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AtricleZine - Promoting Your Marketing Campaigns Via Your Affiliates - Part 1
So you've captured your audience, they are well informed on your event, they are looking forward to attending, they are interested in what you're doing, so what's the next step? Make sure all of your attendees are getting as much as they want from this event by offering extra materials on your registration page.Extras Can Make all the DifferenceGive your registrants the opportunity to buy more than just an event registration. Your registrants are already in the buying mood, so now is the time to offer them additional value.Some of your registrants will want pre-event items like white papers, or to order your speakers' books. Some will want post-event items like t-shirts, audio CDs, or autographed books from your speakers. Whatever the need, try to make an item available to fulfill it. If you are a charity, this is a great opportunity to ask for a donation.Online F
The earlier you can send the notification the better. Don't give the impression to your affiliates that your company decided unexpectedly to discontinue the campaign today and had your own Webmaster jump through hoops to get it of your own website that very same day, if it did not happened that way.
This is still too often done like that by many merchants and very unprofessional. I explain the case where it is appropriate a few chapters later.
Bad timing
Most merchants run monthly campaigns. A lot of coupons are valid for one month only and often targeted to aid and improve the effectiveness of that month's campaign.
Sites that are specialized in promoting merchant campaigns, like coupon and other sites that target and attract bargain hunting custom
Since beginning as a contributor to Ezinearticles.Com I have written 61 (now 62) articles. Most of them have had solid viewing figures, many have been downloaded by ezine publishers and several have had comments posted. But none has had such high levels of views as my article "Writing Business Letters - Tutorial 1: Letter Format" which has had over 8,000 views since I published it on 10/7/2005.I've been wondering why an item about something as common place as letters could create so much interest. And I think I've found the reasons.Before I go into those reasons, however, I'd like to tell you the short story about a young lady who graduated from one of Australia's finest universities with a Bachelor of Communication degree. She contacted me one day and asked if I could teach her how to write a business letter. She'd been applying for jobs, but had no idea about writing a cover letter or any
Introduction
If you are a merchant that uses coupons and special promotions such as clearance sales, site wide free shipping or other marketing tool that have a limited life span and also have an affiliate program which you use as sales channel to promote those campaigns, then this article is intended for you.
Avoid mistakes that can cause problems during or after the campaign which are in most of the cases customer service issues that probably harm your image in the minds of your existing or potential customers and will potentially hurt your brand in the long run.
Part 1 - Announce it, but announce it right
Before you launch your marketing campaign through your affiliate marketing channel consider the following tips and check if you have everything ready and in place that your affiliates can to their job right. This article is focused on the proper announcement of the launch and discontinuation of your marketing campaigns.
Always provide an expiration date and time.
Provide your affiliates with the expiration date and time for any coupon or marketing campaign you want them to promote. If it is an ongoing promotion let them know that.
If you don't know the expiration date of a promotion yet, provide the information how long you expect it to run and the goal you want to accomplish with it, which will have important impact on the expiration because you will probably discontinue the promotion earlier if you don't meet your goals at all and extend it much further than originally planned, if it is exceeding your expectations.
Use your affiliates campaigns to boost yours
You can also announce a campaign before it launches, but make sure that you provide the date and time of the launch and make clear what they can and can not do with that information. Specify if you allow or even recommend affiliates to announce an upcoming campaign to their customers.
You don't want then to announce all the details of the campaign, of course not, because that would damper the effectiveness of the campaign in general, but enough to get their customers attention and make them curious about what might be coming.
Provide Teaser material in those cases. Even without having a teaser can it help to increase the effectiveness of a campaign if you announce it to your affiliates, because it gives them more time to plan and make preparations on their end.
Affiliates might be preparing a campaign for their Site at the same time and your campaign would be perfect to launch parallel to increase each others "bang" or may be it could be incorporated into their campaign, mentioned or referred to. This is often the case with campaigns for specific holidays (Christmas, Valentines Day, Thanksgiving, St.Patrick's Day etc.) or national events (Super Ball, Stanley Cup, Olympic Games, Mardi Gras and Spring Break etc.).
