Rick, Author at Affiliate Program Management

January 28, 2016

How to Monitor Branded Keywords in ShareASale

A merchants brand and how it is perceived to consumers is paramount. Ensuring the brand is being promoted in a positive light is as important as anything else a company can do; but how do merchants with affiliate programs monitor their brand and its use? Sadly, many merchants do not monitor affiliate activity in terms of brand bidding and it costs them money (sometimes significant amounts).

The merchants that do not monitor their affiliates promotional methods sometimes end up paying commissions that should not be paid. When affiliates bid on merchants branded terms in PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns they may be intruding on the merchants own efforts and ultimately driving up the cost of the campaigns. You may ask, why would merchants not monitor this activity? It comes down to education. The merchants may not know enough about it and in turn do not have the tools to combat it. The tools used to detect this activity may not be in the budget or in some cases the merchant does not care, but ShareASale has two (2) tools to help merchants monitor their branded keywords and how they are being used by affiliates. Here are the two tools provided by ShareASale:

Step #1 – Set Up Branded Keyword Monitoring and Rules

Under the “Tools” tab click “Monitor Search Keywords”.

Step #2 – Add Keywords for ShareASale to Monitor

This is where merchants will add keywords that ShareASale will monitor. They can add up to five (5) for them to monitor. Put the most important (or popular) branded keywords in and ShareASale will send alerts if violations occur.

Step #3 – Set up Keyword Bidding Rules

Now we are getting to the nitty gritty. This step is where merchants provide rules that affiliates must obey when using PPC campaigns. Merchants can add a rule that affiliates cannot use PPC bidding at all, but if allowed to, then specific rules can be set. Adding keywords that are off limits to affiliates will be compiled to a list that will be available to all affiliates upon signing up for the program. Completing this section will tell the affiliates from the beginning the stance on PPC bidding.

Merchants should protect their brands by all means necessary. There are affiliates that abuse the PPC rules, but ShareASale has a nice tool to help monitor violations, but recommended to compliment this is signing up for a brand monitoring software (i.e BrandVerity). Merchants do not want to lose control of their brands, especially when there are ways to prevent it.

January 14, 2016

Booking Paid Placements Through CJ Affiliate

Getting additional exposure for your brand is the number one goal when employing various marketing strategies, but some work better than others. Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy that has numerous ways to get your brand exposure, it could be through content, social media, and/or coupon deals. The three strategies mentioned are popular among affiliates, but there is one that is often over looked by advertisers and it is paid placements. Paid placements allow advertisers to become more visible on affiliate sites and assist in the brand reaching a wider audience. Paid placements can either be paid in a flat dollar amount, a commission increase, or a hybrid of both fee and commission increase.

Where do you go to get paid placements? In the past, you would have to look up the affiliate and their site, reach out to them and then ask them if they are accepting paid placements and get all the information that way. Recently, CJ Affiliate has added a tool to their merchant interface that will allow you (advertisers) to locate and book paid placements without leaving the merchant interface. This is truly an innovative move, which will make the lives of all affiliate managers easier. Please keep in mind that this is still a new tool/service, but I am going to show you how to use it to book future paid placements. You still may have to reach out to affiliates, but this new tool is to aid in booking placements.

Step #1 – Go to “Placements” Tab within the CJ Affiliate Interface

Once you are logged in to your CJ Affiliate merchant account, click the “Placements” tab. A drop down menu will then appear and you will then select where to go next.

Step #2 – Select What Section of Placements to Visit

This next step allows you to look up opportunities that affiliates are offering, review insertion orders from previously booked placements, and review reports from past placements (if any were booked).

Step #3 – Review Placement Opportunities Available

Instead of contacting the affiliate directly to get all the information about the placement, it is all here is one place for an easy analysis. Not all affiliates use paid placements and even some of the larger affiliates have not participated yet, so you still may have to reach out to an affiliate if they are not listed.

As you can see, the available placements are listed with the amount of money it will cost, the start/end dates, and where it will be placed (mobile, email, social, etc.). On the left side there are filters to help find attractive placement opportunities. You can narrow it down to your publishers only, opportunity type, date range, promotions, price, and affiliate network earnings. I would strongly encourage using the filters, especially the affiliate network earnings because you want to be working with affiliate that have a following and have earned commission in the past.

