Online Marketing Glossary: Abandonment
Abandonment:
- When a user leaves a shopping cart with an item prior to completing the transaction.
Many factors contribute to why people would abandon without purchasing. A high probability is the complication of the check out process or having to sign in or create an account to do order. The easier it is for customers to order, the higher the likelihood that they’ll complete the purchase.
____
Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Keyword Domain Name
Keyword Domain Name:
- The use of keywords as part of the URL to a website. Positioning is improved on some search engines when keywords are reinforced in the URL.
Many people take advantage of this in buying their domains, not just because of the improved results with the search engines, but to keep the URL as relevant to your topic as possible. When the URL is relevant to the content, it’s easier for visitors to remember when they want to come back.
____
Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Martheketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Rank
Rank:
- How high a particular webpage or website is listed in a search engine’s results.
Obviously the higher you rank, the more prominent your results are going to be and the more traffic you will see. This is true across any industry.
____
Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Cribbed Content for August 15th
it’s been a crazy week, but a lot has been going on in the business world (not to mention my world lol)
- CVS Pharmacy bought small California chain Longs Drugs this week for $2.9 billion. Growing up with Longs, I’ll miss seeing the name around but they’re not one of the better stores so I don’t see it as a loss.
- AOL jumped into life streaming with their acquisition of Social Thing this week as well. I’ve never used Social Thing much, but I definitely won’t use it if it just gets pulled into their system.
- Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston wrapped up – I’m slowly getting all of my coverage posted. The next time I go to the show I hope to have a better laptop with a better battery and better wireless card so I can blog from the sessions instead of taking notes and blogging later. So much for live & current coverage!
That’s really about it this week since I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to antyhing outside of the summit. I did pick up some good tools, so the Free Toolsday column should be back soon!
Read MoreOnline Marketing Glossary: Distribution Network
Distribution Network:
- A network of websites or search engines and their partner sites on which paid ads can be distributed. The network receives advertisements from the host search engine, paid for with a CPC or CPM model.
To be completely honest, I don’t have an example of this or any experience. If you do, please share it in the comments so we can all learn from YOUR expertise! You have all weekend to “school” us!
____
Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Affsum Session: Affiliate Marketing Basics for Merchants
Apparently this same session has been given for awhile now, and is usually referred to as Developing the Right Merchant Mindset. The speaker was:
- Andy Rodriguez, President, Andy Rodriguez Consulting Inc.
Overall there were some good basics here… but I guess I’ve graduated to where the basics are too basic for me.
Bullet Point Review!
- Lots of merchants don’t understand how affiliate marketing works and hence end up abusing the system.
- Affiliates work when they want and for whom they want – once you understand this you’re going in the right direction.
- Affiliates cannot be fired – they’re not your employees.
- Affiliates don’t work for you, they work with you.
- Affiliates have no fixed work hours and no time requirements.
- Affiliates have no fear of loss of compensation or sick days.
- Affiliates have more work than hours in the day.
- Affiliates don’t need you, you need them.
- Affiliates’ most important asset & ROI is TIME.
- Merchant’s most important & ROI is TRUST.
- Build the relationships and the sales will follow.
- Be sure your commissions are comparable.
- Most sales happen in the first 24-48 hours, but long cookies are still appealing to affiliates.
- Affiliates talk – so make sure it’s good.
- Important to notify affiliates of any downtime ahead of time.
- What does it take?
- Merchant mindset
- Affiliate’s first impression
- Program information
- Registration/Application
- Approval Letter – make sure all letters are genuinely personalized
- Rejection Letter
- Creating links – make it simple for affiliates to get links
- What’s in it for the affiliate?
- Commission rates
- Return days
- Creative inventory
- Clear call to action
- Deep linking
- Tools of the trade
- Link options
- Commission structure is flexible
- Affiliate relationship
- Trust
Points brought up during the Q&A
- Goldencan, popshops – some tools that are easy to help affiliates.
- Successful merchant/AM has 1st hand experience as an affiliate & is able to help partners to improve conversions, drive traffic, & motivate them.
- Just search for your top key words + affiliate to do a vertical analysis.
- There are pros & cons to direct linking that are based on the merchant – in general direct linking will have higher conversion rates.
- Stronger brands = not so good idea to allow TM bidding
- Smaller, weaker brands = might be good.
- Should have a program on one network
- There are problems with different networks and compatibility (adware).
- Transitioning is different – just be open & clear.
- How do you find niche affiliates to recruit?
- Tools Aurelius, visit forums like ABestWeb.
- .5% – 1% – 25% of affiliates in a program are active usually. 8-12% is about average.
- Don’t remove affiliates unless they’re doing something unethical or against terms – many will apply with an idea in mind but may not get them in gear right away.
- Continue to reach out to inactive affiliates offering assistance.
- Is everything okay?
- Can I help?
- Have you had a problem with this merchant?
- Is there anything I can do to help you?
- Remember to include links, promotions, CAB (Cash Activation Bonus) and incentives
- Merchants that have their program across multiple networks with different offers are probably looking to switch networks & are offer better terms on the network they’re moving to as an incentive to get affiliates switched faster.
- If you need contact information that your network doesn’t share, there are tools that will help you go around the network to get information – the network is more of a software application.
- Have contests – it’s a great motivator to get a non-performing affiliate active.
- A low percentage of active affiliates are usually due to bad activation emails or poor merchant support.
- Banners are becomming passe, articles are great, and data feeds are here to stay.
