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Articles in the Affiliate Summit Real Deal newsletter are the opinions of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views of the newsletter, or its owners. The Affiliate Summit Real Deal newsletter always welcomes opinions of an opposite nature.
Register now for Affiliate Summit 2007 West - January 21-23 at Bally's Las Vegas.
Read past issues of the Affiliate Summit Real Deal newsletter in the newsletter archive.
Topics in this issue:
- Affiliate Summit Video: W. Kimathi Marangu on Loyalty Affiliates
- Affiliate Program Advice from Jessica Luthi
- MyAffiliateProgram v9 Launches
- Affiliate Marketing Classifieds and Other Stuff
- Ask Shawn Collins: Promoting a New Affiliate Program
W. Kimathi Marangu is EVP Business Development and Co-founder of Mall Networks, a firm that enhances loyalty programs through eCommerce partnerships. Clients include NASCAR and Major League Baseball.
Mr. Marangu is an online loyalty marketing veteran, having served as VP and GM eCommerce at Schoolpop, and Director of Business Development at ShoppingList.com before that. Kimathi began his career as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan.
Kimathi received his A.B. in Economics from Vassar College and his M.B.A. from Stanford. He is President of the Stanford Business School Alumni Association and a member of the Dean's Advisory Council.
See Kimathi's loyalty affiliates presentation for free on Google Video.
You can watch it on the Google Video site or download it to view on the Google Video Player (recommended for uninterrupted playback).
The session is also available for download as an MP3.
Read the transcript from the Loyalty Affiliates: Loyal Allies or Evildoers session and view Kimathi's slides.
Registrations are open for the next Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas on January 21-23, 2007.
She currently runs a company called Affiliate Program Advice which offers consulting to e-commerce sites. Previously, Jessica worked at UKaffiliates, Affiliate Window and ASOS.
The podcast of this discussion is broken down into two parts.
Part one covers the start of affiliate marketing in the UK, her favorite affiliate network, Affiliate Program Advice, tips for affiliate managers, and communicating with affiliates and changes.
The second part of the interview goes into Jessica's impressions of Affiliate Summit and affiliate marketing in the US, UK Affiliate get2gethers, whether there is a need for an affiliate association and getting started in affiliate marketing.
Interesting stuff - I'd definitely recommend giving it a listen.
Check out Jessica's affiliate marketing blog for more on her industry insight and opinions.
MYAP v9 is KowaBunga's foray into Affiliate Marketing 2.0. The new version of MYAP has features, tools and reports that will get any affiliate geek excited.
Some of the things that stand out to me:
Track All Ad Channels
You can track ads, PPC buys, natural search referrers and affiliates through the interface. This enables you to determine the relative value of each type of referrer without struggling through analytics packages or home grown Excel sheets.
Cross-Channel Reporting
MYAP 9 provides a report I've wanted for a long time - their cookie trail report. This report lists all interactions a customer has had with a company's various marketing strategies before completing their transaction. There is also a new report that breaks out the total traffic by source, so you can see the volume from each source and an apples to apples breakout of the ROI for each.
Fraud Screening
Keeping out the bad guys is a game of Spy vs. Spy for any affiliate manager. The latest iteration of MYAP provides some helpful tools for this battle:
- Ability to deny affiliate applications based on country of origin or other user defined variables
- A scanning tool to identify red flags with existing affiliates
- Scorecards that provide in-depth information on prospective affiliates
There are also a number of reports that help to sleuth out potential fraudulent affiliate activity.
RAD Linking
RAD is short for Registered Affiliate Domain, which is a method where affiliates can link to any page on a merchant site using a standard URL. Affiliates will register their domains in the MYAP interface and create direct links to the merchant.
No question marks, ID numbers, redirects, etc. Just a plain, direct link. This will get around the issue of ad blockers knocking out affiliate links. Plus, there is the potential to benefit from link popularity and page rank.
Tons of others bells and whistles, but it's a long weekend Friday and I want to get out of here early. See the features list for MYAP v9 for more details.
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5 Star Affiliate Forums
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Payless.com Affiliate Promo
Latest offer from Payless: Save $5 off any order of $55 or more. (Coupon code is PSS5OFF55 - Ends 10/11). Also, free standard ground shipping and handling with any order of $50 or more (no coupon required). Visit http://www.paylessaffiliates.com.
Snapfish Increases and Expands Commission
The base commission for Snapfish affiliates is going up to $10.00 (a $.50 raise) on every new customer. Also, for the first time ever, all affiliates will get an 8% commission on repeat customer purchases and a 60 day cookie. In order for current affiliates to receive these new terms, check your pending offers on CJ and accept the Snapfish offer. Visit snapfishaffiliates.com for details on the Snapfish affiliate program.
The best thing is to design a multi-faceted marketing campaign for your affiliate program that is unique to your company.
I would suggest submitting your affiliate program to the top 5-10 listings that come up when you search for affiliate program directory on Google, MSN and Yahoo.
Don't bother with the sites that offer to submit your affiliate program to 100+ affiliate program directories. There are maybe a half dozen that are updated, maintained and can actually drive any affiliates to you - those "services" are not worth your cash.
Instead, try testing a variety of keywords in the PPC search engines to promote your affiliate program.
Also, make an effort to attend affiliate marketing conferences to meet affiliates face to face.
In my biased opinion, nothing meets persona interactions with affiliates at events.
Of course, you should endeavor to optimize your affiliate program and make it the best in your category to best sell it.
And when you're communicating with affiliates you should be sure to know the numbers for your affiliate program and company, such as average order size, conversion rate and aggregate EPC for your affiliates.
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