Archive for the ‘Marketing Strategies’ Category
Loyalty Website Best Practices for Affiliate Marketers
By Kyle Henrie | June 26, 2008
Are you looking to build customer loyalty of your affiliate website by offering customer incentives to build long-term customer loyalty? Here are some do’s and don’t to help you turn your browsing customer into a loyal customer while increasing your affiliate sales.
DO’S
- Offer a competitive percentage back to your users.
- Use reliable tracking to properly credit your users.
- Make sure to remind users to click on your link before purchase is made to make sure it tracks properly.
- Use offers when available (such as free shipping or coupons).
- If a special offer is available, make the start and end dates known.
- Watch for specific communication from your advertisers concerning your offer and upcoming promotions.
- Offer well converting advertisers on your homepage for maximum commissions.
- Notify advertisers of missed transactions for proper commissions to be paid.
- Notify your specific users that they MUST click on your link before their purchase takes place, to avoid the above issue.
- Work on strategies; E-mail, link, compensation and site layout.
- Most loyalty publishers either do a 50/50 split or a 60/40 split. This means that depending on the commission offer from the advertiser, you will keep 50% of the commission and offer 50% back as a rebate to your member. Or, as in the case of 60/40, you’d keep 60% and offer 40% back as a rebate.
DON’TS
- Do not use incorrect or expired coupon codes or offers such as free shipping.
- Do not state incorrect start and end dates on offers and coupons.
Topics: Affiliate Marketing, Marketing Strategies | No Comments »
Monetize Your Blog
By Kyle Henrie | June 20, 2008
If you’ve read any press in the last year, the number of Internet users already reading blogs and blogging themselves may shock you. The blogging audience is definitely there, but what are they reading? Everything under the sun, from plastic surgery to biking across New Zealand. Closer to home, blogs track performance marketing strategies and the opinions of a host of online marketing professionals. The point here is that you’ve got a great deal of people reading a great deal of highly-targeted content.
So now it makes sense to ask: can you effectively monetize one of the Web’s last vestiges of traditionally marketing-free content to reach these tantalizing audiences? Should you? We think blog advertising maybe a line worth crossing assuming that we can find ways to include contextually relevant ads that provide value to blog readers. After all, hosting and ISPs don’t pay for themselves.
Lawrence Lee, president of Zoundry.com, developer of a blog monetizing tool, shares his perspective below:
“We’re seeing two types of bloggers.
- The first are bloggers who are writing for their friends and family. Given that they already have a trusted relationship, credibility around product recommendations is a non-issue. In a sense, friends and family can reward publishers for learning about new, often niche, products they wouldn’t have learned about otherwise.
- The second [group] are people who don’t necessarily call themselves bloggers, or view themselves as journalists. They are just using the simple tools of blogging to publisher Web sites without having to learn HTML, so they don’t have credibility issues around monetizing their blogs either.”
So let’s assume you fall into the categories above or that you’re on board with blogging. Now it’s Advertising 101: know your audience and target your ads accordingly. Beth Kirsch, senior marketing manager at Audible.com and affiliate marketing veteran, says “You have to be extremely strategic - matching the context of the blog to the product is the key. It’s tricky, but can be a wonderfully effective channel when done well.”
In other words, one can’t simply throw up an apparel advertiser’s banner in the middle of a blog about the experiences of tuning up your car’s engine and expect to generate commissions. However, placing a “Pickup this year’s hottest toy” ad when blogging about buying birthday gifts is both contextually relevant and valuable to readers.
If you’re already blogging, chances are there are plenty of you who match your content and audience. Take the lead of your competitors and implement your unique, lucrative take on blogs today!
Topics: Affiliate Marketing, Marketing Strategies | No Comments »
Combine your keywords to increase your effectiveness
By Kyle Henrie | June 18, 2008
Do you have multiple keyword lists that you are trying to use to optimize your website (SEO) or for your online campaigns (PPC, SEM)? We suggest you take the two lists and combine them to make your efforts even more relevent and targeted.
There is a tool available to help you do this quick and easy. The Search Combination Tool takes your key or main phrases with your secondary keywords. Try it, you’ll like it - and all the time you save!
Topics: Marketing Strategies, Search Engine Marketing | No Comments »
SEO Tips for Affiliate Marketers
By Kyle Henrie | June 10, 2008
Below are some SEO tips that we hope many of you will find useful. Time and time again I find these issues from people operating affiliate-based websites. Take the time to fix these things and you should see results.
- Fix any broken links. Broken links cause the site’s relevancy to decrease.
- It is vital to contain a site map on a large site. Links from every page need to link back to the site map in order for search engine spiders to locate the pages.
- Write unique content on your website as often as possible. The more relevant the content, the more a search engine will consider the site valid.
- Ensure that an H1 tag is not below an H2 or H3 tag on your page(s). H1 tags are the most important tags- if they are lower on the page, a search engine will consider not as relevant.
- A helpful tool to fix meta and title tags: http://www.seoworkers.com/tools/analyzer.html These show up as the description in a search engine. For usability purposes, if they do not pertain to a user’s needs, they will not click.
- ALWAYS, always, always track your work using an analytics program to ensure traffic control and conversion rates.
Topics: Affiliate Marketing, Marketing Strategies | No Comments »
CAN-SPAM Requirements
By Kyle Henrie | May 30, 2008
What the CAN-SPAM Law Requires
Here’s a rundown of the law’s main provisions:
- It bans false or misleading header information. Your email’s “From,” “To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person who initiated the email.
- It prohibits deceptive subject lines. The subject line cannot mislead the recipient about the contents or subject matter of the message.
- It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. You may create a “menu” of choices to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business days to stop sending email to the requestor’s email address. You cannot help another entity send email to that address, or have another entity send email on your behalf to that address. Finally, it’s illegal for you to sell or transfer the email addresses of people who choose not to receive your email, even in the form of a mailing list, unless you transfer the addresses so another entity can comply with the law.
- It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender’s valid physical postal address. Your message must contain clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation and that the recipient can opt out of receiving more commercial email from you. It also must include your valid physical postal address.
Topics: Email Marketing, Marketing Strategies | No Comments »