Step #4 – Review Total Cost of Paid Placements

Once the placements are booked and run you can you the “Reports” tab to view the exact cost of the placements. The placement has a fee and CJ also collects a fee as well. This is a good place to review your overall spend and determine if the placements yielded ROI.

Booking placements with affiliates just became easier. CJ Affiliate created a much needed tool ot help merchants book placements without a lot of the tedious work. All the available placements are now visible within the CJ Affiliate merchant account. I just have some words of wisdom, do not just book a placement on any affiliate site. Do research and ask questions, because the last thing you want to do is throw a significant amount of money away to an affiliate that has no real following or ability to produce and yield a positive ROI.

December 10, 2015

Creating Coupons & Deals in Your ShareASale Affiliate Program

Coupons and deals can be an important part to a successful affiliate program, but please understand not every merchant needs them in order to have a successful program. Depending on the particular vertical you are in coupons may be essential to keep up with the competition, while other verticals coupons may not help sell products (i.e. some B2B products). I will be going over step-by-step how to create and add them to your ShareASale program.

Step 1 – Navigate to the “Post Coupons and Deals” Page

Once logged into your ShareASale merchant account you will click on the “My Creatives” tab then “Post Coupons and Deals”. Once that happens you will be directed to a page to start creating your coupons/deals.

Step 2 – Start Adding the Details of the Coupons/Deals

Now you will start adding the details of the coupon. There must be a start date, end date, title (explains what the coupon/deal is – 10% Off), coupon code (if applicable), a URL where the deal can be found on your site, a description, any restrictions (i.e. cannot be combined with any other offer, etc.), keywords (so that affiliates can search the entire ShareASale database), and who the coupon/deal is available to (is it public to all or only select affiliates). It is a very simple process, but make sure to fill in as much as possible so that the affiliates have everything they need to promote the coupon.

Step 3 – Check the Coupon Was Added

Once the coupon has been created you will want to make sure it populated in ShareASale and everything is correct. You will need to click on “See Current Deals” and then all the current deals will be available to view. In this section you also have the ability to edit a deal.

There you have it, creating coupons/deals in ShareASale is as easy as it sounds. The key is to make sure all information is accurate (especially end dates) and once the coupons/deals are created be sure to announce them to your affiliate base via a newsletter. If you need help creating an affiliate newsletter read my post “How to Create and Send ShareASale Affiliate Newsletters”.

November 12, 2015

How to Use the ShareASale’s “Group Affiliates” Tool

Your affiliate recruitment efforts are yielding fruit and your program is doing well, but you are having trouble managing your growing affiliate list. What do you do? As an affiliate manager you may want to send a specific group of affiliates a message, but do not want to include all your affiliates, or you want to try and activate your stagnant affiliates, but are not sure how to do this. In this post I am going to show you how to group your affiliates using the tool in ShareASale (next post will cover CJ Affiliate). This step-by-step guide will make it easy for you to group your affiliates however you want.

Step # 1 – Navigate to “Group Affiliates”

Once you have logged in to your ShareASale merchant account you will go to the “Affiliates” tab and then click the “Group Affiliates” sub tab. This will take you to the screen where you can start creating, modifying, and even deleting existing groups (if you have any, of course).

Step # 2 – View, Create, or Delete Groups

Once on the affiliate groups page you will see first the option to view any current groups created. To view any group, hit the drop down arrow and select the group and hit “view”. The next section is creating a new group. Here you will name the group (i.e. Sales in last 30 days, No sales ever, Coupon Affiliates, etc.), then briefly describe the group. Next you are going to select the commission rate for each group (per sale and/or per lead). You may want to pay certain groups a different commission, so this is the place to implement that. Every time you add an affiliate to a group they will be paid the commission for that group.

Step # 3 – Adding Affiliate to Groups

Now that the groups are now created and ready to be utilized, you have to add affiliates to them. You will go to the “Affiliates” tab and then click “Your Affiliate List”. This will bring you to your list of affiliates (starting from top performers and working backwards). Under the affiliates information you will see a drop down box titled “Affiliate Group”, select the appropriate group and then there will be a pop up to “save all”. Click “save all” and then that affiliate will be included in that group.

