Merchant buys Affiliate?
There’s a really interesting piece on Travel Rants which seems to show that TUI (the company who own Thomson Holidays) have acquired holiday review site Holidays Uncovered. It’s interesting to see that what is basically an affiliate site full of user generated content has been doing so well that it makes better business […]
Affiliate Network Overviews
There is an interesting series on affiliate networks by Angel Djambazov, Marketing and Business Development Manager for PopShops, over at ReveNews. As part of the ReveNews 2008 Affiliate Network Preview Series, he interviewed representatives from CJ, LinkShare, Performics, and ShareASale to get a sense of their plans and goals for 2008. Here are the interviews: Commission Junction LinkShare Performics ShareASale Nice work, […]
Ahh the little things.
This post will probably only make sense to the group of us who has been using Twitter and Facebook in the last year or so in order to communicate our little miniature “status updates” to each other… but it reminded me of a greater issue of making sure to take care of the little things for your customers.
Facebook, (today from what I can tell), removed the “is” from every status update. Like I said, this won’t make sense if you’ve never used it… but it was a little thing that was different from Twitter as Twitter did not include the “is”. For example… if I posted… “Brian is at the movies” on Twitter, it would report just that. But - if I had typed the same thing at Facebook it would say “Brian is is at the movies”. Double “is”.
My point was, that it is definitely a little thing and not worth griping about really…but I’m glad Facebook made such a little change because it makes their little tool easier to use the way I imagine it was intended.
Similarly, we often have things at ShareASale that we know are “broken” but are little things in the grand scope of things. I hereby apologize for all of those “little things” and am going to try to sweep through a bunch of them - as I realized today (again) how important little things are to just generating good will and making you all (our customers) happy with us.
So there ya go… anyone who doubts the longevity of the social marketing space can chalk this one up into the column of “things I’ve learned from Facebook”.
MarketingSherpa s E-mail Marketing Benchmark Guide
The annual MarketingSherpa E-mail Marketing Benchmark Guide is now available, and it’s a key read to keep up with e-mail marketing. Marketing Sherpa’s 5th annual Email Marketing Benchmark Guide is their largest edition to date. The guide includes results from an in-depth survey of 1,210 marketers with hands-on e-mail experience; 260 charts, 12 images and nine new […]
Give Nebraska Beef for xmas 
Being from the Midwest I love steak… love love love it. That is one of the things I hate when I travel coastal is they *think* they have decent steaks…. its kind of like how we have decent seafood here in the midwest *blah*. Anyway if you are looking for a last […]
Affiliates Can Use WeViews.tv Video
The content at WeViews.tv is available to any affiliates who wish to use it. Over the past few months, we’ve been creating video reviews of popular products and services. Some hot gift ideas that you might want to promote and supplement with WeViews.tv videos: Amazon e-Giftcards Flip Video Ultra Ion Audio USB Turntable MacBook 13-inch White 2.16GHz VTech V.Smile TV Learning […]
MarketingSherpa s E-mail Marketing Benchmark Guide
The annual MarketingSherpa E-mail Marketing Benchmark Guide is now available, and it’s a key read to keep up with e-mail marketing. Marketing Sherpa’s 5th annual Email Marketing Benchmark Guide is their largest edition to date. The guide includes results from an in-depth survey of 1,210 marketers with hands-on e-mail experience; 260 charts, 12 images and nine new […]
Affiliate Fatblogging, Episode 5
I’m churning right along with the Weight Watchers core program. Another week, another pound down. That brings me to eight pounds lost so far in my quest to knock off 21. Speaking of Weight Watchers, if you’ve been following the affiliate fatblogging series, I’ve been trying to get into the Weight Watchers affiliate program. However, the folks […]
Is Santa Really an Affiliate Marketer?
It s just a rumor of course. We can t be sure if there is any truth to the story but rumor has it that Santa is, in fact, an affiliate marketer. If it is true, the guy is really good! You have to give him that! He has an entire season devoted to his business and the […]
a4uawards - Nominations Are Now Open
Nominations are now open for the first a4uawards. I’m really interested to see how they go as UK awards have been talked about for years but now it’s finally going to happen. Categories include Affiliate Manager of 2007 - Merchant Award Best Agency Account Manager 2007 Publisher/Affiliates Choice of Network 2007 and I can certainly think of […]
Not a podcast - it s a modcast!
