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Last week Share Results attended and exhibited at the Affiliate Summit West Conference in Las Vegas, and I can easily say that this was one of our most successful summits yet. So successful, that it took me 4 full days to recover, after a whirlwind of meetings, networking events, sessions, parties, booth duty, more meetings, more parties, and lots and lots of business cards. Here’s a quick recap of some of my personal highlights:

-The scale and quality of the this summit – by far the largest and most productive affiliate summit I’ve attended to date. The sessions were all well attended, the meet market was packed to the gills as usual and the conference floor was a buzz with constant activity, but what surprised me most was the number of conference attendees EVERYWHERE – walking the halls of the Rio, attending the networking parties and events, we were everywhere! Even when I dragged my weary self to the gym for an early 7am run I ran into fellow affiliate marketers who were passionate about their business and eager to share ideas. It’s a fantastic sign for the industry.

-The diversity of attendees – No longer are people fitting into the usual publisher/advertiser/network molds. Most affiliates I met were also starting do to some consulting work, software development, or program management on the side, while networks were becoming advertisers, and third party agencies and service providers were developing their own new opportunities. This means that you have to listen a lot more closely and ask questions to find out what people do, but the payoff is that there are more diverse ways of working with partners and competitors that may have not been considered before.

-More indepth sessions – I only had a chance to attend one, but it was really worth it. A panel discussion on coupons in affiliate marketing, it was a great opportunity to hear ideas from affiliates, OPMs, and merchants on how to make coupons profitable and successful for affiliate programs and merchants. Annabelle and Vanesa attended some sessions as well and both came back with pages of useful notes.

-More great networking events – this year the trend seemed to be more private or invite only parties, I’m assuming because logistically it’s too hard to organize parties for 4,000 plus attendees. The upside was that the quality and choice of events to attend was stellar, and I got to see some really neat venues in Vegas. Kudos to Paresh of OPMPros.com for organize two amazing nights at Club Vanity and Club XS, Plimus for hosting a sushi and drinks event where I won a bottle of Dom Perignon, and SAS for the cool photobooth, awesome deserts, and free darts at their karoke party.

We’ve already booked our booth for New York, can’t wait to see what the next summit brings!

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Part of our goal at Share Results is to continually develop our software and services to offer merchants and affiliates the most advanced, most robust marketing solutions.  On this note, we are very excited to let you know that we have been working diligently to enhance our affiliate marketing software, and we are now ready to launch.

Here’s a breakdown of our new and improved affiliate marketing software.

What’s New for Merchants

• A completely redesigned GUI (Graphical User Interface)
• Improved navigation
• More powerful CRM section
• Easier access to Fraud Tools

What’s New for Affiliates

• A completely redesigned GUI (Graphical User Interface)
• Improved navigation

We’ll be speaking all about our new and improved software solution at Affiliate Summit West 2010.  Will you be there?  We’d love to have you swing by booth #413 for a software demo, and also to ask our team members about how our enhanced software can help you better meet your business goals.

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Share Results Launches New and Improved Affiliate Marketing Software Solution

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Last year was a banner year here at Share Results and we have resolved to make this one even better than the last. And what better way to start off than with a brand new website redesign?

You’ll notice that the website navigation has been simplified, making it easier for affiliates and merchants to find the information that they’re looking for. You’ll also find a list of our top merchants, for those affiliates who are interested in our program, as well as detailed explanations of how our affiliate managers can help your business succeed.

New to this design is the addition of a Glossary of terms, relative to the affiliate marketing field and an FAQ section that answers many of the questions that merchants and affiliates have regarding our complete affiliate marketing solution. And if you don’t find what you’re looking for, we have a Contact page that allows you to quickly send us your questions, comments or concerns.

We’ll be unveiling our new site at the Affiliate Summit, which takes place from January 17-19 in Las Vegas. Drop by our booth to take a look at the new site, or to ask us more about how we can help you achieve your marketing goals. To set up an appointment, or for any questions you might have, email us at affiliates@shareresults.com.

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Share Results Enters the New Year with a New Website Design

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With the Affiliate Summit coming up very shortly, we’re taking the opportunity to share with you as much as we can about the different departments here at Share Results and what they can do to help support you and your business.

