As we approach holiday season many e-commerce companies and merchants are gearing up their email campaigns in order to maximize sales at the most important part of the year. The big problem? Email inboxes are flooded with holiday-themed emails. Yes Lifecycle Marketing just released a report titled, “Engagement and Deliverability for Holiday-Themed Emails: Biggest Lessons from … [Read more...]
Google Kills Twitter
Google killed Twitter today. With the launch of Google Buzz they ruthlessly attacked Twitter’s weaknesses and quietly set the scene for subsequent creeping infiltration into Microsoft’s stronghold in the enterprise market. Buzz is a big deal. Google’s Buzz is presented as a simple rival to Twitter. It shows up discreetly as a tab in Gmail, will play nicely … [Read more...]
Old Dog, New Tricks
Forrester's March report, "Email Marketing Comes of Age," finds that clickthrough rates have remained steady since 2003, at an average of 5 percent, and that email is the No. 1 activity on the Web. And Datran Media's December 2006 annual email study found that 83.2 percent of respondents picked email marketing as the most important advertising tactic they planned to use in … [Read more...]
Sweet Charity
If you think getting people to shop online is tough, consider the plight of nonprofit organizations. They ask people for their time and/or money, but instead of receiving goods, these donors simply get the satisfaction of doing good.Although nonprofit organizations may have a different agenda from the for-profit online marketers, many of the goals (building relationships, … [Read more...]
Sell Green to Make Green
For online marketers, green could be the new gold. The events of the past year opened the eyes of many consumers to the importance of being Earth-friendly, which in turn has created an unprecedented opportunity for the sellers of green goods. Hurricane Katrina, the popularity of the global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and President Bush's epiphany … [Read more...]
Follow Up or Fall on Your Face
Guerrilla affiliates know well the importance of customer followup and prospect follow-up because they know what it takes to succeed in business.Why do most businesses lose customers? Poor service? Nope. Poor quality? Nope. Well, then why? I say, it's apathy after the sale. Most businesses lose customers by ignoring them to death. A numbing 68 percent of all business lost in … [Read more...]
Mistakes Lead to Success
Learn from your missteps and the path to affiliate success will be paved with opportunity.Lurk around any affiliate marketing forum for more than a few minutes, and you will surely encounter a post that reads much like this: "Affiliate marketing sucks! I'm not making ANY money and I've tried EVERYTHING - Google AdWords, AdSense and affiliate programs. NOTHING works. My … [Read more...]
Four Ways to Make More Money
Have you ever wondered why big Web sites like AOL, Yahoo and MSN don't run many cost-per-action (CPA) deals in their ad spaces?It's simple: They don't have to. They make much more money selling ads based on impressions rather than the number of customers or leads generated. Who wouldn't prefer to get paid for just showing the ad instead of having to rely on it really … [Read more...]
Beyond Search Engines
Paid search may be driving the rebound in online advertisers, but it's also driving away the promoters with shallow pockets.Demand for paid spots on Yahoo, Google and their ilk is pushing prices sky high. Within the most popular categories, it's hard to stand out from the crowd of merchants without spending a fortune. In fact, some aggressive marketers play "keyword smackdown," … [Read more...]
The Secret to Being Super
They're called superaffiliates, but there are no secret powers behind their amazing sales. They follow the same path every other affiliate does: They publish a Web site, sign up for affiliate programs, download the affiliate codes and troll on the search engines. But they work a little smarter, make a few more calls, send a few more emails and do a lot more testing. And what … [Read more...]
Wooing the Lonely Hearts
With thousands of dating sites on the Web, it can be as hard for surfers to find the right site as it is to find the right mate. Affiliates are the matchmakers of the online dating world, bringing lonely hearts to dating service merchants who can light the path to true love, or at least some warm companionship. In a space Jupiter Research projects will more than double to … [Read more...]
Been There Done That: Q & A with Shawn Collins
It's very difficult to find anyone in affiliate marketing better known than Shawn Collins, who earned his first commissions more than seven years ago.Wearing his newest hat, as president/CEO of Shawn Collins Consulting, he provides outsourced affiliate program management. But he is, perhaps, better known as a co-founder of Affiliate Summit, as the author of the top-selling book … [Read more...]
The Spam Jam
What a mess. Jim Gordon is hell-bent on collecting some of the $600,000 or so he thinks Commonwealth Marketing Group owes him for sending more than 1,500 emails advertising credit cards. He says the emails had inadequate subject lines and the transmission paths - the list of computers that passed along the email - had been doctored. Gordon, who runs an online health and … [Read more...]
Affiliates, Start Your Engines
Unless you've been living in a cave for the last year or so, you probably realize by now that in order to get customers to your affiliate site you have to market it on search engines. Even if you haven't realized this, your competitors certainly have, and if you don't take advantage of what the search engines have to offer, your Web site is likely to go the way of many other … [Read more...]