It was great fun this morning to invite the moderators of affiliates4u together on a conference call to discuss various issues. Not everyone could make but those who did were Fraser Edwards Julie Hegarty John Lamerton Paul Wheatley Matthew Wood
Affiliate Marketer Shawn Collins is Retiring
I hereby retire from being an affiliate manager. It was back in the fall of 1997 that I first got into managing affiliate programs for a company called Medsite.com. They had a site called MedBookStore.com, which specialized in textbooks for medical students. Anyhow, I managed affiliate programs as an employee or consultant from back then straight […]
The Monday Foursome
All this talk about Cyber Monday … I’m here to hopefully provide some insight into real data on how the holiday shopping season is shaping up.
Starting on the Friday following Thanksgiving, ShareASale noted a pretty steep incline in transactions taking place. How steep? Taking usual transaction volume averages for the previous few months - “Black Friday” saw a raw increase of about 15%. That’s pretty good I think. That was Friday…. and then there was Sunday - seeing an additional increase taking the whole thing to more like 25% increase.
Monday….well, Monday was closer to a 50% increase over previous month averages. This number is notably higher than some of the national averages that have been released, which (pure speculation really) I think has to do with the flexibility of smaller merchants in combination with the lean towards “bargain shoppers” in the affiliate channel.
Lessons learned? First off, congratulations to all of the merchants and affiliates who prepared for “Cyber Monday” by designing deals, shopping incentives, motivations, etc… Your efforts obviously paid off.
Second, to those merchants or affiliates who may have underestimated the power of “Cyber Monday” … I’m here to share another historical trend with you.
Cyber Monday was a coined phrase a few years ago (origins are debated) … as a buzzword to help us all kick off the shopping season. However, the true trend lies in the four Mondays that lead up to the end of the year. They include (this year) November 26th, December 3rd, 10th, and 17th. (hence, the “Monday Foursome” (no relation to the Sunday Foursome, Four Horsemen, or Forefathers) )
Using last year as an example, ShareASale experienced approximately a 5-10% increase each Monday over the next (excluding last Monday due to shipping deadlines, etc…)
So - what I am trying to tell you is that if you are a merchant or an affiliate looking to take advantage of the holiday shopping season, stay tuned and ready because Cyber Monday might be a kickoff to the season, but there are even bigger days to come.
AdMob Mobile Affiliate Network Revises Pricing
AdMob is working on improving performance for their advertisers and publishers via fee adjustments, which went into effect on December 5, 2007. In some cases, they are raising minimum bids for advertising, and in others they are lowering minimum bids in order to maximize market efficiencies. AdMob state that “minimum bid increases in the following […]
A few things we have changed since Think Tank
Well, I hope to get to all of the great suggestions that were put out there at our in-person annual event (the ShareASale Think Tank) … but here are a few highlights that we’ve been working on since then (October).
Feedback Feature - was actually in place just before Think Tank, but was discussed a lot and some tweaks were made. Basically, merchants can leave feedback for affiliates - who can then reply, etc…
Merchant Terms of Use - we have added a system whereas any modification to the Terms of Agreement is then emailed to the affiliate base - including both full agreements and a brief “Summary” so that Merchants can highlight the individual things that have changed such as PPC policy, etc…
Application Process - Affiliates now have a place to include a short description of what they plan to do for the program… including listing a specific website that they would like to use. This should ease the pain of trying to apply for a program with a website that doesn’t really fit, even though you have another one that does, etc…. On that same page, affiliates must view, read, and agree to the terms of the individual program. Current, new, and PPC policies are listed. A history will be kept so that Merchants can keep track from within the interface and not just by the email notification, etc…
A new “Join Program” button was added to each Merchant’s “Detail” page, as it was described that the previous button was hard to find, etc…
Banner View organization (default) changed as it was confusing in an upside down alphabetical order.