Grouping affiliates is a great way to manage the hundreds (even thousands) of affiliates that may be in your program. As I mentioned earlier, grouping affiliates may be necessary for a variety of reasons. It could be you want to send a certain deal to a certain group of top performers or you want to get your inactive affiliates active and referring traffic. Whatever it may be, grouping them and messaging them accordingly will help keep your program organized and save you a great deal of time in the long run.

October 29, 2015

Advanced Affiliate Transaction Metrics via ShareASale

As a ShareASale merchant you have access to an array of tools to help manage and grow your affiliate program, but they also offer a robust reporting solution for transactions that occur. In one place ShareASale visually explains each transaction (important details of them) to help you (the merchant) determine if it is a legit sale or one that needs to be reviewed and reversed. This post will go over what you do not see on the ShareASale transaction reports and how you can access that information.

Here is a sample affiliate transaction from the “Reports”—”Transaction Detail”:

As you can see it includes many of the details of the sale including: The date it occurred, sales amount, commission paid (to both the affiliate and ShareASale), the affiliate who referred the sale, the page the banner/link was clicked from, and creative ID. This is all great information, but what if I told you there is other information (just as important) that you can access about every transaction. How, you may ask?

It is very simple. First, you must download a file of the transactions you want more information for. Once it is downloaded and opened you will be shown information that many merchants do not even know exists.

The advanced metrics shown include the banner name (not ID) so that you can see exactly what banner converted instead of looking via the banner ID, if a coupon was used and the code associated with it, and if it is a new or existing customer (this only works if you have the ability to track new v. existing).

Showing the coupon code used can be helpful in determining if affiliates are “harvesting coupons”. If you only have specific coupons for the affiliate program then you can easily void the transaction or contact the affiliate to let them know that they cannot promote the code(s) being used.

Enabling ShareASale to track new v. existing customers can also be beneficial to the program. It will help determine who is adding value and plan to help increase sales that will lead to incremental business.

It was nice to share a little hidden gem within the transaction report of ShareASale. They provide great data, but cannot include it all in the visual breakdown in the “Reports”—“Transaction Detail” section. What is shown in the advanced data can be just as, if not more, beneficial than the actual sales amount and affiliate referrer.

October 15, 2015

How to Create Program Terms on CJ Affiliate Network

A very important aspect of a starting and maintaining a successful affiliate is program terms. “Program terms” is a phrase/term used by CJ Affiliate network to help merchants relay the affiliate program rules (and pay out structure) to affiliates. As important as they are to the success of a program, many merchants do not invest enough time into creating them to ensure affiliates understand and therefore, play by the rules. In this post I will go over step-by-step on how to create them and what should be included.

Step # 1 – Navigate to Program Terms Page

Once logged into your CJ Affiliate account you will navigate under the “Account” tab and click the “Program Terms” link. You will then be directed to the page where you will start to create the program terms for your affiliate program.

Step # 2 – Create New Program Terms

Click the button “Create New Program Terms”. If program terms have already been created they will be listed and have the date created, the amount of publishers in each program term, pending offers, and pending applications (if any). Once the “Create New Program Terms” is clicked a new window will open and that is where you start adding the details and rules you want your affiliates to follow.

Step # 3 – Name Program Terms

Here is where you will name the program terms, add actions (which includes the commission to be paid, cookie life, etc.), and add policies (SEM and other brand related rules).

Step 4 – Add Actions to Program Terms

First, select an action from the “Action” drop down box. Here you may find various options like new customers, existing customers, or if you are paying by lead. Select the action you want to use. Note: If you want to pay commission at different levels for new vs. existing customers you will need to create an “action” for each. Next select the “Commission”. It could be in the form of a percentage or a flat dollar amount. You will then want to input the cookie life and the number of referrals you want to allow. The “Lifecycle” option is when the transactions that took place lock and cannot be edited. If you are going to offer performance incentives (i.e. tiered commission structure) you will make those additions.