A vital part of our organization here is the Affiliate Management team. Our dedicated affiliate managers are committed to allying merchants with the most appropriate affiliates to help them market their products. Their skills lie in being able to help businesses establish themselves in the affiliate marketing world through a six-point approach, outline below.

1. Getting to Know You
First, we take the time to find out everything we can about your business. What are your strengths, your potential weaknesses and your unique selling point? We take the time to analyze everything we can about your business, your products and services to get a firm foundation of what your business represents.

2. Assessment of your Marketing Goals
In the next step, we assess your affiliate marketing goals. What are you willing to invest and what are your short- and long-term goals? Additionally, an assessment of your company’s resources is imperative to understanding what tools you will be able to provide affiliates with. Do you have a design team? Do you have an affiliate manager, or management team? Assessing these aspects of your business will help us to understand what goals can be accomplished over the short and the long term.

3. Competitor Analysis
The next part of the process is a competitor analysis. Understanding who your competition is will help you to establish your current position in the marketplace and give you an idea of how to proceed. Who are the other companies that are competing for your affiliates/customers and what are they doing to achieve that? This will help you to understand how and why your customers are spending money and how you can best reach your customer base.

4. Establish Target Market
Once this is established, we have the foundation necessary to establish the target market. And by doing so, we can then match your business with the appropriate affiliates, and help you target the right customers. Having established very strong relationships with our affiliates allows us to determine who the best fits are going to be for your specific business.

5. Strategy Set-up
From here, we form a strategy for differentiating your business from the others. We know what makes you special and how you are currently positioned, so from there, we are able to plan on how to best expose your company and use best practices for branding.

6. What is Your ROI?
Of course, the goals that your company has will dictate the actions taken at this point. And because we understand how affiliates are driving traffic to their sites, we can assess who is going to be the best for your brand and is the best match for your goals. You know what you want to spend, as well as what you want to get out of that expenditure, so with all of the steps we’ve taken up to this point, we’ll be able to provide you with a detailed assessment of what is possible and help you to put that plan into action.

While at the Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas, we’ll be at booth #413 and we encourage all of your to come by and find out more about our Affiliate Management team and our full-service marketing solution. In attendance will be Director of Client Relations, Kristyn Gaffney, IT Operations Manager Vanesa Cantt, Affiliate Marketing Manager Julia Stead and Affiliate Manager, Annabelle Agnew. They are there to answer all of your questions and are looking forward to sharing their experience with all of you. See you there!

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Affiliate Management: Six Steps to Success

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In our last post in the How to Become an Affiliate series, we looked at a few of the different types of affiliate marketers. In this, the third and final installation in this series, we will look at two more types of affiliate marketers.

Email Affiliates

If you can get people to sign up for a newsletter that will promote certain goods and services, then you can become an email affiliate. Obviously, you need a forum to get people to sign up for a newsletter, so that’s step one. But once you have a list of individuals, you can start sending targeted promotions and offers.

The great part of this strategy is that you know that, having signed up for the newsletter, they want to receive your emails, but the disadvantage is that some of these emails might not make it through their spam filters. Another downside is if they choose to unsubscribe, you have lost them as a lead forever.

PPC Affiliates

Pay-per-click, or PPC marketing, is a little more advanced, but can be a very lucrative way of generating income. What’s most important about this advertising method is having a good idea of how to do it before attempting it. Because you pay every time someone clicks on your ad, you have to know exactly how to target the right people through proper keyword usage, effective text, and relevant landing pages.

For those who choose to put in the effort, the rewards are there. PPC gives you a great deal of control over your budget, and you will be able to directly target very specific audiences. Comparing how many surfers clicked your ads versus how many signed up for services will allow you to easily track your ROI (return on investment).

However you choose to go about it, the most important thing to remember is that you only get out what you put in. The chances of an affiliate being successful with a neglected blog with a few banner ads, are slim to none.

However, if you’re willing to dedicate just a little bit of time every week to your marketing efforts, then this can be a great way to make some extra money. And if you’re willing to go all-in and become a full-time affiliate marketer, then you have to approach it as such, or you’ll be back at your old job before you know it.

