Reversals happen. They happen to merchants, and by extension, they hit affiliates too. Of course, affiliates love programs with “no reversals” policies, but if you, as a merchant, aren’t ready to offer one, I strongly encourage you to at least stick to the following 3 best practices:

1) Locking Periods — Set the locking period in a way that both gives you enough time to react to your customers’ returns and cancellations, but doesn’t stretch this time beyond the sensible time period required for you to apply the corrections/changes. After all, affiliates don’t get any certainty on their earnings until that commission locks in their account.

2) Explanations — Always provide affiliates with detailed (even if eloquent) info on the reason for the reversal (e.g.: invalid credit card, return/cancellation, duplicate order, customer fraud, affiliate fraud, non-qualified lead or non-fulfilled order requirements, test transaction, etc). Affiliates have the right to know what’s going on. Reversals without explanations are a sure route to disaster.

Below you may see how affiliate commission reversal/correction options look on ShareASale and Commission Junction respectively (frankly, I love ShareASale’s options better, especially the fact that when choosing “Other” you can manually enter your own reason):

3) Keeping Your Word — Whatever your commission reversal policy says, stick to it! If you get a customer that stays with your service for 3 months and then cancels their membership, but your risk-free trial period is set at 30 days (within which they didn’t go away), and your affiliate commission locking period is 40 days, there is no reason whatsoever to even think of reversing the affiliate commission. I’ve had this situation come up just yesterday.

As always, if you have any suggestions about this topic (as an affiliate, merchant, or affiliate program manager), your comments are warmly welcomed.

Good thing Dave Chaffey tweeted a link to Gary Robinson’s Your 60 Second Mobile Review post yesterday. I got hooked on this immediately, and was indulging myself in the analysis of my site’s mobile visitors literally seconds after reading Gary’s post.

My Observations:

• Approximately 3.5% of visitors view my website via mobile devices
• Regardless of how small the above percentage may seem, it accounts for (or translates into) thousands of visitors every year
• The top 3 operating systems over the past four months have been: iPhone (58%), Android (13.6%), and iPad (12.9%)
• The lowest bounce rate registered with “mobile devices” has been with iPad users (natural, isn’t it?)

My Conclusions:

• Start monitoring this particular set of stats more frequently/closely
• Work on optimizing my mobile visitors’ experience (especially those accessing the website on their iPhones and iPads)

My Screenshot:

The fourth quarter is quickly approaching (yes, the first day of calendar Fall is here already!), but there is still time to analyze your websites, and make them (especially those of them that are in any way related to the Q4 shopping season) more mobile-friendly.

Every day there are a number of routine tasks I have to perform. Among them: (i) review of affiliate applications, (ii) response to emails, and (iii) review of blog comments that have queued up in the moderation queue of this blog.

Every day among the good ones, there are also bad and silly ones. Today my cup has finally overflown, and I’ve decided to show some of these “masterpieces” to everyone.

And winners are…….. [drum roll here.......]

Category: Hopeless Affiliate Application

Category: Ill-Researched Email Solicitation

I’m Anna C… at [company name]. I have read your article about email marketing on [URL of website I've never heard of, or written for] and found it quite informative and helpful.

From your article I know you are really an expert in email marketing tools (while, in reality, I am not at all!). At [company name], we also provide powerful and easy-to-use email marketing software for businesses. It’s highly appreciated if you can review our software and help us make it better.

Check it out at: [URL to their product]

Category: Meaningless Blog Comment

Yeah, the post in this blog is true and i thank you for the one who post this site because the researcher will have an idea and the post is so convincing. (spelling retained)

Got similar ones to share? Be my guest! You may do so in the “Comments” are below…

Almost immediately after posting my 9 affiliate fraud prevention tips on Econsultancy I have received the following question from a merchant:

If we do detect a fraudulent affiliate, do you think it’s standard/best practice to remove him or her from the program without paying out the commissions they’ve “earned”?

“Earned”? I believe “stolen” would be a much better choice of a verb in this context!

You may absolutely do what you’re saying. That’s the whole beauty of performance-based marketing: you agree to pay for the performance you’ve defined. You are never be liable to pay for fake “performance”.

Only one more thing to add: it is a good idea to make sure your program’s TOS points out to banning out violators, forfeiting any commissions credited for unacceptable activity.

A friend and fellow affiliate marketer, Mark Welch, writes that “the single most important source of successful affiliates is a direct invitation from the program manager to the site owner or advertising manager” (source: Affiliate Recruitment Strategies and Practices post). I fully concur with Mark here.

Interestingly enough, out of all available methods of direct contact, the vast majority of affiliate program managers are using only one.

In reality, there are 3 methods of direct contact that can be effectively used for affiliate recruitment. They are:

1. Electronic mail (self-explanatory) — This is by far the most widely-used method of a merchant’s/manager’s coming into direct contact with a prospective affiliate (with a purpose of inviting them into an affiliate program). In this category I include both traditional emails, and direct messages sent via an instant messengers, affiliate network or social media platform, or other messaging options. The latter basically represent a condensed form of an email invitation.