Step # 5 – Create Policies

Now that the affiliate program actions are added, next you will add policies. This is where you will set your search engine marketing policies (including restricted keywords and recommended keywords for affiliates to use), website policy (URL policies, domain policies, etc.), additional promotional methods, and miscellaneous policies. You want to fill in as many of the policies as possible to ensure your affiliates understand what they can and cannot do.

Step # 6 – Finalize Program Terms

You are almost at the finish line. You named your program terms, added actions, added policies and reviewed everything for accuracy, now it is time to make them official. Click “Create Program Terms” and now they are live. If they are the first set of program terms created they will be your default terms, if there are multiple ones already there then you will want to make the new one your default (if you want).

Having up to date programs terms is critical so that affiliates can change their promotional methods if needed and to adjust to previous affiliate behavior. The key is to make sure you put everything affiliates cannot do in terms of promoting, so if an issue comes up you can simply reference the program terms and discuss it accordingly with the affiliate.

September 24, 2015

New Placement Finder Tool – CJ Affiliate

With Q4 only one (1) week away I would like to discuss a new feature in CJ Affiliate that will help merchants find opportunities to promote their brands during the busiest shopping time of the year. CJ Affiliate now offers merchants a way to purchase placements with affiliates directly through their interface. Talk about making it simple.

This new feature will not completely eliminate the outreach to affiliates about placements, but it has made merchants lives a lot easier. Not all affiliates are participating in this, but many of the top “super” affiliates are and getting additional exposure is just a click away. In this post I will present a step-by-step guide to using the new “Placements” feature in CJ Affiliate.

Step 1 – Click “Placements” on Main Navigation

Once you (merchant) are logged in, navigate to the “placements” tab in the main navigation. When clicked it will bring you to landing page where you can now browse and choose what placements to pursue.

Step 2 – Review Available Placement Opportunities

This feature is similar to the recruiting feature CJ has in that it allows you to filter in many ways. For example, if you are looking for placements from your affiliates only, there is a way to do that. What makes this feature awesome is that it gives you the ability to recruit new publishers for Q4 too (not directly, but you will have their contact information). Other ways to sort placement opportunities is by date range, seasonal events, promotions, price range, and by affiliate network earnings.

Once you have the filters set you will see a list of potential placements shown. It will list the affiliates name, the cost of the placement (dollar amount or commission increase), a way to contact the affiliate and the website it will be placed on.

Step 3 – Learn More About the Placement

By clicking the “website” box you will see what type of creative is needed (sizes included), the placements position (where it will be listed), and contact name and email address.

Step 4 – Book the Placement

All that is left is to book the placement and ensure you have additional exposure for Q4 and to be in front of more new customers. Simply click the envelope to email the affiliate and confirm listings.

This new feature CJ Affiliate added came at the perfect time. No more searching for affiliates and their contact information, no more guessing on the size of the creatives needed, and no more guessing on the amount of money (or commission increase) they are looking for; it is all there in one spot. When reviewing the placements available, remember this could be an opportunity to recruit an affiliate you have been looking to partner with.

August 27, 2015

3 Types of Affiliates to Add to Your Affiliate Program

The question I am asked too frequently is: Where can I find quality affiliates that will grow my affiliate program? Merchants are always looking to recruit quality affiliates into their programs, but that task is easier said than done. Recruiting is a task that should consume a majority of the time by the affiliate manager. Many merchants see affiliates (or publishers) as bloggers, coupon/deal sites, loyalty/cash back sites, etc., but there are companies that offer digital marketing services, but act as an affiliate. For example, shopping cart abandonment, remarketing/retargeting and paid search are key components to any successful digital marketing campaign and are offered through an affiliate relationship. What does this mean? I will discuss and highlight 3 affiliates (of various types; though with some similarities) that merchants should consider to partner with through their affiliate program.

UpSellit

UpSellit is a shopping cart abandonment solution that is offered on a CPA (click per acquisition) basis. There are no monthly fees or set up costs associated with doing business with them. However, depending on the size of the merchant they may require a monthly minimum in the first few months, but that is for the new and/or smaller merchants. The minimum disappears once the program ramps up.