No matter which direction you choose, one thing you can be assured of is that you will never be bored. The world of affiliate marketing is fascinating and there are many exciting aspects. Learning how to effectively market products is a science in and of itself. Learning new ways to target specific audiences and tracking campaigns to more efficiently manage your business can be a compelling activity. Once you’ve been bit by the affiliate bug, you’ll finding yourself really enjoying your marketing efforts.

If you want to get started in affiliate marketing, or if you are an affiliate who wants to become more successful, our affiliate management team can give you a hand. The Share Results team is here to answer whatever questions you have, and can supply a great deal of information on how to create a successful campaign.   Contact us at affiliates@shareresults.com for more information.

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After the success of last year’s Affiliate Summit East, the Share Results team is getting excited about heading to Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Las Vegas. We’ll be at booth 413 from January 17-19, and will be taking the opportunity to reach out to our partners and affiliates, and develop some new relationships along the way.

Accompanying CEO, Nicky Senyard will be Director of Client Relations, Kristyn Gaffney, Affiliate Marketing Manager Julia Stead and Affiliate Manager, Annabelle Agnew.

We’ve got a lot to share with you this year, and we’re particularly excited about the re-launch of our software solution with multi-language support. With our software available in any language, make sure to ask us how this exciting language feature can help you branch out to new international markets, and develop new relationships with affiliates in different countries.

With the ease of integration provided by the software solution and implemented by our dedicated teams, this is a great solution for anyone looking for superior affiliate software supported by a knowledgeable affiliate management team.

The other thing that already seems to be creating some buzz this year is the formation of our new Search Engine Management team. Our SEM expert team is Google Adwords and Google Analytics certified and can help you to generate some extra qualified traffic. They can perform in-depth audits of the performance of your website, and can even help to point you in the right direction once the assessment is complete.

Of course, everyone is free to come by and chat about anything at all. Our team of delegates is there to answer all your questions, so come on over and chat with them. They’ll be set up at booth 413, so make sure to drop by and say hello. You’re also welcome to set up an appointment beforehand; email Julia Stead at Julia [at] shareresults [dot] com to make an appointment today!

Looking forward to seeing you there!

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Affiliate Summit West 2010, Here We Come!

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Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone as online retailers prepared for consumers buying in less quantities by being more strategic with their campaigns. This proved to be a winning approach as earlier predictions for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales were smashed this past weekend when the final numbers rolled in.

The proof is in the Christmas pudding (courtesy of Coremetrics data):

- Sales were up 13.7 percent compared to Cyber Monday 2008

- Cyber Monday continued the momentum set by Black Friday. Sales were up 24.1 percent compared to Black Friday 2009.

- The average dollar amount consumers spent per online order rose 38.2 percent from Cyber Monday 2008 ($180.03 versus $130.24), led by apparel retailers.

With many retailers offering huge savings and free shipping, shoppers indeed took advantage of their offers and this was especially apparent for apparel retailers. According to Coremetrics, apparel retailers and jewelry retailers reported the biggest jumps in the average dollar amount consumers spent per online order, up 26.4 percent and 14.3 percent respectively.

Shoppers looking for the best possible deal were not disappointed. For example, plus-size fashion leader AdditionElle, Penningtons and MXM offered a wide variety of savings ranging from free shipping, to dollar savings, to my personal favorite BOGO (Buy One Get One).

All in all, it was a very successful weekend that officially kicked off this season’s holiday shopping spree. It looks as though Santa will be generous this year .

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Cyber Monday 2009 Surpasses Expectations

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The Chick Lit genre has grown in popularity over the past decade. From Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones Diary to the Sex and the City collection of essays by Candace Bushnell, Chick Lit has become a staple in many women’s book lists. With empowered female protagonists choosing between being financially independent, shopping and love (generally in that order), we are often led to believe that these qualities are part of an everyday women’s life. As a genre, the Chick Lit that we’ve become accustomed to is supposed to be representative of a woman’s hopes, fears, dreams and values, but is this an accurate description of the “real” woman? I think not, and neither do an array of authors and publishers who are urging to include a sense of realism into the genre.

