Partner Programs – tesseramarketing.com https://tesseramarketing.com a piece of your marketing mosaic Thu, 09 Mar 2023 16:39:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.1 https://tesseramarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/TesseraHero_SiteIcone_512_512-150x150.png Partner Programs – tesseramarketing.com https://tesseramarketing.com 32 32 Affiliates and Offer Structure https://tesseramarketing.com/affiliates-and-offer-structure/ https://tesseramarketing.com/affiliates-and-offer-structure/#respond Tue, 05 May 2020 18:39:00 +0000 https://the7.io/business-advisors/?p=281

Affiliates and Offer Structure

There are a lot of moving parts to any affiliate program, but no matter how you go about it, you’ll definitely need two things – Affiliates and Offers. Affiliate traffic comes in many types, with different interests, intent, and qualifications. Correctly matching your offer to the appropriate traffic type is essential. Advertisers should create multiple offers to best match various affiliate traffic types to the most appropriate and best converting sales funnel.

Affiliate Program Basics

What is Affiliate Marketing? The concept is simple enough. You have a product or service you wish to promote online. Affiliate Marketers are those who can advertise your product or services to their audience for a fee. How they do it, how effective they are, and how you pay them can vary quite a bit. We tend to group all external advertising sources as an affiliate when building a program for our clients. So whether it’s a display media buy with the larger online portals, or a single link placement with a stand-alone blog, or a large list manager providing email distribution, all of these advertising opportunities can be managed under your affiliate program.

Types of Affiliate Marketers: Affiliate Marketers come in all shapes and sizes, and not all will fit into an easily classified or single bucket, but here are the main types we’ve worked with over the years. Some are better than others, and it all depends on what it is you’re promoting to determine which of these would be a good fit. What may be an excellent source of new traffic, customers, or leads for one advertiser, could very likely be a complete disaster, and maybe even a violation of an industry’s terms and conditions for another. It’s always important to know and understand the type of traffic each channel will deliver.

  • Comparison shopping websites and directories
  • Loyalty websites (points, rewards)
  • CRM sites that offer charitable donations
  • Coupon and rebate websites that focus on sales promotions
  • Content and niche market websites, including product review sites
  • Personal websites
  • Weblogs and website syndication feeds
  • Email list affiliates
  • Registration path or co-registration affiliates who include offers from other merchants during the registration process on their own website
  • Shopping directories that list merchants by categories
  • Cost per action networks that expose offers from the advertiser with which they are affiliated to their own network of affiliates
  • Websites using ad toolbars to display context-sensitive, highly relevant ads for products on the site
  • Virtual Currency: Incentive-based promotions encouraging the purchase of your product in exchange for game-based currency or points.
  • Video Blog: Video content that allows viewers to click on and purchase products related to the video’s subject
  • File-Sharing: Websites that host directories of music, movies, games and other software.

Match your types of offers to the available traffic and points in your sales funnel to maximize conversions and opportunity.

Offer Structure

It’s assumed you want to get more customers and sell more products and services. That’s a given. How your sales funnel works, however, will vary. How your conversion process works, and how it performs, will determine the best way for you to structure your offer for affiliate promotions. The best part is it is not uncommon for you to develop multiple offers with varying actions for payout and commissions and offer all of them to your affiliates.

Different offers can be structured for the same product or service.

Design multiple offer types for the same product or service to best match the traffic to your sales funnel.

Lead Generation – Due to its simplicity, lead generation is the most popular type of affiliate marketing offer. Users interested in what you offer are driven to your site, and are only asked to share basic contact information so you may follow-up with additional material. The most basic is name and email. There are others which are called ‘long-forms’ and they may ask dozens of questions in a multi-page format. The basic rule of thumb is the more data you collect, the lower the conversions and subsequently the higher you’ll need to pay for each successful lead.

Trials/Continuity – Trials are really popular with health and beauty products such as diet supplements and makeup, as well as anything subscription-based. For products, the user gets a small sample for only the cost of shipping and handling, and unless they opt-out of receiving more they automatically get the full-size version at full retail cost automatically billed to their credit card. It is extremely important to understand the rules and regulations regarding this type of setup to avoid FTC violations.

Sales – Obviously the best one from the advertiser’s viewpoint since the least amount of work is involved and revenue is automatically generated.