2. Regular mail (postcard or similar invitation) — This method of affiliate recruitment is without a doubt the most underused method, which consequently gives it the edge most prospective affiliates will appreciate. Mail them a postcard, or even a package with a little gift! It can do wonders for your affiliate recruitment campaign; and it’s well-worth the extra time spent on it, especially when we are talking super affiliates.

3. Face-to-face contact (at conference or other meeting) — There are a number of affiliate marketing shows and events to attend every year, and each has its own opportunities for meeting prospective affiliates. Besides the events directly related to affiliate marketing, I always recommend attending other conferences on digital marketing.

Whether you’re reading this as an affiliate, or as a program manager, I’d love hear your feedback too. As always, you may post it in the “Comments” area below.

If you’ve attended the most recent Affiliate Summit East in New York (August 15-17, 2010) or Search Engine Strategies in San Francisco (August 16-20, 2010), you have probably already seen the newest August 2010 (issue 5) edition of the Revenue Performance magazine. This issue has published my recent interview with Jason Spievak, the CEO of RingRevenue, a platform widely used by many affiliate networks for the support of their pay-per-call programs.

Here’s just an excerpt from that interview:

Geno: Can you give me any examples of how pay-per-call has opened up new opportunities for either merchants or affiliates?

Jason: Sure. ServiceMagic is an online marketplace that connects homeowners with service professionals. Until recently, they offered no offline opportunities for their affiliates, but in the last few months they have been using the LinkShare pay-per-call service. As the interest of their pay-per-call affiliates in these opportunities has increased, they began to expand the variety of offline marketing channels they were offering. As a result, ServiceMagic affiliates can now drive traffic via flyers, radio and print ads, for example, using unique phone numbers that enable the company to track and then compensate affiliates accordingly.

Mobile is also proving to be strong channel for many merchants. The challenge with many mobile campaigns is that many mobile publishers are able to drive a lot of calls, but they aren’t always well qualified. Historically this has presented a problem for the merchant because they don’t want their call center agents spending time answering calls from unqualified callers. Pay-per-call platforms can allow the merchant to screen, survey and filter these calls before they reach the call center. By doing this, the technology creates a win-win where mobile publishers can run broad based promotions and merchants only accept and pay for the quality calls.

To take my company as an example, just over 50% of calls generated across our partner platforms in the past month have come from offline publishers, including mobile.

Geno: An issue that I have been campaigning about is the danger of “phone leakage”, where if a merchant has their own phone number displayed on their website it may take sales credit away from a referring affiliate. It’s critically important that affiliates are credited with the sales they are entitled to. Can concerns about phone leakage be addressed with your technology?

Jason: Yes, our solution allows the affiliate’s trackable phone number to be injected into the merchant’s website in place of the merchant’s default number. When a potential customer clicks on the affiliate’s ad, the click URL passes a unique identifier that the merchant can use to switch out their main phone number with the publisher’s phone number so that anytime the site visitor is on the merchant’s site, they will see the phone number that was assigned to that specific publisher.

The full interview may be found both in the magazine, and online here.

It’s Friday again, and I decided to dedicate my today’s #FollowFriday-style post to experts and companies that tweet great small business advice.

My list is actually made up of two smaller lists: 10 people, and 15 periodicals and small business communities to follow.

Disclaimer: None of the below are meant to be a ranking of any kind.

Small Business Experts:

1. Anita Campbell — Besides being a good friend of mine, Anita is also the CEO of Small Business Trends, an online small business community reaching over 250,000 each month. Her tweets, articles and interviews are always insightful, and highly recommended.
2. Alexandra Levit — Business/workplace author, speaker, and columnist. Helping people find meaningful work and succeed once they get there.
3. John Jantsch — Small business marketing and digital technology coach and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine.
4. Dane Carlson — Blogger, consultant. Business opportunities and ideas expert.
5. Melinda Emerson — Host #SmallBizChat, author, speaker, and business coach. Expert in start-up, social media marketing & reinventing a business.
6. Martin Zwilling — Veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech professional, and angel investor. Published on Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and Huffington Post.
7. Pamela Slim — Business coach and author of Escape from Cubicle Nation.
8. Brent Leary — Co-founder and partner of CRM Essentials LLC, a CRM consulting/advisory firm focused on small and mid-size enterprises.
9. Becky McCray — Rural entrepreneur. Teaching new marketing with TourismCurrents.com. Learning from small town businesses about survival and community building.
10. Michael Port — New York Times bestselling author of four books including Book Yourself Solid, Beyond Booked Solid, The Contrarian Effect and The Think Big Manifesto. Founder of Booked Solid Univeristy, a coaching program for small business owners.

Periodicals & Online Business Communities:

1. Harvard Business Review
2. Fortune Magazine
3. Entrepreneur Magazine
4. New York Times Small Business
   
5. WSJ Business
6. WSJ Personal Finance
7. Forbes
8. LA Times Business News
9. Fast Company
10. Small Business Expo
11. True Small Business
12. Small Business Tech
13. Success Magazine
14. YoungEntrepreneur.com
15. AOL Small Business

If I have missed your favorite accounts, please mention them in the “Comments” area below.