As such, there has been a completely new genre of Chick Lit –   a breath of fresh air if you may. “These books are spearheading the revolution towards a more realistic perception of real women in easy-reading literature” says Mink Elliot, author of The Pi**ed Off Parents Club. This new genre is attempting to move in a new direction, away from the focus of women antagonizing over weight and appearance while juggling several love interests and an addiction to shopping.

“Chick Lit is finally holding a real mirror up to its readers, and they can’t get enough of it”, says Elliott. This new sense of ‘body confidence’ is the same concept that is being promoted by leading plus-size retailers like AdditionElle, Penningtons and MXM. By celebrating ‘real women’, these brands are at the forefront of the new wave of body image that is erasing stereotypes everywhere.

Trish Wylie, author of His LA Cinderella – a ‘bigger Chick Lit’ book – offers this interesting tidbit, “All women have body-image issues, no matter how slim they are. The ultimate fantasy for most women is simply accepting themselves, whatever their body weight. That’s what we, as authors, are responding to.”

Power to people like “Ugly Betty” creator Silvio Horta. It’s almost 2010, and it’s about time that the natural beauties of the world started getting together and exuding confidence for who they are. Together, authors like Wylie and retailers like Addition Elle, Penningtons and MXM are leading the way for women who simply want something they can relate to; the truth.

If you would like to promote AdditionElle/Penningtons/MXM, we can provide you with strong content and tailored creative for your audience.

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With the right knowledge, merchants have a greater opportunity to manage campaigns. Finding out where programs are successful and where they might need work can mean the difference between a good business and a great one.

Using feedback acquired over the course of several years, Share Results has worked steadily with partners to provide a software solution that meets the needs of merchants and allows them to track program performance results.

The software (available as a stand-alone proprietary product or accessible to merchants who are part of the Share Results network) is equipped with a powerful dashboard tool that allows merchants to view performance statistics at a glimpse, enabling them to get the information they need to measure campaign performance.

The Traffic Report is a reporting option included in the Share Results software. It allows you to pull reports based on several different criteria, all of which are important to the marketing process. For example, a merchant can group their report by “Affiliate ID” to help assess how many affiliates are actually promoting, and whether or not they find value in using the marketing tools provided for their email or PPC campaigns, or banners they place at the top of their site. If you find that the numbers here are low, one area to explore is whether or not you have a competitive commission payout, because you may have great tools, but if the pay isn’t high enough, it may not be attracting enough partners to your program.

Generating a Traffic Report by “Creative ID” allows a merchant to evaluate what tools are generating the most clicks and whether or not they are converting. Merchants who place a registration pixel on their site will help affiliates to see those results in the report, because our software captures that data. The success of a creative may depend on where the affiliate has placed the tool. If it’s in a prime location on their website and you aren’t seeing any sales, then that is a fairly clear indication that interest in your product may be low and may require more brand exposure.

Using the Share Results software to generate a Transaction Report can help to determine how many affiliates are generating sales and just exactly where those sales are coming from. You’ll know that your product or service can convert if you’re seeing sales, but if you see little or no sales over a three-month period, then you need to evaluate elements of your program, like whether or not you have the right affiliates promoting your product or if you have enough dynamic marketing tools to help them promote. If you already have a lot of quality affiliates, perhaps you need to look at increasing brand recognition.

The Referring URL column toward the far right of the Transaction Report will allow you to see which web pages your affiliates are using to promote your products. Knowing exactly where the sales are being generated from can help you learn more about an affiliate’s campaign strategy.

The knowledge of how to measure program performance is out there, and we can help assemble it for you in such a way as it will make sense to you, and help you in your marketing strategies. For more information on how Share Results can help you as a merchant, or as an affiliate, feel free to contact one of our affiliate marketing managers. Or, feel free to email us at merchants[at]shareresults[dot]com.

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Ways Merchants can Measure Affiliate Program Performance

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The holidays present online retailers with tremendous earning potential.  With mere days left in the month of October, and the countdown to the real holiday madness just around the corner, now is the time to have a good look at your marketing campaigns to make sure you’re set up to enhance your sales volume, and ultimately, seal the deal.  Here are some key areas of your marketing campaigns that you should look at to make sure you’re in shape for the season.