Surveys – Surveys typically involve some sort of bundled offer where the user is offered a gift card or some other sort of compensation in return for answering questions, doing a product review, sharing opinions, etc. Either the advertiser or the affiliate can handle the fulfillment.

Different payment types can be structured based on the traffic and conversion goals.

Payment Types

Cost Per Sale (CPS) – Can either be a flat bounty for each sale, or a percentage-based structure allowing for higher commissions if the user adds multiple items to their shopping cart. For example, as the advertiser, you can decide to pay maybe $10 for every sale, or 10% of the sale price.

Cost Per Lead (CPL) – A flat payout per qualified lead submission. How much you pay for each lead will be determined on the amount of data you request, the type of data, and how valuable it is to you and how well it converts.

Cost Per Action (CPA) – As the advertiser, you define the desired action (fill out the form, place an order, request more information, download a file, click-through past page 3 of your site, etc.) and set the payout to be rewarded upon the successful completion of that action.

Cost Per Impression (CPM) – Most common with display media buys and some email promotions it means ‘cost-per-thousand’. So the rate charged is calculated for every 1,000 impressions of an ad on a web site, or for every 1,000 emails sent. (Why the M? There are two explanation widely accepted. In Latin, the word mille means 1,000, and in Roman, the letter M represents the number 1,000.)

Cost Per Click (CPC) – Best known as the payment structure for search engine advertising, such as Google and Bing. How often your ad is displayed and promoted will be decided by the portal or affiliate, and you only pay when someone sees the ad or receives the link and clicks through to your site.

Depending on the payment type agreed upon, the balance of risk will tilt between the advertiser and the affiliate.

Commissions, Conversions, and Quality

To develop a successful affiliate program, for both the affiliate and the advertiser, requires correctly matching the type of offer, to the appropriate payment model, and the right affiliate. It all starts at the end of the chain with the advertiser. Once the requirements of the advertiser are correctly identified the offer can be developed, the payment method chosen, and the correct affiliates can be targeted and recruited. The most successful advertisers are those who are able to convert multiple types of traffic and offers. For example, an advertiser who can benefit from both sales, as well as leads, will be able to develop multiple offers and recruit a larger affiliate base.

Who We Are

Tessera Marketing is an online marketing agency specializing in Affiliate Program Development. We build and manage direct affiliate programs for our clients. If you are interested in learning more about affiliate marketing and whether or not an affiliate program could help your business, please give us a call at 303-379-9501 or send a note by visiting tesseramarketing.com. We love learning more about your business and helping to determine if any of our services can be of any assistance. Consultations are always free, and introductory packages are available.

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]]> https://tesseramarketing.com/affiliates-and-offer-structure/feed/ 0 281 Affiliate Program Management Options https://tesseramarketing.com/affiliate-program-management-options/ https://tesseramarketing.com/affiliate-program-management-options/#respond Tue, 14 Apr 2020 14:05:27 +0000 https://the7.io/business-advisors/?p=1445

All affiliate programs are unique. Each has been designed for the advertiser to support particular goals and objectives. The most successful programs tend to be the most flexible, and it is not uncommon for advertisers to develop hybrid versions with overlapping structures. For example, an in-house affiliate manager may manage the program on one of the large networks that also offers management services. Or an Outsourced Program Manager (OPM) may recruit direct affiliates and CPA Networks alike. Which option is best and at what time varies for each advertiser.

Networks with in-house affiliate program management teams

Some of the larger affiliate networks such as Commission Junction and Linkshare offer merchants complete and total affiliate management services. They provide the platform, the tracking software, the setup, recruitment, management, and payments to the affiliates in their network promoting your products and services. They work with the merchant to develop program goals and provide customized analysis, insights, and program recommendations. They will assist in the creation and optimization of all creative assets.

Full Service Affiliate Networks are one option for affiliate management

Full Service Affiliate Networks offer an easy one-stop shopping option for a completely outsourced solution.

Benefits: These larger full-service networks offer varying levels of service, and with their most comprehensive program the advertiser gets a complete solution. The technical setup, campaign development, promotions and management are all mostly handled by the network staff.

