How Affiliate Managers Can Help
Affiliate Managers get no love. In affiliate marketing the role of the affiliate manager is to bridge the gap between advertiser and marketer. A good affiliate manager will keep you informed of new offers, help you choose higher converting offers, and check in from time to time to see how business is going.
I make it no secret that I promote with many different CPA networks. I do have some I prefer over others but to me there really isn’t much difference between them all. The two bggest factors in determining if I stick around with a CPA network is trust and relations. When there is an issue between advertiser and affiliate, I want to trust that my CPA network will fight for me and get the payment I deserve, even if sometimes the CPA network takes a temporarily loss on an offer. Developing a good solid relationship is the other factor I look at when promoting with a CPA network. Does the company go out of the way to provide top notch service? Do they help the smaller affiliate or just focus on keeping the so called “super affiliates”?
Which leads us back to affiliate managers. I’ve seen the full spectrum when it comes to my affiliate managers. Some provide great service while contuially updating me with the latest offers why others only care about their cut and take my traffic for granted. Still on some networks I don’t even have an AM (tired of typing out the word affiliate manager). I absolutly do prefer quality service from an AM over no AM at all. Here is a guideline from an email marketer on how to be a good AM
- Listen to your affiliate. This isn’t realtionship advice, but if your affiliate is one who doesn’t like you bugging him on AIM or phone all day, LEAVE HIM ALONE! it’s your job to guage the personality. Most affiliates are going to be introverted by nature. Others like myself, don’t mind the occasional mid-day gab. However, be conscious of the time invested. Sometimes a quick hello and how ya doing is all that’s needed. The affiliate will contact you for offer advice so be ready and available.
- It’s never JUST business! That attitude will get you no where. Your job is to build good quality relationships. I’ve switched out AMs due to their unwillingness to invest time in helping my business grow. If you want to keep your affiliates around, big and small, be there for them.
- Be honest and don’t push crappy offers. The affiliate marketing industry is small and word travels fast. Do whatever you can to help the affiliate and be straight. Don’t push low converting offers to affiliates b/c of higher payouts to you, pressure from boss, etc. Your top affiliates will appreciate it in the long run.
- Find ways to provide value. This might take some creativity, but try and figure out ways that you can directly be an asset. If an affilaite is looking for hosting, maybe you know of a good reputable service. Providing services like that will make you an invaluable component to helping him grow his business.
- Provide payout increases whenever possible. Again, CPA/Affiliate networks are a dime a dozen. Knowing that I will be recieving increases motivates me to use more of my resources to promote a high converting offer. if you won’t provide higher payouts, I will move my traffic elsewhere.
- Referals are your friend. All it takes is a few good super affiliates to provide a nice source of income for the AM. If you follow the first 5 steps to the bone, the referals will start pouring in. As an email marketer, I talk with many other top performing email marketers on a daily basis. if a certain network is doing a real good job, I’ll refer other mailers to that AM. Don’t beg for referals. That shhows you only care about stuffing your pockets. Provide good service and referals are your friend.
The above listed points is a guideline I follow when looking for an AM. I proably missed a few keep points and I might add another version to this post at a later time. I believe that Am’s are a good thing for the industry as long as they stay in communicaton with you and your needs. If there’s anything I missed email me and I might consider revising this post.
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing | No Comments »
AOL switching from FBL to ARF
I know this has been news for a little while now. I’ve been getting alot of emails about AOL’s ARF format from a certain Email Round Table I am part of. I’ll explain the meaning of ARF and what it means for the future of email marketing.
As taken from AOL’s postmaster website here, ARF literally means Abuse Reporting Format.
What is the difference between the traditional AOL Feedback Loop format and ARF?
The traditional format is a MIME multipart message with one empty text part and one message/rfc822 part with the original message being complained about. Parts of the header of the message being complained about are redacted out, where normally the AOL ScreenName recipient would be present.
ARF is defined in a internet draft located at http://www.mipassoc.org/arf/ . ARF messages have three mime parts, one part for general information, one machine parsable and meta data part, and the last part as the original message being complained about. The original message is redacted to protect clear text occurrences of AOL screen names and email addresses.