1. Quality Affiliates
Having knowledgeable, capable marketing partners is crucial to the success of your online campaigns.  A quality affiliate will have an attractive, user-friendly website with a high page rank, and will employ multiple marketing methods to promote your product(s).  So make it a point of recruiting these affiliates and regularly logging into your account to evaluate the quality of partners that you are attracting to your program.

If you don’t feel confident about the caliber of your partners, you should speak to your affiliate manager, or consider re-evaluating your recruitment strategy.  Your Traffic Report can also help you identify your top-performing affiliates, along with their conversion rates, and can be pulled based on Affiliate ID.  Once you have partners whom you believe have the potential to perform well in your program, the more likely quality sales will be generated.

2. Click-Through Rate
Your click-through rate is an important indicator to help you determine whether (a) customers are attracted to your product/service, and (b) if they are abandoning your landing page for some unforeseen issue.  For example, you may create an effective banner ad or coupon, but a problem on an affiliate’s site, your landing page or your shopping cart could be impacting the customer’s ultimate decision to buy.

The Deep Linking tool is applied by merchants who want to help their affiliates highlight specific products that match the need of the customer.  This tool allows affiliates to send customers to an exact area of your site that truly responds to their buying need.  When a customer sees a product on a banner that they like, and then lands on a relevant landing page for that item, you are helping to seal the deal, and reduce the odds of shopping cart abandonment.  If you’re seeing low stats, consider permitting a tool like deep linking in your program, or talk to your Share Results affiliate manager to offer some insight.

3. Seal the Deal
Once an affiliate has sent a customer to your website, and the customer is ready to buy, it’s up to you to seal the deal.   Make sure you have the right tools, and are doing everything you can to make buying convenient and simple.
An example of a deal breaker might be a banner on an affiliate’s site promising a flat price for one of your products, only to have that customer discover shipping charges during the checkout process.  In fact, according to comScore, 43% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts because of unexpectedly high shipping charges, and 72% of consumers say that if an e-commerce site eliminated free shipping, they would use another e-commerce site that did offer free shipping.  Free shipping is just one of several incentives that are important to online shoppers, so make sure to incorporate this in your strategy whenever possible.

Most importantly, remember to apply your Share Results marketing software to its full potential by using the tools at your disposal, and to check in with your affiliate manager regularly to find more strategic techniques for closing the sale.

Is your affiliate marketing campaign ready for the holiday season? If not, this is the blogging event to get you ready for the busiest season of the year. Check out last week’s blogs, and make sure to tune in until November 27 for more tips and techniques to help you end Q4 with your most successful campaign yet!

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Merchants: Boost Your Sales and Seal the Deal with 3 Quick Tips

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As the cold air begins to flow, merchants are on the lookout for what kind of online shopping trends are on the horizon for this 2009 season. October is half over, and if you haven’t started to prep your Q4 campaigns already, it’s time to get started!

This year, it is estimated that US retail e-commerce sales (excluding travel) will total $132 billion, down 0.4% from 2008. eMarketer forecasts online sales will begin to rebound in 2010 and hit full stride in 2011 if the recession is to end in 2009 as economists have predicted.

Trends suggest consumers will be spending less this holiday season making it more of challenge for retailers to attract ideal customers to both brick and mortar and online stores. That, of course does not mean there will be no shoppers, but it means that consumers will be more selective. That simply means that this season, more than ever, it is important to stand out, and make educated decisions about where advertising money should be spent.

Trends also show a progressive shift in consumer research, and there are more value shoppers who will browse research and compare products on the Internet. Consumers are using social media more to search for deals and coupons via Twitter, Facebook. So, marketers may want to channel more resources into that avenue.

In preparation for the 2009 holiday shopping season, online retailers looking to create the most effective e-commerce site should take the following steps:

1. Optimize website with holiday focused content
2. Improve pay per click (PPC) advertising campaigns for holidays
3. Driving more sales through the Comparison Shopping Engines
4. Create more customer loyalty programs
5. Humanizing customer service
6. Increase free shipping offers
7. Offer exclusive holiday coupons
8. Plan long term on how to reach consumer AFTER the holiday season have passed

For more techniques, tools, tips and great resources to make sure you’re getting every last drop out of your affiliate marketing campaigns, be sure to come back to the Share Results blog. Until November 27, Share Results.com is throwing a big Holiday Blogging Event, packed with all kinds of seasonal information regarding trends for Q4, tips to get the best deals, consumer trends and how best optimize your affiliate marketing campaigns.