Drawbacks: There are typically required setup fees and minimum monthly costs incurred, even if your program isn’t making you any money. Also, the technical setups and marketing collateral requirements can be challenging for some advertisers, even though they have been streamlined and assistance is always available. And no matter how large the network already is, their recruitment abilities for affiliates to promote your offer is always limited to the affiliates already signed on, or willing to work with the network.

Be aware that some full service solutions will still incur monthly fees even if unable to deliver any traffic, leads, or sales.

CPA Networks

Also provide the necessary tracking, promotions, and payments to the affiliates in their network. There are easily hundreds of these networks available, and their services and performance will vary. They excel at promoting your offer to their network of publishers, since that is how they get paid, but most will not have the in-house teams and expertise and teams to best help you develop your program. It’s best if you already have all the pieces, and look to these networks simply for new distribution and traffic. You’ll still want someone to actively manage the program.

CPA Networks are one affiliate management option

CPA Networks can quickly generate traffic to an established offer.

Benefits: The CPA networks will typically charge no fees and the setup is pretty simple. Also, since most evolved from a core niche competency, they offer an easy way to quickly tap into a bunch of affiliates with the sort of traffic best for you and your offer. (The trick, of course, is to know what each network excels at and how they operate.)

Drawbacks: Not all CPA Networks are created equal. There are some really great ones out there, and there are a few too many with good intentions but lack the necessary experience,  and others who are intentionally cutting corners and bending rules with little concern to your product or brand in order to make a buck. It doesn’t take a lot of research to find stories about advertisers and affiliates alike who have lost money and suffered damages from the mismanagement of offers by a network.

Ask the network about the types of traffic and offers which have worked best with the majority of their affiliates.

Outsourced Program Management

An Outsourced Program Manager (OPM) brings a wealth of experience and connections to your program. The good ones have been around and managed numerous campaigns in a variety of roles over the years. Some may specialize in the types of products or promotions they manage, while others may be more diverse and flexible. They may have their own network of publishers, and should also be able to manage your offer through both the large networks and CPA networks listed above.

Outsourced Program Manager for Affiliate Programs

OPM’s bring skill and experience to build and manage your affiliate program on one or more platform or network.

Benefits: As mentioned above, an OPM typically combines some of the best features of the other options. Since they are usually smaller in size, they are personally involved in learning your product and building a custom program best for your company.

Drawbacks: Not many. The only thing that may give you pause is any program they build for you is likely still on their platform, using their tracking software and associated technology. While cost-effective, this can make it difficult if you ever choose to assume control of your program. Even if you’re provided with complete transparency and have the contact information and relationship with the affiliates driving your traffic, you’ll still need to have them switch links and sign new agreements before you can assume control.

Direct (in-house) Affiliate Management

For maximum return, an in-house direct affiliate program is always recommended. With a direct program, an advertiser can take advantage of all the best features listed above, plus affiliates always prefer to work direct with the advertiser whenever possible.

Of course, to accomplish this, it is necessary to hire an experienced affiliate manager. Your in-house affiliate manager should be experienced with recruiting, promoting, and negotiating with affiliates. They should be able to spot trends, and monitor all affiliate activities for both brand management and fraud prevention.

Direct in-house affiliate programs for the most control

A direct, in-house affiliate program increases control, transparency, competitive insight, and brand management for a company.

Benefits: Building a direct program is by far the best way to go. To begin with, you can still take advantage of all the network benefits listed above. From there, transparency, compliance, and brand management are just the start. By establishing and growing the relationships with your affiliates, you will gain considerable competitive insight, and be able to quickly take advantage of unique opportunities with the affiliates you trust the most.

Drawbacks: It all depends on who you hire and how you assign the job responsibilities. A seasoned marketing professional with specific experience with affiliate management should be very capable of building your program by leveraging the use of the networks along with establishing direct relationships with affiliate marketers and not creating conflict. Far too often, however, the affiliate program is handed over to an entry-level employee who may either fail to correctly develop the program, or mistakenly creates conflicts which either unnecessarily increases costs or loses traffic.

For continuous control, a direct in-house program will serve you best.

Who We Are

We’re an online marketing agency specializing in search engine marketing and affiliate program development. We work very closely with our clients to build unique and branded programs with complete transparency and insight with a strict adherence to any and all marketing guidelines and compliance regulations as required per industry. Our clients completely own their programs at all times, and whenever requested, we offer a seamless transition and training services back to in-house teams. If you have any questions, and would like to discuss whether a direct program might be a good fit for your company, please give us a call at 303-379-9501, or visit us at www.tesseramarketing.com. All consultations are free with no obligation. We look forward to speaking with you.