ARF can not be read in most major e-mail clients. The format assumes that parsing and decoding will be done via script. Please do not contact AOL with questions about reading ARF FBL emails.
What this means to you is that your email marketing platform will need to have certain features enabled to properly read AOL’s new format and process the removes. With AOL’s old FBL (Feedback Loop), the MTA could easily remove the complainer by pulling the email from the header or body of the message in text format. Now with the ARF format, there needs to be a way to easily parse the complainer from the message. Email addresses will not display in the header or footer of the message. As mentioned on the roundtable , one way to become ARF compliant is to use VERP strings.
Taken from Wikipedia:
Variable envelope return path (VERP) is a technique used by some electronic mailing list software to enable automatic detection and removal of undeliverable e-mail addresses. It works by using a different return path (also called “envelope sender”) for each recipient of a message.
Most of the larger MTA’s (Mail Transfer Agent’s) are VERP enabled. VERP helps automate the process of bounce removal by using a different return path string in the header of the message. As mentioned above, each string is unique, therefore when an email bounces, the software is able to determien the type of bounce and remove accordingly.
Another soultion to be ARF complaint is to use links to your advantage. By placing the subscribers email address in the mailing link or unsubscribe link, you are able to easily track where the complaint is comming from. Additionally, your links will be able to track openers, click throughs, and unsubscribes efficiently.
Filed under: ISP News | 2 Comments »
Revisiting Txt vs. HTML Ads
I posted about this sometime ago on the WickedFire.com forum.
Hope this is of value, which one do you use?
Advantages of text advertisements
-Universally accepted by all ISPs. All the users programs will be able to read.
-Straight to the point. The user doesn’t have to search through all the graphics to find where the link is.
-Less spamassassin points. Typically txt messages get less points than HTML with all things being equal.Disadvantages of text advertisements
-Can be visually boring to look at and turn some users off.
-The mailing link will not be hyperlinked with some ISPs like AOL. The user will have to copy and paste the link into the browser to actually view.
-Can’t think of anymore. The first one is a big disadvantage.Advantages of HTML ads.
-Wide range of creativity in the message. Add pictures, colors, different fonts. The advertisement is visually appealing.
-Track the number of people who opened their email. Most email delivery platforms can keep track of who actually opened and viewed your advertisement. This allows you to clean up your list and see who in any given month is actually responding to your emails
-Shorten up your link. Pictures can be clicked on and you can hyperlink.Disadvantages of HTML ads
-Not all ISP platforms will accept HTML messages. While most major ones do, a txt message is also needed for those who cannot view HTML.
-Deliverability issues. Users will block themselves from receiving attachments and images. Viruses and worms can be in those messages.So which one to use? it really depends on your data and the advertisments your mailing. Test both out and see which one converts better. If your having deliverability issues, go with the txt version. If you can get through ok, play around with HTML and add some images to give the user something of value.
I myself mostly go with txt ads only because my deliverability isnt the greatest at the moment. I’m using my own mailing client at the moment. I know that constant contact and aweber are very good solutions for email marketers and are whitelisted with major ISPs. Im not sure about constant contact, but I know with Aweber you have to send out a confirmation email to your email list before mailing.
It’s been a little over a year since I posted that. Things change quickly in this industry. In revisiting this post there are a few things that stick out for me.
1. Spamassassin is becoming more and more obsolete. Spamassassin used to be the gold standard for email filtering. ISPs relied on spamassassin to catch content based spammish words like xxx, free, no obligation, and pre-approved. Spamassassin did a good job of filtering spam based on a points system. However, ISPs became better at regulating spam from their own networks as well. As we move into a reputation based world, less ISPs are filtering mail based on content. ISP’s will allow word’s like free, click here now, refinance today, etc as long as you display good deliverability, few complaints, and operate within the ISP mail limits. Spamassassin still provides a good service to some of the smaller General Internet domains and might carve out a niche providing service to small businesses, however their reign as the most reliable anti-spam service is over.