Go here to read the rest:
2009 Online Holiday Shopping Trends

Search Engine Keywords:

• shopping trends
• online shopping trend
• trends for online shopping 2009

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If PPC is part of your affiliate marketing campaigns, (and it should be!) then the Affiliate Custom ID (ACID) Tool is a great feature of the Share Results software that you should become familiar with.

What is the ACID Tool?
The ACID Tool is a Share Results software feature that allows you to add a custom parameter to your links to enable more detailed tracking at the transaction level, and to track the traffic that you are generating directly to a merchant’s website.

What is the Benefit of Using the ACID Tool?
The great thing about using the ACID Tool is that you will be able to instantly identify which keywords are working for you. This information will allow you to tweak your future PPC campaigns, ensuring that you are getting the greatest return on your investment.

Where Do I Access the ACID Tool?
To access the ACID tracking, (1) go to the Share Results Banner Manager, (2) select your campaign, (3) select your creative and (4) add a unique identifier in the addACID text box and click on update.

How Do I Implement the ACID Tool?
Implementing the ACID requires that the additional parameter and value be added at the end of the standard affiliate link.

1) When you create your ACID link in Share Results, it will look like this:

http://www.shareresults.com/t/url.php/cid/[cid]/sid/[sid]/acid/[ACIDtracking]

[cid] = is the banner id generated automatically by Share Results
[sid] = is the site ID supplied by Share Results that identifies the affiliate
[acid] = can be your keyword or an alphanumeric value supplied by the affiliate

2) For the tracking to be PPC compliant, you need to modify the tracking to the following:
http://www.shareresults.com/t/url.php?cid=[cid]&sid=[sid]&acid=[ACIDtracking]
And note, when you are tweaking your tracking (in point 2 above), that you are adding “?”, “=” and “&”. This will ensure that your tracking is PPC compliant.

I Have my Affiliate Custom ID, Now What?
Once you’ve created your ACID, you need to add this URL to the destination URL in your PPC campaign. The keyword that generated the sale will now show up in the Transaction Report of Share Results. To view the ACID, look at your Affiliate CID column, shown below.

Are you getting ready for Q4… and the upcoming holiday season? It’s the perfect opportunity to start using the ACID tool. Log into your Share Results account and get set up with the ACID Tool by implementing this tracking to your PPC campaigns today! Have questions, need assistance getting started? Contact jamie at shareresults.com—he’d be pleased to help!

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How To Use the Share Results ACID Tool in a PPC Campaign

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If affiliate marketing is an important part of your acquisition strategy, then you might want to consider bringing your affiliate program in-house. Doing so offers you more control of your affiliate database and tracking, and there are increased efficiencies because you’re not outsourcing a major part of your marketing strategy.

Of course, if you’re going to bring an affiliate program in-house, you better make sure that the software you choose to power it is up to par. Otherwise, your base of affiliates is unlikely to switch over from promoting your network-based program to your in-house one.

When evaluating a potential affiliate marketing platform (as well as any 3rd party network program), there are four sets of features to consider:

1. Commission Management Tools
2. CRM Tools
3. Tracking Reports
4. Marketing Tools

By either allowing you optimize your program performance and campaigns, or supporting your affiliates and making your program more appealing to them, each of these sets of tools are essential to the success of an affiliate program.

Commission Management Tools

Supporting flexible commissions helps you maximize the return on various promotions by tailoring incentives according to the needs of a product, promotion, and/or target affiliate demographic. There are three essential features that an affiliate platform should provide if it’s going to help you effectively manage custom commission structures: (1) support for different ad-models, (2) commission groups, and (3) automated commission management.

Implementing Custom Commissions: your software should support CPM, CPC, tiered CPA, and hybrid commission tracking; this will help optimize your program for the long-term by attracting a blend of affiliates that can quickly generate results, as well as affiliates who prefer to build a steady revenue stream over time. Working with a wider-base of affiliates gives you more control over your program, and insulates you from sudden changes in the market.