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]]> https://tesseramarketing.com/affiliate-program-management-options/feed/ 0 1445 Before You Begin Developing Your Affiliate Program https://tesseramarketing.com/before-you-begin-developing-your-affiliate-program/ https://tesseramarketing.com/before-you-begin-developing-your-affiliate-program/#respond Sat, 11 Apr 2020 11:50:25 +0000 https://the7.io/business-advisors/?p=728

Affiliate Programs are a terrific means to increase traffic and sales. Affiliates can reach a wide audience and provide multiple paths for conversions. Much of it is typically purchased on a performance-only model, which means the Advertiser only pays for the traffic that completes a desirable action, usually by buying something.

Take a few minutes now to pull this content together and you’ll be able to use it again and again as you go through the development of your affiliate program. There are a lot of steps involved, and plenty of options and service providers available to help you along the way, but no matter how you choose to build your program, having this information and collateral readily available will help expedite your efforts.

The checklist you need before starting an affiliate program

1. What type of service are you – Define yourself and your program.

It’s the first question you’ll be asked when you begin promoting the program, and sharing a concise description will help others understand your setup and goals as they begin working with you. Be able to answer these questions:

  • Who are you? Every service provider you elect to work with will require most, if not all, of this information:
    • Company Name:
    • Address:
    • Billing Information:
    • Accounting Point of Contact: (Name, Title, Email, Phone #)
    • Technical Point of Contact: (Name, Title, Email, Phone #)
    • Day-to-day Point of Contact: (Name, Title, Email, Phone #)
  • What do you do? Describe the company and the services provided
  • How long have you been in business? If a new business, share the background and experience involved in your new venture.
  • Credit App. A pre-prepared credit application with your bank information, references, and permission for the vendor to contact your bank and references for a credit check.
  • What is the offer or product? What is the name, website, or landing page URL.
  • What are you asking of the visitor? Are they filling out a form, purchasing a trial, etc.
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Collect all your offer information including target audience, traffic types allowed, any restrictions or disqualifiers, and how it performs.

2. What is the Offer and how does it perform?

  • Offer Name and Landing Page URL
  • Offer Description: Use simple and plain language to describe what the offer is. Can be a single sentence or a short paragraph.
  • Who is your target audience, or what type of visitor is most likely to convert? Men, Women, Mothers, Seniors, Persons in Debt, etc.
  • What type of traffic are you getting to the offer now? Organic Search, Paid Search, Email, Social, Display, Referral, etc.
  • What is your click-to-conversion percentage? What is the typical range of conversions for the current traffic.
  • What is the payout? If it’s a % of sale, what is the typical order size?
  • What is required for the pixel to fire? Where is the conversion pixel placed?
  • Fraud Protection. Have you implemented various levels of data validation and verification?
  • Are there any disqualifiers? If your offer is asking questions and collecting data, are there any answers or selections which will make the user exempt from your product or services?
  • Any geographic restrictions? Do you accept traffic in all 50 states, or from other countries?
  • How many leads/sales can you manage in a day/week/month?

Complete offer information is essential to a successful campaign.

3. Terms and Conditions of your program

  •  Do you have an Affiliate Agreement? When you recruit a new affiliate and they sign up to join your program, do you have the legal terms and conditions ready for their review and acceptance?
  • What type of traffic is allowed? On what type of sites do you allow or not allow your offer to be promoted, and do you accept all traffic types – email, display, social, incentive, coupon, etc.
  • Is there any type of traffic specifically not allowed? In addition to listing the type of traffic you do allow, it’s always helpful to emphasize any types of web sites or traffic you will not accept.
  • Any specific rules regarding industry compliance? If your offer or services is regulated by any independent ethics/compliance body, what are the specific rules and requirements for promotion?
  • What are your payment terms? On what schedule will you pay your affiliates? Will you make allowances for more frequent payments for your higher-volume affiliates?
Terms and Conditions for your Affiliate Program are essential

In addition to an official legal Affiliate Agreement, provide your affiliates with general guidelines in simple language about the do’s and don’ts of promoting your offers and brand.