Discontinuation of long running promotions
There are only a few cases where you would not know at least a few days before the fact when an ongoing promotion will be discontinued for whatever reason.
Send a notification before it expires to give your affiliates some lead time to prepare and ready exactly when you want them to be. Don't do it on the day or worse after it expired, demanding the immediate removal from the affiliate site and a complete stop of any other way of promoting it.
The earlier you can send the notification the better. Don't give the impression to your affiliates that your company decided unexpectedly to discontinue the campaign today and had your own Webmaster jump through hoops to get it of your own website that very same day, if it did not happened that way.
This is still too often done like that by many merchants and very unprofessional. I explain the case where it is appropriate a few chapters later.
Bad timing
Most merchants run monthly campaigns. A lot of coupons are valid for one month only and often targeted to aid and improve the effectiveness of that month's campaign.
Sites that are specialized in promoting merchant campaigns, like coupon and other sites that target and attract bargain hunting custome
One of the valuable tools in the Six Sigma toolbox is Design of Experiments. Design of Experiment (DOE) is a structured technique that helps to uncover relationships often hidden inside mountains of data. Within the structure of a Six Sigma project, Design of Experiments is a structured approach to identifying the factors within a process that contribute to particular effects, then creating meaningful tests that verify possible improvement ideas or theories.Most of us are familiar with the concept of experimentation within the fields of science and medicine. Experiments can be designed and conducted for any process in any field not just testing physics equations or new drugs or medical procedures. Design of Experiments is a formal statistical methods required to ensure that the testing or piloting of any new improvement ideas maximize the informational potential of the trial and ultimately the retu
Before you launch your marketing campaign through your affiliate marketing channel consider the following tips and check if you have everything ready and in place that your affiliates can to their job right. This article is focused on the proper announcement of the launch and discontinuation of your marketing campaigns.
Always provide an expiration date and time.
Provide your affiliates with the expiration date and time for any coupon or marketing campaign you want them to promote. If it is an ongoing promotion let them know that.
If you don't know the expiration date of a promotion yet, provide the information how long you expect it to run and the goal you want to accomplish with it, which will have important impact on the expiration because you will probably discontinue the promotion earlier if you don't meet your goals at all and extend it much further than originally planned, if it is exceeding your expectations.
Use your affiliates campaigns to boost yours
You can also announce a campaign before it launches, but make sure that you provide the date and time of the launch and make clear what they can and can not do with that information. Specify if you allow or even recommend affiliates to announce an upcoming campaign to their customers.
You don't want then to announce all the details of the campaign, of course not, because that would damper the effectiveness of the campaign in general, but enough to get their customers attention and make them curious about what might be coming.
Provide Teaser material in those cases. Even without having a teaser can it help to increase the effectiveness of a campaign if you announce it to your affiliates, because it gives them more time to plan and make preparations on their end.
Affiliates might be preparing a campaign for their Site at the same time and your campaign would be perfect to launch parallel to increase each others "bang" or may be it could be incorporated into their campaign, mentioned or referred to. This is often the case with campaigns for specific holidays (Christmas, Valentines Day, Thanksgiving, St.Patrick's Day etc.) or national events (Super Ball, Stanley Cup, Olympic Games, Mardi Gras and Spring Break etc.).
Discontinuation of long running promotions
There are only a few cases where you would not know at least a few days before the fact when an ongoing promotion will be discontinued for whatever reason.
Send a notification before it expires to give your affiliates some lead time to prepare and ready exactly when you want them to be. Don't do it on the day or worse after it expired, demanding the immediate removal from the affiliate site and a complete stop of any other way of promoting it.
The earlier you can send the notification the better. Don't give the impression to your affiliates that your company decided unexpectedly to discontinue the campaign today and had your own Webmaster jump through hoops to get it of your own website that very same day, if it did not happened that way.
This is still too often done like that by many merchants and very unprofessional. I explain the case where it is appropriate a few chapters later.