Commission Groups: your software should make it possible to pre-approve affiliates for certain commission structures by assigning them to groups; affiliates only see the different commissions available to the groups their assigned to.

Automated Commissions Management: such a feature ensures that when a custom commission structures is set up for special promotions, (1) it expires alongside the promotion, (2) the relevant affiliates are automatically notified of the expiration, and (3) a new, replacement commission is automatically applied to all affiliates on that promotion.

Affiliate CRM Tools

Affiliate software should also include sufficient CRM tools to help you retain affiliates, keep them active, and better publicize promotions and other program developments. So your affiliate software should possess CRM features that facilitate both internal and external communication.

Internal Message Bank: an internal inbox, it should be featured on the affiliate dashboard, communicating with affiliates the moment they log in.

Email Lists Generation: makes it possible to segment affiliates according to performance (inactive, super-affiliate, etc.), generate a targeted list of those affiliates, and then reach out to that targeted demographic with specialized communications.

HTML Mailer: makes it possible to build, preview, and deploy marketing emails through your affiliate software interface so that you don’t have to also use email marketing software if you don’t want to.

Email Alerts: notifies affiliates via email whenever transactions occur, internal message are received, or a new promotion is available; this is essential to keeping affiliate engaged and active.

Affiliate Tracking Reports

There are four kinds of affiliate reporting that are necessary to optimize an affiliate program: traffic, earnings, creatives, and period comparisons. These reports provide invaluable metrics on the ROI of the program and other marketing efforts, and should be available in a variety of formats.

Traffic Report: helps you identify your strengths in the acquisition process by providing insight into the full acquisition cycle; it compares conversion success at the click, registration, and conversion level based on both creatives and landing pages.

Earning Report: provides intelligence on your top earning affiliates and which promotions and commission structures deliver the greatest return; this helps you determine how individual and groups of affiliates are performing, what’s working for them, and what can be done to maximize their performance.

Marketing Creative Reports: offers insight into which creatives deliver the best return; this intelligence can be used to both maximize the program performance and, because of the performance-based model of affiliate marketing, helps you test creatives before deploying them across other acquisition channels (such as CPM networks).

Period Comparison: helps you identify what caused a change in program performance by providing an overview of changes in your affiliate program performance over time; this report is particularly useful for conducting quarterly or seasonal analysis of program performance.

Exporting Reports: your reports should also be adaptable to your pre-existing business needs; your affiliate software should make all reports available to be exported in Excel, CSV, and TXT formats, as well as through an API so that they can be integrated directly into other CRM platforms that you might be using.

Affiliate Marketing Tools

Your affiliate software should also support the needs of affiliates. Essentially, it should help you help them focus more on doing what they do best: driving sales. Have your software feature a variety of tools to help affiliates save time on administrative and technical tasks, and allow them to focus on generating referrals.

Geo-Targeting: uses a user’s IP addresses to allow affiliates to target users with offers and banners that are relevant to their location and language; the affiliate simply drops some banner code on their page, and your software determines the user’s location, then shows them a banner that’s pertinent to them.

Affiliate Custom Tracking: helps affiliates segment and track different campaigns by letting them add additional variables to their affiliate tracking URLs; particularly useful for PPC affiliates, it lets them determine how well each keywords/campaigns converts in a referral.

Banner Rotator: your software should also support javascript that automatically rotates banners so affiliates can always show their users fresh content.

Banner Groups: your affiliates should be able to create banner groups to be rotated on different campaigns; this same functionality also allows program managers to create banner groups for different segments of affiliates.

Banner Uploader: program managers can upload new banners directly through the admin interface, and then assign them to specific groups or campaigns.

Third Party Banner Support: your software should also support banners codes and javascript from third party platforms so that both affiliates and program managers can consolidate all their tracking and conversion reports under a single interface.

Deep Linking Tool: allows your affiliates to choose the landing URL/pages of their affiliate links; this supports them in their own marketing methods and helps them provide calls-to-action that resonate and convert with their own user-base.

