Members of the buy.at team joined Merchant ABCs and Affiliate Buzz podcasts last week to discuss two great topics:

• - Engaging New Customers Following Black Friday (including Amy & Kim)
• - New Advancements for Tracking Your Campaigns (including Jeannine)

Highlights are outlined below – happy listening!

Engaging New Customers Following Black Friday

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare joined Kim Salvino and Amy Ely of buy.at to discuss ideas on engaging new customers gained from Black Friday sales.

Topics include:

• - Promotion ideas to recapture the attention and dollars of Black Friday / Cyber Monday customers
• - Helpful data, creative and resources for affiliates so they can generate additional holiday sales

Key takeaways:

• - Consider time-sensitive promotions that encourage customers to keep returning to the site, such as daily deals or a “Countdown to Christmas” – great examples include eBay and Amazon’s daily and weekly deals
• - As the remaining shopping days dwindle, alter promotions to feature gift cards and/or free overnight shipping
• - Promote complementary products or add-ons for gifts they’ve already purchased, such as Kindle Edition books if the original purchase was a Kindle Fire
• - Use Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales data to give affiliates top seller data and popular categories, then let them know if and when you will highlight or offer a sale on these products again
• - Supply affiliates with shipping deadline dates and when gift card sales are strongest so they can plan and promote accordingly
• - Recognize that holiday promotions don’t have to stop at Black Friday and Cyber Monday, give affiliates offers that run through the rest of December and into post-holiday shopping promotions – for example, encourage gift card spending after the holidays

Helpful statistics:

From Shawn Collins’s Affiliate Tip Blog and citing stats from comScore:

• - Online shopping for Black Friday 2011 was a 26% increase versus Black Friday 2010
• - Thanksgiving Day (November 24) was also strong with an 18% increase over Thanksgiving 2010 with $479 million in online sales.
• - There was $1.25 billion in online spending on Cyber Monday 2011, which is up 22% from 2010
• - Cyber Monday 2011 was the heaviest online spending day in history and only the second day ever to surpass the billion-dollar threshold

Click here to listen to the podcast.

New Advancements for Tracking Your Campaigns

This discussion includes a review of basic tools (cookie tracking, deep linking and data feeds) as well as a few of buy.at’s unique tools (OfferCentral and ContentEngine Contextual) and more.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

Do you currently send emails and newsletters to your affiliate base?  Are you looking for ideas to improve the content, open rates and general engagement with your affiliates?  Then grab your headphones and tune in to this helpful podcast.

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare joined Kim Salvino and Amy Ely of buy.at to discuss ideas on how merchants can create engaging and efficient affiliate newsletters.

Topics include:

• - Using subject lines, content and a format that is helpful and appealing to affiliates
• - The pros and cons of using HTML vs text, personalizing messaging, and including tracking code
•  - The importance of understanding legal & illegal practices when communicating with affiliates

Key takeaways:

• - Use subject lines that make sense – don’t title “monthly newsletter” when you can include key words that relate to the information in the email
• - Consider addressing recipients by name and making the messaging personal
• - List main topics at the start of the email to immediately engage recipients on points of interest
• - Think about including code (that works!) when mentioning the great creative available for your program – if you have their attention, make their life easier by allowing for a quick copy/paste
• -  Don’t bother telling affiliates about sales that started yesterday and end tomorrow
• - Engage affiliates beyond your program details, ask them what they need from you, share helpful industry stats, discuss topics with them on forums, in social media, etc.
• - Include contact details at the close of each email
• - Test before you send!  Test before you send!!!

Helpful statistics:

• - In a recent survey of 7,000+ affiliates from Affiliate Benchmarks, they listed weekly as the most preferred frequency of affiliate program newsletters
• - Further, affiliates listed direct personal email, newsletter email, and network email as the top three preferred ways to receive information from advertisers they work with

Listen to the podcast here: http://merchantabcs.com/create-engaging-and-efficient-affiliate-newsletters-merchant-abcs-26/

Did you know?

• - Black Friday online sales totaled $595 million in ’09 & $648 million in ’10
• - The 2010 largest online sales day was Cyber Monday and the peak week was December 5-12^th

The opportunity is there to mark Black Friday and Cyber Monday as your largest online sales days this year.  Planning, communication and unique deals are all critical factors to generate the greatest revenue from your affiliate channel on the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend.  The following podcasts and posts provide guidance – the rest is up to you.  It’s never too early to start preparing, and with 4-6 weeks of ideal lead time, today is a great day to start!