A merchant, who is launching an affiliate program, has emailed me the following question:

How effective would very well produced videos be as creatives? We were thinking of possibly having some videos made and wanted to know how well these tend to pull in traffic and sales vs banners and text links.

Great question, especially with the following growth reports and forecasts recently published regarding online video:

• 2010 video spending will reach $1.5 billion, up 48% from last year [eMarketer]
• Online video advertising and related media spend is forecast at $2.7 billion in 2010, and double-digit growth is projected through 2012 [AccuStream Research]
• Advertising in video streams will also continue to grow, up more than 60% in 2011 to $5.6 billion, with 2 out of every 5 streaming video ad dollars being spent by local advertisers [Borrell Associates]

The short answer to this merchant’s question is: Yes, well-produced online videos are extremely effective as creatives, and I highly recommend for every merchant to tap into the online video advertising (be it directly, or by offering their affiliates the video creatives to promote).

I know you want to see the exact comparative data on performance. And I do have it for you:

• Video creatives get a CTR and conversion rate higher than any other creative format. “This is primarily driven by the fact that video creatives include Sight, Sound & Motion, whereas most banner ads for instance only have sight, and maybe motion, a text link only has sight” and so on. It isn’t unusual for video CTR to be “10-50x greater than a typical banner and conversion rates up to 10x greater.” [John Ferber of Video Affiliate Network]
• “Consumers who view videos on websites are 64% more likely to buy something from the site, and they also tend to spend more time (up to two minutes) on webpages per visit. Additionally, 96% of shoppers who make online purchases have watched online video before. For advertisers, online video is also able to influence shoppers’ buying decisions. According to comScore, 63% of total U.S. internet users are reached by video advertising. These consumers account for 83% of online sales, making them highly valuable targets.” [stats as quoted by RICG]
• “Video advertising increases engagement, doubling Dwell Time (the amount of time users engage with an ad) and increases Dwell Rate (the number of ad impressions leading to users engaging with an ad), by 20%.” [Eyeblaster data quoted by WebProNews]

I hope you will find this data of help, and if I haven’t mentioned something that should be mentioned here, please do post about it below (in the “Comments” area).

In the beginning of this year, while replying to a completely different question, I wrote:

The responsibility for conversion of affiliate-referred traffic is always a shared one: (i) affiliates should work on making it a targeted traffic, while (ii) merchants should ensure that their own websites actually convert. I have seen affiliate programs with zero conversion rates, and not because the affiliate-referred traffic wasn’t right! In some cases the merchant’s offer wasn’t competitive, while in others they had major shopping cart problems that prevented safe and speedy checkout… When there is no (or low) conversion across different affiliates in one program, look for an internal problem. [underlining added for emphasis]

Today I’d like to address the question of conversion optimization specifically, and give you a real-life example. As a case in point, let’s look at an affiliate program I’m managing now.

We’ve recruited a good number of highly targeted affiliates for this merchant, but regardless of the amount of traffic these affiliates were sending, the traffic hasn’t been converting well at all. The average across-the-program conversion rate was ranging from 0.48% to 0.65% (while a good conversion rate for affiliate programs normally ranges from 2.5% to 3.5%).

So we’ve worked with the merchant on the optimization of the landing page the affiliate traffic was going to, and while there’s still progress to be made, we’re already seeing good improvements:

The average affiliate conversion rate has already improved by ~48% going up from 0.65% to 0.96%; and, naturally/consequently, the EPC improvement has also followed — growing by over 54% (going from some $26 that an average affiliate was earning on 100 clicks sent to this merchant to $40). And this is based on a non-expert advice, folks! If you’re serious about your online business, you better be real serious about that conversion rate optimization.

CRO is everyone’s job, and merchants should be actively working in this direction. After all, everyone wins as a result (both merchants, and affiliates).

Are you optimizing and A/B testing the landing pages your affiliates are sending the traffic to?

Having analyzed how affiliates see links on 5 affiliate networks — Commission Junction, LinkShare, ShareASale, Google Affiliate Network, and AvantLink — I have noticed that 2 of these 5 (CJ and AvantLink) offer data on link performance.

Commission Junction shows link’s 3-months and 7-days EPC:

AvantLink, in their turn, displays link’s Conversion Rate “calculated from click-throughs and sales in the past 30 days”:

On the one hand, displaying data like EPC and conversion rate may seem to be an extremely valuable thing to do. In reality, it isn’t.

The problem with link-specific performance metrics is that they are nearly always skewed. Over 7+ years of my affiliate program management experience I have been observing how many affiliates just pull the affiliate tracking code from the first text link they see, and then link the rest of their campaigns through it. This is precisely why in the above case with Volusion’s affiliate program among the merchant’s best-performing creatives you’ll find 3 text links (see their EPC measurements circled above).

Affiliates, do not let link performance data (as reported either by an affiliate network, or an in-house affiliate program software) guide your decisions. When it comes to deciding which links perform best, you want to be experimenting and measuring by yourself.

The same advice applies to merchants as well. I know that most affiliate networks (even those that don’t make such info public to affiliates) give merchants the info on their “performance” of their links.