2. HTML isn’t perfect but it’s my choice for sending out newsletter campaigns. Outlook and just about all of the major ISPs auto-block images these days. Unless your software hasn’t been updated since Y2k, just about all ISPs and email providers accept HTML. The reason I prefer HTML over text ads these days is because there is a limited amount of display options I can use. Alot of users will automatically assume you are spamming them if there is only txt in the email. With HTML I can display graphs, charts, images, pictures, and really liven up the email. ISPs are doing a much better job of not blocking my HTML messages.
While sending text based messages will always deliver faster than HTML messages, higher speed can have a negative affect on deliverability. Email networks and servers continue to get technologically better on a daily basis. Even if you do operate a list in the millions, it won’t make much of a difference in speed sending out text as compared to HTML. In other words, stick with HTML because there arent really big enough benefits to justify switching over to text.
Anyways, who knows, maybe a year from now I completly change my mind again. The point is email marketing changes at warp speed. Keeping up with ISP changes is a full time job in itself. As of now, HTML advertisements are the marketers weapon of choice.
Filed under: Email Marketing History | 3 Comments »
Email Marketing in Affiliate Marketing
I’ve been working in the Affiliate Marketing Industry for a couple of years now. As defined by Wikipedia:
Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliatesfor each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.
It really is a unique and interesting concept. Basically, these affiliate networks provide you with a menu of offers to choose from. They create the landing page, track the stats, and display approved creatives. The offers are recieved directly from the advertiser and a cut of your earnings goes to them. For example, affiliate network recieves a Business Oppurtunity offer from advertiser that pays them $20 per lead. Affiliate Network uploads offer to their site and displays that same $20 lead they got from advertiser for $17.50. You have a solid offer that you might otherwise not of had access to with no management on your end while the Affiliate Network takes their cut for providing the service. A win/win situation right??? Not always….
Looking deeper, I’ve seen it all. The biggest problems on the affiliate side is scrubbing and shaving. This industry is highly unregulated and fraud is common practice. Scrubbing, the lesser of the evils, happens when the advertiser or affiliate network doesn’t pay you on leads that are already in their system. I can understand this practice to a certain point. The leads are useless to advertiser if they can’t sell them. However, the frustrating part is, in the affilate marketing industry, a handful of advertisers domainate the market. Thus, it is very common to generate numerous leads that you won’t be paid for. Shaving is completly illegal and there needs to be federal laws in place to ban the practice. Shaving occurs mostly on the advertiser side. Whoever controls the advertisement has the ability to turn off the firing of the pixel. In other words, leads will come in, but they won’t pay you for them. Unfortunately, this has happened to me on more than a handful of occasions. The companies I work with now are very ethical in the way they do their business, but most are at the mercy of the advertiser. Advertising company wants to see quick boost in profits, turn off the pixel for an hour and watch the leads come in! Makes me cringe thinking about it. There needs to be some sort of 3rd party watch dog to hold the advertisers accountable for their actions. This is one of the few instances where federal legislation is needed to outlaw shaving.
The competition in the Affiliate Marketing industry is fierece. As one CPA network owner explained to me,
”Its a very simple business model that you can launch with under $1,000 in startup costs”
There isn’t a day that goes by that somebody somewhere isn’t hawking some sort of new offer to me. There really isn’t much difference between the hundreds of affiliate netowrks out there either. Most of the networks I work with are built on realtionships and trust. Knowing that the networks are in your corner when an issue arises shows commitment to developing a solid business relationship.
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Email Conferences and Summits
As an Internet Marketer I spend countless hours behind a computer missing the beautiful light hours of the day indulgiing in email marketing campigns and analyitics. Every now in then I’ll attend a conference or two related to the niches I focus on. These experiences, few and far between, are invaluable to the success of my company.
Recently the Authentication and Online Trust Alliance (AOTA) hosted a conference in Seattle. I was unable to attend, but was able to get the juicy details from other attendees. Here is AOTA’s website for the event: http://www.aotalliance.org/summit2008/
One thing I found really interesting at the summit is AOTA hosted the first ever Email Deliverability and Trust Competency Program. Bascially, reps from some of the top name brands in the world including Amazon, National Geographic, Microsoft, and Apple were asked to conduct an email campaign that focused on consumer protection. The results as well as participants can be found here: http://www.aotalliance.org/summit2008/academy.html.
Filed under: Email Marketing Events | No Comments »