Podcast for Merchants: What Your Affiliates Need to Maximize Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare joined Kim Salvino, Amy Ely, and Jeannine Crooks of buy.at to talk about preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Topics include:

•  - Important information affiliates need to promote your Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals
•  - Considerations when designing a Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal

Key takeaways:

• - Plan and send Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals at least 4-6 weeks in advance so affiliates have time to prepare.
• - Communicating with your affiliates is very, very important.  If your deal details won’t be available far in advance, tell your affiliates if you’re planning to run a deal at all – this way they can prepare their sites.  If you send them a deal a few days before or on Black Friday, you’ll likely be out of luck.
• - Don’t try to pass off a standard promotion (ex. Free shipping on orders over $50) as a Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal if it’s something you already offer regularly.  Your customers and affiliates will find out and be disappointed if you’re trying to pull the wool over their eyes, and might take their business elsewhere.
• - If you’d rather not discount your entire online store, offer a special on one or a handful of items to drive traffic to your site, and keep the remaining items at regular price.
• - Ensure you have ample stock of the products you’re featuring for the deal, and if the stock runs out, be prepared to redirect the page to a similar item with a deal.
• - When sending affiliates (and/or your network) deal details, we strongly recommend providing all of the following information:
• *Offer title & details
• *Official deal start date & time
• *Official deal end date & time
• *Specific landing page URL
• *Required coupon code (if applicable)

Click here to listen to the full podcast.

Podcast for Affiliates: Optimize for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Affiliate ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare joined Kim Salvino, Amy Ely, and Jeannine Crooks of buy.at to talk about preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Topics include:

• - Important information to ask merchants in preparation for Black Friday/Cyber Monday
• - Tips for communicating with merchants to ensure you’re not stuck with last-minute updates

Key takeaways:

• - Communicating with your merchants (or network rep) is key.  Explain why you need information in advance, make a case for why it’s in their best interest (stats, site traffic over Thanksgiving weekend, case studies), and describe how you promote (email, ppc, etc) so they can provide all the assets you need.
• *Give merchants a deadline and stick to it
• -  If working through a network, think about asking to be part of a spotlight in newsletters sent to merchants, highlighting the value of your site for Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals.
• - Consider asking for a list of a merchant’s top sellers and the products they plan to promote during the holiday season so you can plan accordingly.
• - Ask merchants if gift cards are commissionable, as sales of these cards directly add revenue to their bottom line and many consumers don’t end up redeeming them.  This presents a high-profit opportunity for them and an up-front commission earning opportunity for you.
• - When asking merchants  (and/or your network) for deal details, consider asking for all of the following information:
• *Offer title & details
• *Official deal start date & time
• *Official deal end date & time
• *Specific landing page URL
• *Required coupon code (if applicable)

Click here to listen to the full podcast.

 
Post for Affiliates: 6 Ways Affiliate Marketers can Capitalize on Black Friday – Cyber Monday Shopping Season

Posted by Evan Weber in the Affiliate Summit Forum, this post provides great suggestions on maximizing your affiliate marketing activities leading up to the Black Friday / Cyber Monday time-frame.

From the post: “I wanted to put an article together about the upcoming Holiday buying season which will be the biggest ever in 2011 according to all indications. “Black Friday,” which falls on November 25th this year and is the day after Thanksgiving, and the following “Cyber Monday” are when online retailers are offering their best deals of the 2011 Holiday shopping season typically. Not to mention this time kicks off the Holiday shopping season for consumers, so demand for deals at popular retailers will be strong. Every year, millions of Americans flock all over the Internet (and locally) looking for deals and promotions to maximize their gift shopping budget. But how to capitalize on your Black Friday/Cyber Monday Affiliate Marketing efforts and maximize your time spent and commissions?”

Click here to read the full post.

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare joined Kim Salvino, Amy Ely, and Jeannine Crooks of buy.at to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of running programs on multiple networks.