They join a merchant’s affiliate program and accept the terms and conditions as any other affiliate would, plus they get paid the same commission as other affiliates (there may be instances where they get more). They use their affiliate link each time their solution is enabled and conversions are tracked through whatever affiliate network interface a merchant is using (i.e. ShareASale, CJ Affiliate).

They offer merchants 3 different solutions:

Targeted Offer

Targeted offers increase conversions and average order value by offering abandoning visitors a personalized incentive to convert. They fully customize campaigns to align with the visitor’s behavior. The personalized offer only engages at the time of abandonment, and not every visitor will be offered the same deal.

Chat

Abandonment Chat increases conversions with a live chat simulation that assists visitors the instant they abandon. Chat is powered by a sophisticated automated chat engine called SmartAgent and analyzes sentence structure, conversation history and session data to understand both what a customer said.

Email ReMarketing

The Email ReMarketing solution increases conversions with two lead recovery technologies that fuel a real-time email remarketing platform. It is fully customized to collect new leads and recover lost conversions.

VE Interactive

Similar to UpSellit, but VE Interactive offers a few different solutions. They work through an affiliate relationship except through their VEAds solution, which requires upfront ad spend and they factor in certain site metric to come up with a competitive rate (may be higher than the default affiliate commission rate) to charge the merchant. There are no set up costs or monthly fees and they only get paid on a CPA basis (or CPL).

They are not integrated with ShareASale, but are with CJ Affiliate and other affiliate networks. If a ShareASale merchant wishes to partner with them they can be invoiced monthly as opposed to using the affiliate network interface.

They are meant to help increase the reach of a merchants remarketing/retargeting campaigns and use more than just the Google ad network. They have a vast network that allows them to reach a greater audience than that of Google (which is approximately 40% of the net).

Their ReMarketing/ReTargeting services that include:

VEAssist

Its main job is to increase a merchant’s customer acquisition from search traffic by reducing the overall bounce rate of the site.

VEChat

The purpose is to assist when customers have questions about a product and are about to leave the site. The VEChat solution will be enabled and assist in increasing conversion rates and customer service.

VEContact

This is for visitors who abandon their transaction during the payment process; it brings them back to the site in hopes to complete their purchase. This is done through email reminders which may or may not contain a discount.

VEAds

They use a sophisticated DSP to access online ad space, purchased in real-time and via ad Exchanges. The ads can be either static or dynamic, using a data feed from the merchant.

Imwave

Imwave is a performance search engine marketing agency. They can work independent of a merchant’s paid search team or in conjunction. It is completely up to the merchant. They pay for the ads and only get paid when a sale or lead is generated. They truly have skin in the game!

They along with UpSellit and VE Interactive integrate into a merchants affiliate program and abide by the program terms listed. When they place their ads they use their affiliate links, which will then be tracked through the affiliate network.

In many cases they do require a higher commission than the default rate (unless the default is enough for them to start and grow a campaign). What is great about them is that they play by the rules of the merchant. They may require the ability to bid on trademarked/branded terms and must have the ability to directly link to the merchants site. Not all merchants allow this, but if they work closely with the paid search team in place the relationship can be fruitful for both parties.

Partnering with the typical affiliates (i.e. bloggers and coupon/deal sites) is great, but using solutions like UpSellit, VE Interactive and a service like imwave can grow (significantly) a merchant’s affiliate program. We (AM Navigator) have been using all three for years now and recommend them highly to all of our clients (if there is a fit of course). I have seen them come in and grow affiliate programs in a few short weeks and help companies in their other digital marketing campaigns as well. Thinking outside the box and recruiting affiliates is essential to growth, but knowing who to partner with is just as important.

I highly recommend the three (3) companies mentioned and if you have any questions about them, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. You can email me or just post a comment below.

August 6, 2015

ShareASale Holiday Central Placements for Merchants

In my last post I outlined the different placement opportunities available within ShareASale for their merchants. Having additional exposure for an affiliate program can help the overall brand, but can yield positive affiliate recruitment statistics. I want to detail one final placement opportunity and it is called ShareASale’s Holiday Central.