4. Marketing Collateral

  • Landing Page. At the very least you’ll need the destination URL. Ideally, you’ll have one or more dedicated landing page focused on promoting the offer and optimized for conversions.
  • Banner sets (IAB Standards). At a minimum, you should make available the IAB Universal Ad Package (UAP) – 300×250, 180×150, 160×600, and 728×90, and be ready to create custom ads on request.
  • Email Creative
    • From and Subject Lines – Pre-approved From and Subject Lines should be available and of course conform to CAN-SPAM compliance.
    • HTML-based
    • Text-based
  • Text Links

With all these pieces readily available you’ll be able to quickly and confidently move through the process of developing an affiliate program by working with the various vendors, service providers, affiliate networks, and direct affiliates. You’ll of course also want someone experienced with these setups to review, edit, and negotiate the various contracts to make sure that your business and brand are well protected and positioned for success.

Different image sizes and files for different platforms and social media sites

A complete suite of marketing creative for all traffic types should be available.

Who We Are

Tessera Marketing is an online marketing agency with specialization in Affiliate Program Development. We function as an Outsourced Program Manager (OPM) with the unique difference of building direct, in-house affiliate programs for our clients. We don’t just manage your offer on third party networks, but rather build you your own program allowing for complete control, insight, transparency, and confidence regarding any brand or industry compliance requirements. We’ll handle all the legal and technical development on your behalf, including affiliate program promotion, recruitment, and management. At any time we will happily train and transition the program to your in-house staff, and since it has been your direct program since the very beginning, there is no concern about disruption in traffic due to link changes, new contract negotiations, etc. Contact us today to discuss your program and how we might be able to help.

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]]> https://tesseramarketing.com/before-you-begin-developing-your-affiliate-program/feed/ 0 728 Direct Affiliate Program or Purchasing Leads from Marketing Aggregator https://tesseramarketing.com/direct-affiliate-programs-and-lead-generation/ https://tesseramarketing.com/direct-affiliate-programs-and-lead-generation/#respond Wed, 08 Apr 2020 18:34:57 +0000 https://the7.io/business-advisors/?p=288

Features and Benefits of Buying Leads from a Lead Aggregator, or Building Your Own Direct to Consumer Marketing Program.

More and more professional service providers, such as lawyers and financial advisors, are taking advantage of the lead generation services provided by internet marketing. There are numerous ways of advertising on the internet; Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, Email, Blogs, Inbound Marketing, Paid Search (PPC), etc. just to name few. None of these are mutually exclusive, and any solid marketing plan should include a combination of these efforts.

Since most professionals have already concluded that some sort of internet advertising for new customers or client acquisition is a good idea, the next biggest question facing them is whether they should just buy leads from one or more third party marketers, or develop a direct-to-consumer program on their own. Let’s review the two options.

Lead generation for professional services with an affiliate program

It is no surprise that the number one determining factor when considering options for lead acquisition is based on needs and means. A smaller company, such as an independent lawyer or financial advisor, may only wish to acquire a handful of new clients in any given month. To do this, they may only require a couple dozen leads with a very specific type of targeted customer.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are the super large, billion-dollar companies with established brand recognition and the ability to spend millions in multi-faceted advertising including television, print, and radio. They operate large call centers and likely also dominate the paid search advertising for the most profitable keyword terms, making it cost prohibitive for smaller and localized providers to compete.

What about everyone in-between? Online advertising is often a numbers game. The larger you can go, the less expensive it can become on a per-lead basis. This is primarily due to the ability to simultaneously tap into multiple online advertising sources – Paid Search, Email, Display, etc. The larger the media buy, and the more leads you can process, the less you will typically pay on the individual acquisition costs.

Turning traffic into conversions

Buying leads from an outsourced provider allows for greater volume control and overall simplicity.

The smaller, independent, and regionally focused service providers such as local lawyers and financial advisors often cannot leverage these online advertising mediums in a cost effective or productive manner. Many of the media buys are priced on a cost-per-click (CPC), or cost-per-impression (CPM) model, which does not guarantee results and may only produce a limited number of qualified leads. Regardless of the results, the traffic still must be paid for.

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Option: Outsourced Lead Aggregation
Buying leads from an independent internet advertising company.