Topics include:

• - Managing creative, promotions, and information across all networks
• - Considerations: Ts & Cs, setup and monthly fees, tracking, network quality measures
• - Identifying network benefits: different affiliates, tools, verticals
• - Actions that negatively and positively impact program growth

Key takeaways:

• - Avoid confusion – be consistent with promotions and communications across networks unless you’re running separate tests to gauge performance
• - Be strategic when beginning a new network relationship – consider the added value vs. added time and effort to manage another account
• - Grow 2-3 relationships vs. joining every network – this will enable program managers to work effectively with each relationship vs. reactive program management to simply keep up
• - Avoid network hopping – affiliate marketing is a marathon, not a sprint; don’t upset affiliates by repeatedly closing on one network and opening on another

Click here to listen to the full podcast.

Kim Salvino, Amy Ely, and Jeannine Crooks of buy.at joined Affiliate & Merchant ABC’s hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare on two podcasts discussing the hot topic of coupon sites in the affiliate industry.

Affiliate ABCs #50 – Build a Coupon Site the Right Way

This podcast includes best practices, tools, and ideas for coupon sites in the affiliate industry.

Topics include:

• - Best practices – ensuring sites are adding value and providing complete, updated coupons, removed expired deals and coupons quickly
• - Tools available – such as For Me To Coupon, buy.at’s OfferCentral, Shareasale Network Deals Database
• - Ideas – consider niche targeting, work with merchants to create unique coupons
• - Scripts, plugins – don’t use them “out of the box”. Customize, change, build your traffic. No script or plugin is going to bring you traffic, they are only the display mechanism
• - Check Merchant Rules about coupon sites – some practices like “Click to Reveal Code” are prohibited, know and follow the rules.

Listen to the podcast for great tips about how to run a coupon site that will bring revenue and not headaches.

Merchant ABCs #16 – Utilizing Coupon Sites to Your Brand Advantage

This podcast reviews best practices when creating coupons and deals and how to effectively work with coupon affiliates.

Topics include:

• - The benefits of working with coupon affiliates
• – Best practices when creating a coupon code
• - Common concerns when working with coupon affiliates
• - Opportunities that could give your company an competitive advantage

Discussed in the podcast – when putting together a coupon code for affiliates, consider the following:

• - Test to make sure the coupon works
• - Ensure the promotion is a “real deal” vs. an everyday benefit (ex. free shipping on orders over $50)
• - Give at least 3 days notice to affiliates before the promotion goes live
• - Add time zones when defining coupon expiration dates and times
• - Clearly define any restrictions
• – Make sure the code is NOT case sensitive

Click here to listen to the full podcast.

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare joined Kim Salvino and Amy Ely of buy.at to talk about affiliate program SEO policies and important considerations when constructing terms and conditions.

Topics include:

• - The impact of placing restrictions on affiliates who rank for SEO/natural search terms
• - Understanding why advertisers may put restrictions in place and how affiliates use SEO
• - Suggestions on how to structure a search policy and additional Ts & Cs

Key takeaways:

• - Be smart – advertisers benefit by learning industry best practices and from other programs before finalizing their affiliate terms and conditions
• - Be aware – think about the impact on affiliates in addition to the impact on the advertiser
• - Be clear – write terms and conditions in a way that affiliates can clearly understand the rules

Also, be fair – affiliates are an advertiser’s marketing partners.  Great communication will go a long way in developing a profitable relationship.

Click here to listen to the full podcast.

Over the last few months, buy.at’s Jeannine Crooks joined podcasts with Deborah Carney and James Martell to discuss a wealth of great information on how merchants and affiliates can improve conversion rates and how merchants can effectively support affiliates with an editorial calendar.

Review the descriptions below and click on the links to listen to these great podcasts – we hope you find them helpful!

Merchant ABCs #12: Why Merchants Need an Editorial Calendar
Join Merchant ABCs host Deborah Carney and guest Jeannine Crooks as they discuss why merchants need to create an editorial calendar.  With this approach, companies can provide information and creatives that are appropriately timed for affiliates to use in their site promotions.

Click here to listen.

Affiliate Buzz #199: Conversion Conference Reveals Secrets to Skyrocketing Revenues – Part 1 of 2
Jeannine Crooks joined James Martell of Affiliate Buzz and Affiliate Marketers Boot Camp to talk about more key points from Tim Ash’s Conversion Conference, including:

• - Importance of tracking conversion
• - The power of heat maps
• - Increasing your conversion ten-fold
• - Powerful nuggets from Tim Ash’s Conversion Conference

Click here to listen.