Bad timing
Most merchants run monthly campaigns. A lot of coupons are valid for one month only and often targeted to aid and improve the effectiveness of that month's campaign.
Sites that are specialized in promoting merchant campaigns, like coupon and other sites that target and attract bargain hunting custom
An ebook is a book in electronic format. It is downloaded to a computer, PC, Mac, laptop, PDA or any other kind of computer, and is read on the screen. It can have numbered pages, table of contents, pictures and graphics, exactly like a printed book.Ebooks present many benefits and advantages, and this article shows some of them.It is very simple and easy to purchase and download ebooks through the Internet. It is exactly like purchasing any other product. The only difference is that after payment you will either be directed to a download page or receive the download link in an email. All you have to do is click on the link and the ebook will automatically download to your computer, to a folder of your own choice.After download you don't have to be connected to the Internet in order to read the ebook. You can stay offline. If you wish to have it printed, it is very easy. Just click on
Use your affiliates campaigns to boost yours
You can also announce a campaign before it launches, but make sure that you provide the date and time of the launch and make clear what they can and can not do with that information. Specify if you allow or even recommend affiliates to announce an upcoming campaign to their customers.
You don't want then to announce all the details of the campaign, of course not, because that would damper the effectiveness of the campaign in general, but enough to get their customers attention and make them curious about what might be coming.
Provide Teaser material in those cases. Even without having a teaser can it help to increase the effectiveness of a campaign if you announce it to your affiliates, because it gives them more time to plan and make preparations on their end.
Affiliates might be preparing a campaign for their Site at the same time and your campaign would be perfect to launch parallel to increase each others "bang" or may be it could be incorporated into their campaign, mentioned or referred to. This is often the case with campaigns for specific holidays (Christmas, Valentines Day, Thanksgiving, St.Patrick's Day etc.) or national events (Super Ball, Stanley Cup, Olympic Games, Mardi Gras and Spring Break etc.).
Discontinuation of long running promotions
There are only a few cases where you would not know at least a few days before the fact when an ongoing promotion will be discontinued for whatever reason.
Send a notification before it expires to give your affiliates some lead time to prepare and ready exactly when you want them to be. Don't do it on the day or worse after it expired, demanding the immediate removal from the affiliate site and a complete stop of any other way of promoting it.
The earlier you can send the notification the better. Don't give the impression to your affiliates that your company decided unexpectedly to discontinue the campaign today and had your own Webmaster jump through hoops to get it of your own website that very same day, if it did not happened that way.
This is still too often done like that by many merchants and very unprofessional. I explain the case where it is appropriate a few chapters later.
Bad timing
Most merchants run monthly campaigns. A lot of coupons are valid for one month only and often targeted to aid and improve the effectiveness of that month's campaign.
Sites that are specialized in promoting merchant campaigns, like coupon and other sites that target and attract bargain hunting custom
Ever wonder, how some importers and exporters get suppliers and buyers from other countries so easily? After trying their hand on eBay an increasing number of people are looking for either a foreign supplier for the items they are trading locally or global buyers for the unique product that they sell. If you are one of them, or you have recently decided to explore import-export business opportunities, using this simple method you can also find buyers and sellers from other countries easily and effectively.There are several means people use to look for a foreign supplier or buyer, which include attending trade shows, contacting trade section of embassies and chambers of commerce, posting trade leads on the Internet, etc. However, posting trade leads on the country and industry specific bulletin boards is by far the easiest and cheapest technique which brings pretty fast results.What is a trad
Affiliates might be preparing a campaign for their Site at the same time and your campaign would be perfect to launch parallel to increase each others "bang" or may be it could be incorporated into their campaign, mentioned or referred to. This is often the case with campaigns for specific holidays (Christmas, Valentines Day, Thanksgiving, St.Patrick's Day etc.) or national events (Super Ball, Stanley Cup, Olympic Games, Mardi Gras and Spring Break etc.).
Discontinuation of long running promotions
There are only a few cases where you would not know at least a few days before the fact when an ongoing promotion will be discontinued for whatever reason.