Third party advertising companies, by combining the purchasing power of multiple, smaller, regional buyers are able to take advantage of larger scale national advertising in a more cost effective manner. Additionally, they can then often deliver to the buyer the specified number of leads requested, pre-qualified by definition, and at the times desired.

Your lead seller should be able to deliver the data and the qualifiers specified by you, at the times and in the amounts as requested.

Benefits of Outsourced Lead Aggregation

Benefit 1: Cost Effective – In most cases, an outsourced lead aggregator can provide leads for a lower cost than smaller, individual efforts can produce. Most importantly, you’re only paying for leads, and not just the traffic which generates the leads.

Benefit 2: Volume Management – As a lead buyer, your provider should deliver to you only the agreed upon number of leads you have ordered based on what you can effectively process. Also, they should be able to provide consistency with the lead volume, so you don’t end up with more than you can process at any given time, or worse, not enough and you have staff sitting around being unproductive.

Benefit 3: Simplicity – Servicing your clients and running your business keeps you busy enough. No need to learn the ins and outs of internet marketing, managing advertising campaigns, or testing new channels.

As you can see, the benefits of outsourcing your lead acquisition are fairly compelling, and even larger companies can get these same benefits if they choose to pay a third party for their leads. However, not all lead aggregators are equal, and the benefits listed above should be considered a best-case scenario. Building a direct program offers all these benefits as well, plus quite a few more.

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Option: Direct to Consumer Lead Generation
Building your own branded lead-acquisition marketing program with affiliate marketers.

Should you go direct? If considering a direct marketing program for your own lead acquisition, consider these questions:

  • Are you currently outsourcing your lead acquisition marketing to a third party?
  • Have you found many of the leads you’ve been sold are completely bogus?
  • Is it difficult to identify and separate the leads which were completely bogus, from those which were not truly qualified, or those that you just weren’t able to successfully close?
  • Would you like to increase the lead quality and contact percentages?
  • Is your industry uniquely regulated by marketing compliance laws?

If you’ve answered yes to these questions, you may very well benefit from developing your own Direct to Consumer Marketing Channel, leveraging the advertising power and distribution of an Affiliate Program. With a proper affiliate program, you work directly with the internet marketers who drive traffic to your site and your lead form. They use your pre-approved advertising content and you control the qualifying filters and only pay for the leads you’ve defined as valuable. You don’t pay for traffic, only the resulting leads. In many cases, these are the same advertising channels and affiliates used by the lead aggregators, and all of the good ones always prefer to work directly with the advertiser. You can remove the overhead of the middle-man, and gain valuable insight and competitive advantages.

Lead validation can be complicated but worthwhile.

Automated validation and verification tools will increase the number of qualified leads contacted.

By developing your own direct channel, you can:

  • Improve Contact and Conversion percentages
  • Reduce the amount of bogus leads you pay for
  • Increase brand awareness and referral business
  • Attain transparency for marketing oversight and compliance monitoring

Benefit 1: Increase in Contact-to-Lead ratio.
Save time and money from purchasing bogus or non-qualified leads, or not being able to contact the person. Generating a lead is only part of the process. From there, the lead needs to contacted, in many cases further qualified, and ultimately converted to a revenue-generating client or customer. The levels and methods of lead validation and verification done by an outsourced lead generator will vary, and there are additional benefits delivered by a direct program.

Automated Filtering and Validation, including Fraud Detection and Prevention: Use technology to assist with your qualification and filtering process. There are a number of service providers who can analyze and validate and verify the data being entered in real-time at the point of entry. This means, while the user is filling out your contact form and questionnaire, that information is bounced against various databases to confirm that not only is the information accurate, but it is also legitimate. By starting with genuine and accurate data, the follow-up efforts and closing ratios will increase.

Some forms use no validation whatsoever, which allows whatever garbage is entered to make it through to your system. If you have staff being paid to then contact this person, they are wasting their time and your money.

Some forms use only basic data validation, such as requiring a ten-digit phone number, or an email entry to include both an ‘@’ and a ‘dot’, such as ‘emailaddress@network.com’. This does not prevent fake or incorrect data from being entered. (i.e. mickeymouse@disneyland.com).

