Online Marketing Glossary: Cookie
Cookie:
- Small file stored on a visitor’s computer that records information. For affiliate programs, cookies have two functions: to keep track of what a customer purchases and to track which affiliate was responsible for generating the sale and is owed a commission.
The vast majority of affiliate programs use cookies. When a visitor clicks on an ad, a cookie is placed on their computer that says where they came from. When they make a sale, the cookie fires off information to the merchant to tell them who the credit should go to. Cookies have a shelf life and often expire after 90 or 180 days. This allows the cookie to fire off information about the referring website for up to that amount of days if they come back and make their sale later. This also applies when generating leads.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Spamdexing
Spamdexing:
- Also called search engine spamming. It combines techniques employed by some Web marketers and designers to fool a search engine’s spider and indexing programs to ensure that their website always appears at or near the top of the list of search engine results.
I’m sure you’ve come across this without realizing it. You go to Google and search for something relatively common and the SERP has listings near the top that, upon clicking them, you find have nothing to do with what you’re looking for.
This is because the marketers behind that website (usually laden with affiliate links and poor or scrapped content) have gamed the system and used these tactics.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Lead Generation
Lead Generation:
- Websites that generate leads for products or services offered by another company. On a lead generation site, the visitor completes a contact form to get more information about a product or service. The submitted contact form is counted as a lead.
While it’s easier on some levels to generate a lead than a sale since no money is involved initially on the consumer’s end, leads are trickier nuts to crack. Merchants often must batch lead payments due to the inevitable scrubs, dupes, and just bad leads.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Feeds
Feeds:
- A Web document that is a shortened or updated version of a webpage created for syndication. Usually served at user request, through subscription; also includes ad feeds to shopping engines and paid-inclusion ad models. Ad feeds are usually in eXtensible markup language (XML) or rich site summary format.
There are great tools out there for affiliates to utilize data feeds put out by merchants to create their own customized online shops. Pop Shops and GoldenCAn are the two big ones.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Commission
Commission (also Referral Fee, Finder’s Fee, Bounty):
- The income an affiliate receives for generating a sale, lead or click through to a merchant’s website.
AKA, the reason there are affiliates at all. You have to give a person something to motivate them to promote your brand as a merchant. In performance marketing, that “something” is the commission. Without the commission you’d be asking these online advertisers to promote your service just because they like you, and you wouldn’t get a whole lot of response 🙂
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Targeted Marketing
Targeted Marketing:
- The act of making the right offers available to the right customer at the right time.
So, I added “available” to the definition, although I think that might just have been a typo from the original article online. Like visitor segmentation, targeted marketing will boost conversion rates by giving the visitors what they want.
I’ll take a minute to talk about the ills of NOT using targeted marketing. If you have a website about memorials for lost loved ones, don’t serve ads for dating services. If your website is about international delicacies, don’t serve ads for pet adoption – it sends the wrong message.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