Affiliate Buzz #200: Conversion Conference Reveals Secrets to Skyrocketing Revenues – Part 2 of 2
Jeannine Crooks continues the Conversion Conference chat with James Martell of Affiliate Buzz and Affiliate Marketers Boot Camp.  This edition is packed full of resources and tips on optimizing conversion through testing and simple, yet small changes that are implemented strategically.

As an added bonus to any affiliates who listen, they discuss recommendations on preparing site visitors for the merchant site and incidentally increase the chance for a sale.

Topics covered in this podcast include:

• - Making large changes vs. small changes
• - Testing your changes with reliable software
• - CrazyEgg.com and Google Website Optimizer
• - Powerful tips on optimizing your conversion

Click here to listen.

Deborah Carney of Merchant ABCs hosted two panel discussions that included James Martell of Affiliate Buzz and Affiliate Marketers Boot Camp, as well as Kim Salvino, Jeannine Crooks and Amy Ely of buy.at.

Merchant ABCs #10 – Supporting Your Affiliates with Content & Creatives
This podcast provides general guidance on content and creatives that help affiliates promote a merchant’s business more effectively.

Topics include:

• - Why supplying a variety of creative is key to program growth
• - The types of content and creative to consider
• - The value of text links, banners, and offering unique sizes
• - Providing a comprehensive list of product information, company facts, and statistics for affiliates to use when creating articles and unique content
• - Ideas for communicating creative changes and key messages
• - Best practices in the merchant-affiliate relationship
• - The under-utilized power of video

This podcast wraps up with information on video creative, which is covered in the following podcast:

Merchant ABCs #11 – Embracing Video Creative
This episode focuses more specifically on creating, sharing, and using video creative.

Topics include:

• - Why video is important for merchants to consider
• - Tools available to create and tag video on different networks
• - Video formats – product reviews and demonstrations, the manufacturing process, testimonials, and more
• - Creating professional and polished clips vs. simple and personalized video
• - The three main video components – the establishing shot, mid shot, and close ups
• - Methods to share videos with affiliates
• - Creating motion graphic videos and slide shows with audio

During the conversation, participants shared a few recommended video editing companies and software to help merchants get started, as well as video players offered by networks.

Enjoy listening!

Continuing on from the Key Takeaways Part 1, Jeannine Crooks shared another round of valuable insights from her visit to Conversion Conference in early March.  This time, she joined Merchant ABCs host Deborah Carney, as well as Amy Ely from buy.at to discuss key merchant takeaways from the event.

We covered six main points during the conversation:

1. Look at your site through the eyes of your visitors – acknowledge that we (the digital marketers) are online regularly and can be considered super users.  As such, we may not think and interact with the site the way that 99% of our visitors do.  Learn how they search, how they look for products or categories and improve your site based on the user’s perspective.
2. A clear call to action is key – make the call to action prominent with colors and placement.  Avoid common roadblocks (discussed further in the podcast).
3. Address the “peakaboo” problem - if a user fills out a field incorrectly, show the message to correct their entry at the relevant location, not at the top of the page after they submit the form.  Don’t make your users scroll up and down to figure out how to fix their information.
4. Use the power of “scarcity” – if your site sells products, list the remaining number of that product to encourage visitors to buy while they can.  If your inventory is large, use messaging similar to “9+” to still incite a level of urgency.
5. Never stop testing – enough said
6. Don’t force a user to login when making a purchase – if they forgot their credentials, they may give up and purchase elsewhere.  Instead, give them the option to shop and purchase as a guest, then sign up as a member after the sale completes.

Learn about these points and more on the podcast (click to listen or right click to save).

Kim Salvino and Amy Ely of buy.at US joined Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare to discuss ways that B2B merchants can succeed in the affiliate industry.

Topics include:

• Observing the growth of B2B advertisers in the affiliate industry
• Understanding the B2B customer and the relevance to B2C affiliates
• How B2B services apply to many affiliate sites and audiences of all sizes
• Helpful tools, creatives, content, and resources that B2B merchants can provide to support their affiliates

Click here to listen to the podcast.