Widget Support: lets you offer affiliates widgets that show users fresh, dynamic advertising that they can interact with; increases both user-engagement and conversions.

Bringing it Home

Migrating an affiliate program in-house offers you efficiencies and profitability. But if you’re going to be able to bring your affiliates in-house as well, you need to ensure that the technology powering the in-house program features the right commission, tracking, CRM, and marketing tools.

That being said, just because your software alone can break your in-house program, it takes a lot more than your just software to make it. At the end of the day, affiliates like networks because they allow them to manage multiple programs through one account and interface.

So if you’re going to lure them into setting up another account and login, you’re going to have to give them a damn good reason. You can do that partly by passing on some of your increased efficiencies to them in the form of better commissions – offer them a few extra percentage points if they come in-house.

The other half of the equation, of course, is relationships. You’re going to need a strong relationship with your base of affiliates if they’re going to listen when you bring your program in-house. So while you’re building your internal program, focus on getting to know your affiliate-base and building strong relationships with them. That way, when your internal program does go live, you’ll be in a much better position to get their attention and explain to them what’s in it for them if they make the switch.

More here:
Choosing Affiliate Software

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With our recent affiliate dashboard makeover, we couldn’t let our merchants go without a new dashboard makeover as well.

Here now, are a few of our merchant interface changes in a little more detail.

New Welcome Dashboard: The redesigned merchant interface allows our clients to get more information, with less effort. Merchants can immediately see their KPIs, allowing them to quickly change their marketing campaigns in response. This new interface reduces the number of clicks, and more importantly the time spent searching. So with new graphical reporting, merchants can analyze their program performance from the moment they log into the Share Results system.

Top Performing Affiliates: Displays in descending order the top 10 affiliates earning commissions in the merchant’s program for the current month. Includes quick links to affiliate details such as IDs, username and website URL. Other info in this section includes impressions, clicks, click-through-ratio, registrations, approved transactions, total commissions earned for the current month.

Top Banners: Displays the best performing creative by EPC for the merchant’s affiliate program. Includes thumb nail version of creative where applicable. This includes creative by type such as banner, flash, text link, coupon and widgets.

Period Comparison: Displays a graphical trend of the overall program stats over a specific period. Compares stats by number of transactions, impressions, clicks, number of affiliates generating clicks, amount of revenue share commission generated, amount of CPA commission generated, total program commissions and program EPC (earnings per click).

Reports: Allows merchants to quickly access top-level reports directly from the welcome dashboard. Reports include Quick Summary, Traffic, Earnings, Transactions and showing results month-to-date.

If you are a merchant of Share Results we encourage you to take some time to log into your account and provide us your feedback about the new appearance. Email us at: merchants@shareresults.com

Originally posted here:
New Look for Share Results Merchant Dashboard

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We announced a few weeks ago that we had unveiled a completely new look of our affiliate interface.

We wanted to take the opportunity to share with everyone in more detail a few of these new changes.

New Welcome Dashboard: The simple and easy-to-read design of the new welcome dashboard provides affiliates with instant access to critical account information and a list of the top performing creative along with important message alerts from the network. This new dashboard reduces the number of clicks and time spent searching; and with new graphical reporting, affiliates can analyze their campaign performances from the moment they log into their account.

Quick Stats: Displays vital program stats based on all the merchants whose programs an affiliate is subscribed to and for whom they are generating stats. This includes impressions, clicks, approved transactions, commission by percentage, commission by CPA, commissions by referral and total commission.

Period Comparison Chart: Displays a graphical trend of an affiliates ‘campaign stats over a specific period. Affiliates can view period trends for all merchants they promote or just one program.

Commission Breakdown: Graphical display of the commissions affiliates have earned for the total approved transactions for the current month. By hovering over the pie chart with the mouse, affiliates are able to see a breakdown of the amount of commissions earned from each merchant they are promoting.

This fall, we plan to continue developing the look of the Share Results software and various tools within the system to help affiliates navigate and manage their affiliate account more efficiently.

If you are an affiliate of Share Results we encourage you to take some time to log into your account and give us your feedback about the revamped appearance. Email us at: affliates@shareresults.com

Here is the original:
Share Results Affiliate Interface Gets a Makeover

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