pages

4. NEVER… EVER do this any time around the Christmas shopping season or any other peak season for your business.

5.  If you can – please see if you can script a solution to redirect old links to the correct page to make sure that all are protected.

Breaking your affiliates links in peak seasons does a couple of bad things.  It kills links… making potential clients mad with you and the affiliate, it costs you and the affiliate money and most importantly it costs you affiliate goodwill.

How much notice should you give the affiliate manager before a change like this?  I’d say at least 30 days.   This gives time for an email newsletter and calls to selected affiliates who are using product links and a couple of follow up email newsletters to make sure that affiliates are showing correct and current links.

God Bless and happy selling!

Wade

Spotting cookie stuffers – must read for affiliate managers

I was looking through the numbers of one of the programs I manage.  It’s a really solidly performing cost per lead program that had been running with a very high EPC.  I logged in this morning and the EPC (earnings per 100 clicks) had dropped through the floor…. literally … to about $.95 from a high of almost $100.

I started looking around to see what the heck had  happened and I noticed that one affiliate who came on about 3.5 days ago had allegedly delivered 17000 “hits” in the last 3 days.   Of those 17000 hits, 2 have converted to leads – this is fishy as all get out.

We had great momentum on affiliate recruiting because of the high EPC and now this is all shot until we can get the hit count removed or spend a month or socorrecting the stats with targeted traffic.

I started doing some poking around on ABestWeb and found a great article by Michael Coley on how to spot “cookie stuffers” or affiliates who use automated methods like software installs or forced pop ups to display merchant pages and force the setting of the cookie. One of the tip offs Michael mentions is huge traffic with low conversion.   Seems like a fit to me.

Affiliates who do this stuff are the scum of the industry and need to be dealt with harshly by the programs they work with and the networks.

I’m doing a bit more detective work to confirm that this is what’s happening, but I plan to post the affiliate in question’s name, sites and SAS affiliate ID for all to see.

Tip for Merchants – Personalize your affiliate communications

I have been looking at a lot of affiliate program pages and various action generated emails from those programs over the last week as I compile my Christian Affiliate Program Directory eBook.   I see one mistake happening quite a  bit and I wanted to address it.

Time and time again, I see emails signed by “The XXXX.com Affiliate Team”  or “XXXXX Affiliate Manager”  and I think these guys are making a mistake.   Affiliate Marketing is a RELATIONSHIP BUSINESS – bigger than life.   I don’t know about you, but most of my “relationships” are one to one and not “one to team.”

Your affiliate emails and affiliate program page are a chance for you to show affiliates that your program values them enough to put a person in charge of dealing with them and handling their needs.  In an ideal world, the affiliate manager would actually have some contact information on the affiliate and pick up the phone from time to time and get to know their affiliates.  You’d be amazed at the activation you will see if you do this.

In the case of my company, we have 3 of us that an affiliate could be in contact with – so we’ll sign emails:

Wade, Karen and Joel
Affiliate Managers
XYZ.com Affiliate Program
affiliates@xyz.com

This is the LEAST that you should be doing -

I’m actually moving to a model where I make my name, email address, cell phone and a chat handle  or two available to affiliates.

As an affiliate – few things are more frustrating than having a question about a program and having no easy to identify contact to get in touch with or means to get in touch with them.

Personalize your communications with your affiliates from the start.  You will be glad you did.

God Bless,

Wade

Practical eCommerce Tip – respond to criticism respectfully

Respond via comments on blog posts, forums, or consumer review sites. When you find your company is being talked about, don’t be passive, especially if what’s being said is negative in tone. Be respectful and state your case. More than once, I’ve seen critics become advocates simply because their complaints were responded to by a representative in the company.

Paul Chaney Practical eCommerce Contributor

I love this advice because I have been on the wrong side of it so many times as an affiliate manager.   I make  decision based on the information that someone has submitted in their application, some quick research, and a gut feeling, and next thing I know someone sends me back an angry email and flames me on a blog or forum.   Guess what – the decision wasn’t personal… do don’t let your response be.

The same is true with corporate blogs and forums.  When someone takes the time to post negative feedback, they are giving you a chance to address their issues and win a convert over.   It’s the guys who don’t post and just flame you privately that you need to worry more about.   If you get negative feedback on your site or blog here’s what I suggest.