Send a notification before it expires to give your affiliates some lead time to prepare and ready exactly when you want them to be. Don't do it on the day or worse after it expired, demanding the immediate removal from the affiliate site and a complete stop of any other way of promoting it.
The earlier you can send the notification the better. Don't give the impression to your affiliates that your company decided unexpectedly to discontinue the campaign today and had your own Webmaster jump through hoops to get it of your own website that very same day, if it did not happened that way.
This is still too often done like that by many merchants and very unprofessional. I explain the case where it is appropriate a few chapters later.
Bad timing
Most merchants run monthly campaigns. A lot of coupons are valid for one month only and often targeted to aid and improve the effectiveness of that month's campaign.
Sites that are specialized in promoting merchant campaigns, like coupon and other sites that target and attract bargain hunting custom
1. Stay In TouchStay in contact with customers on a regular basis. Offer them a free e-zine subscription. Ask customers if they want to be updated by e-mail when you make changes to your Web site. After every sale follow-up with the customer to see if they are satisfied with their purchase.2. Friendly Web SiteMake it easy for your customers to navigate on your Web site. Have a "FAQ" page on your Web site to explain anything that might confuse your customers. Ask them to fill out an electronic survey to find out how make your Web site more customer friendly.3. Easy And Free CommunicationMake it easy and for your customers to contact you. Offer as many contact methods as possible. Allow customers contact you by e-mail. Hyperlink your e-mail address so customers won't have to type it. Offer toll free numbers for phone and fax contacts.4. Teach Your Employ
The earlier you can send the notification the better. Don't give the impression to your affiliates that your company decided unexpectedly to discontinue the campaign today and had your own Webmaster jump through hoops to get it of your own website that very same day, if it did not happened that way.
This is still too often done like that by many merchants and very unprofessional. I explain the case where it is appropriate a few chapters later.
Bad timing
Most merchants run monthly campaigns. A lot of coupons are valid for one month only and often targeted to aid and improve the effectiveness of that month's campaign.
Sites that are specialized in promoting merchant campaigns, like coupon and other sites that target and attract bargain hunting customers have their busiest days right at the end of the month and the first days of the following month replacing expiring campaigns with the new ones. If possible, announce upcoming or to be discontinued campaigns that used to be ongoing outside this timeframe.
This will increase the chances that your campaign will get more attention and decreases the chances that the announcement of a discontinuation gets unintentionally missed. Affiliates are humans and humans make mistakes especially when they are under stress.
Unplanned discontinuation of any promotion
Keep in mind that the chances are good that affiliates promote long running promotions in multiple different ways. To stop all of them might takes more than a few minutes.
Affiliates are busy too and the ones that do it right and successful are doing also resource planning as any other healthy business and are not able to halt their business operation for you, because you want them to do something immediately you knew already earlier.
Only if there is very good reason (Legal Issue, Natural Disaster, End of the World and that sort of things) is it acceptable and also understandable for your affiliate if you demand an immediate stop of a promotional campaign. If you have to demand an immediate stop, explain why.
The promotion and even the release of new action movies that involved terrorists was stopped or delayed immediately after 9/11. TV Stations changed their programming and replaced what was considered inconsiderate with more appropriate programming.
This could not be planned ahead, but the right thing to do and nobody was complaining about the extra time it took to do it or the fact that I had to be done fast. It is not acceptable and bad business practice in any other case.
Announcements via email
Regardless what, when and why you announce something important and/or time critical to your affiliates via email, make sure that you state in the subject of the email your intention and content of the email and not just "Affiliate Newsletter" which is fine if you are providing general information and news to your affiliates.
It is the worst subject you can use for emails that do require immediate attention or actions to be taken by the affiliates that have a due date. Your emails are not the only emails an Affiliate receives.
Clear email subjects allow quicker, more efficient and better processing by the affiliate and reduce the chances that critical emails get overlooked.
Final words
Affiliate Marketing Rule No.1: Affiliates and merchants are business partners, treat them as such.
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