Holidays can turn the internet into complete mayhem and affiliates (and merchants too) love it. People love shopping online and there is no better opportunity for merchants and for affiliates to capitalize than holidays. ShareASale Holiday Central allows merchants to promote individual products that fall within specific holidays. For example, a weight loss merchant might want to target customers at the beginning of the New Year. With this opportunity the merchant can select “New Year’s Eve” holiday and they will be featured during the time period allotted. Affiliates are presented with all the upcoming holidays approximately 2 -3 months in advance so they can prepare their marketing materials/promotions.

The cost of the holiday placements are relatively inexpensive. It costs $100 for the first category. If a merchant wishes to be included during other holidays they are welcome and the cost for 2 holiday placements is $175, 3 holiday placements $225 and each additional placement after 3 is $75. What is unique about this type of placement is that is good for one (1) year from purchase.

What does the placement look like? It is similar to a Feature Program of Your Category placement. Merchants can load an image (of their logo or specific product being promoted) and a description of the program or product. When recommending placement opportunities for clients we always steer them to the Holiday Center.

ShareASale also does a good job in providing a lengthy list of holidays merchants can promote for. Some of the holidays include: Mardi Gras, Halloween, April Fool’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Winter Season, Valentine’s Day, Fall Season, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and many more.

As mentioned earlier I recommend looking into holiday placements. They target affiliates looking for specific brands and/or products during holidays and finding a programs top performing affiliate is only a few clicks away.

Combining the list of placement opportunities outlined in my last post and the ShareASale Holiday Central there are enough options to get your affiliate program out in front of the top affiliates in the industry. Along with the prices that will not break the bank a holiday placement can yield fruitful partnerships for years to come.

July 9, 2015

7 ShareASale Featured Program Options for Merchants

Are you a ShareASale merchant looking to acquire new and quality affiliates into your program? If yes (and I hope so), then I have some exciting information to share with you. ShareASale offers their merchant’s ways to “boost” their programs exposure and be directly in front of affiliates that can help grow their programs. There are seven (7) options that can increase the exposure of an affiliate program. In the following paragraphs I will detail each one to help determine if it makes sense for merchants to undertake and invest further into their affiliate programs.

Option # 1

The first placement option (and most popular) is the Featured Program of the Week. A merchant will get their logo and a description of their affiliate program displayed on the opening of the affiliate homepage. This is a competitive placement because there are only 2 merchants per week allowed to be placed. The current cost is $450 per week. Below is a screenshot of what the Featured Program of the Week looks like.

Option # 2

The next option is the Featured Program of Your Category. It is similar to the Featured Program of the Week (includes logo and description) except the placement will be within your category only. This placement is a one (1) month deal and at the time of this post it costs $300. For example, if a merchant is in the Art/Music/Photography category it will be placed at the top of the search results for that category only.

Option # 3

The third placement option is the New Programs in the last 20 days. This is one of the most popular places for affiliates to look for new merchants to promote. It is a “directory” of all the merchants that have launched on the ShareASale network in the last 20 days. This allows merchants to list their ad at the top of the new program category and increase exposure for a new and growing program. This (presently) is a $400 per month placement and the affiliate program must be “new”.

Option # 4

Option # 4 is for merchants who have data feeds. Not all merchants have data feeds, but the ones that do should seriously look at this as an option to increase their programs exposure. The merchant’s graphic will be placed in a rotation along with five (5) others. ShareASale recommends mentioning the data feed within the graphic to enhance visibility. This will cost merchants $550 per month.

Option # 5

Program Directory Listing is another solid option for merchants to consider. For $650 per month a merchant’s graphic will be listed along with 5 others on the directory page that lists all merchants in the ShareASale network.

Option # 6

Not satisfied with only one (1) category listing? Some merchants operate and can be categorized in more than one category, so ShareASale gives merchants the option to be place in another related category. For $350 per additional category a merchant can be added to additional categories.

Option # 7

The final option for merchants to expand their programs reach is through Affiliate Invitations. For $200 per two weeks ShareASale will send top performing affiliates in a category invitations to join the merchant’s program.

There are seven (7) viable options for merchants to increase their affiliate programs exposure to prospective affiliates. Not all options will be suitable for all merchants, but there are a two specifically (Featured Program of the Week and Featured Program of Your Category) that can significantly increase a merchants pool of quality affiliates and drive growth for the future of the affiliate program.