1. Acknowledge -  post a comment and email the person with the issue and let them know you will look into the issue and get back in touch with them in a reasonable time period.  Be positive and thank them for the opportunity to fix the issue.
2. Act quickly – do your research and come up with a proactive response.  Do this as quickly as you can reasonably.   Try to put yourself in their place and come up with a solution that would make you happy in the same situation.
3. Follow through – Get in touch with your critic and apologize if necessary and lay out your solution for them.   If you give them a well thought out solution that would have made you happy in the same situation,  and treat them with kindness, most likely their anger will be defused and they’ll be cool with your solution.   Most likely they will follow up with a post or comment on how proactive you were.

One converted unsatisfied customer or prospect can go a long way – especially if you get that positive feedback after all is resolved for the public to see.

A big part of being a Christian in business is applying our values like kindness and forgiveness to business situations as well as personal ones.   If we keep this in mind, we should be in great shape when “hiccups” occur.

God Bless,

Wade

Affiliate Network Overview – The Big 3

I get asked this question from time to time and the answer can really vary depending on the circumstances. I ask the merchant a few questions to help make this decision:

What is your budget for start up?
What is your affiliate recruiting and management effort going to be like?
Are you looking for rapid growth? Or more gradual and controlled growth?
Is your offer a retail or lead offer?

For well funded merchants looking for rapid growth that have money to hire a full time affiliate manager, I still recommend one of the Big 3 Networks: Linkshare, CJ or Google (was Performics) They have the big affiliate counts, and the big affiliates themselves in the networks. They also tend to have bigger price tags for set up (from $1000) and monthly charges (from $500 + a percentage of sales or affiliate payout)

Here are some notes on each solution.

Linkshare – the most expensive solution in terms of set up and monthly cost, when last I checked, they were looking for $5k + on set up and $2k per month or 3% of sales (whichever is bigger) Linkshare is a great network if you are well branded, and if you have decided that you would only like to play with one network. They are really big on merchants being exclusive to their network and their Agreement reinforces this. Their integration is the most challenging technically involving a batch process that reports sales daily as well as a pixel if you want to have “return days” in place for your offers.

Commission Junction – CJ claims to have more of the “Top 500 Internet Retailers” than anyone on their network. They have a lot of affiliates, and a lot of good ones, especially on the high end with loyalty and shopping sites, as well as quite a few of the big paid search affiliates. Their cost runs $3000 ish on set up (+ a $3000 escrow account that goes to affiliate and CJ fee payments) and $500 per month or 30% of affiliate payout. Many affiliates, especially the ABestWeb crowd are not fans and don’t trust CJ much because of past issues with spyware/adware affiliates that CJ/ValueClick is currently in the process of settling. That said, CJ programs with good payouts and good name recognition and conversion can grow really quickly. Several programs we run have seen growth from 0 to 1000+ affiliate applications within a month or so.

My one drawback with CJ is that I love to have ability to contact affiliates directly and CJ doesn’t give it.

Google Affiliate Network- Until last month or so, this was known as Performics. When Google bought the parent company of Performics, they made a big change in strategy. Performics had been known since it’s inception as a bit of a “brand snob” company that really cherry picked the big names and signed them to big monthly deals in the $5k – $10k per month range that included full affiliate management and sometimes paid search management services. Google came in and changed things a lot, deciding to aggressively impact the market by offering the “Affiliate Direct” service that starts at $1000 for set up with a $1000 deposit. They charge $500 or 25% of affiliate payout monthly.

Their new pricing is pretty attractive and their merchant count has been growing rapidly since they did this. I like their tool set as well although their interface is a bit clunky. They have 2 things that I really like about their system. They provide affiliate contact information so you can email your affiliates using external mailing tools (as well as load into your own CRM) and they also have just opened up a “Recruit” function that allows you do some searching among affiliates who have “opted in” for inclusion. It has it’s limitations, but it’s good stuff and the other biggies don’t offer this in their base packages.

The program that I run in Google has seen a number of high quality affiliates come in in the last 2.5 months since launch so I have been impressed there.

Many in the industry have real concerns about Google being involved in the affiliate space, especially the major paid search affiliates (and merchants who aren’t on the Google network) with concerns on whether Google’s natural and paid search divisions will remain neutral in judging the value of affiliate links, and how they will value the rankings of the affiliates of non Google aligned programs since Google controls so much of the web’s traffic. We’ll see.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about some of the Tier 2 networks that are up and coming – and I consider in many cases to be a great value for Christian merchants launching affiliate programs. Included in the discussion will be Shareasale, AvantLink, Link Connector, BuyAt, and ShareResults.

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