Slightly better systems will check to make sure the data entered actually exists. So ‘Mickey Mouse’ at 123 Disneyland Street, is immediately flagged as not being legitimate. They may even go a bit farther and verify that both the phone number and email address are live and active.

Not all lead validation and verification services are the same. The best setup for you will depend on the data you are collecting, your sales funnel, and your internal resources.

The best systems can do all of the above. Not only do they check to make sure the information is complete and accurate, but all of it is live and active. Better yet, they check to verify that all of the information entered is related. This helps defeat the most competent fraudsters who will enter valid, but disassociated data such as one person’s name, another person’s street address, and yet even another person’s email and phone number information. This type of data entry would pass through the simpler systems, but are obviously still worthless to you for contacting purposes.

Additionally, there are systems and services available to help monitor and defeat fraudulent sources of data. These systems complement the data validation by checking for patterns of fraudulent activity, so even if all the information entered is accurate, complete, and related, if it is created by a known source of bogus data it can either be denied, or at the very least flagged for additional review before a member of your sales team wastes any additional time trying to follow-up and convert the lead.

Not all third party lead aggregators bother to implement these systems. After all, their goal is to deliver you what look like legitimate and qualified leads, and they know you don’t have an expectation of being able to contact all of them. If you can’t contact them because they don’t answer their phone or reply to your email, or because it’s a false phone number and bogus email address, you’ll never know.

Some of the lead aggregators also know that if they only bought and sold legitimate leads to you, they would likely be unable to fill the volume expectations you’ve ordered, and they would lose their sources for leads due to the drop in what is considered performance. In other words, they are comfortable with knowingly buying 20-30% of garbage leads and passing them along to you in order to deliver the other 70-80%.

Follow-up awareness. By advertising your own site and services, you immediately establish awareness and recognition with the end user. After they submit their information and request to be contacted by you, they are much more likely to pick up the phone or respond to your email since they now know who you are and are expecting to hear from you based on the messaging from your confirmation or Thank You page after filling out your form, on your site.

Automation processes. If applicable, you always have the option to completely automate the process and establish communication using completely automated services such as auto-responders, or pre-recorded phone messages. This can be especially useful if your sales cycle is a bit longer, or you know that providing additional information and qualifying steps are in the best interest of both your sales team, as well as the consumer. For example, you may wish to first send them a ‘Getting Started’ guide, or a questionnaire to better understand their situation and how you can be of assistance.

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Direct advertising strengthens your brand’s awareness, even for those that do not initially convert.

Benefit 2: Brand Awareness vs. Competitor Creation.

Brand Awareness: As mentioned above, by driving traffic directly to your site you increase brand awareness and referral business. When traffic comes from a third party site, the visitors who may just visit the first time or whose information gets sold to another buyer, will never have the opportunity to learn about you and the services you offer. There is no way for them to return to you since they don’t know you exist. They also cannot share their discovery about you with anyone else they may wish to refer.

Competitor Creation: Even worse, it is not uncommon for some lead aggregators to actively work to support your competition by delivering leads to them as well. In some cases, they are even reaching out and creating your competition by educating those in similar services as to how they can work with your type of client. A common example would be a lawyer or financial advisor who may specialize in one practice area or vertical, is encouraged and even trained to assist customers looking for complementary assistance, such as a personal injury attorney being instructed on how to process workers compensation or social security disability claims. If you are a workers compensation or social security disability attorney and have been buying leads, your lead provider not only increased your competition, but may also now raise rates due to supply and demand.

Be wary of third-party aggregators using your money to increase your competition.

Benefit 3: Revenue generation from extraneous data.
While still only paying for the leads you’ve defined as qualified, and filtering out any bogus data, you will still end up collecting additional lead data. This data may be valuable for either continued education efforts of your own services, or possibly complementary services you offer. Additionally, you could broker this data to marketers of other services for a revenue-share opportunity.

Benefit 4: Transparency, Optimization, and Compliance

Transparency: Do you know where your current leads are coming from, who is promoting them, and how they are driving the traffic? Have you seen the ads? Do you review the content on the web pages hosting the forms? By developing your own channel, you will establish direct relationships with the affiliates providing the internet marketing and traffic generation.

Optimization: Do you know which sources are creating the best leads? Do you have insight into which ads provided the best type of client or customer? By matching the final disposition data to the original advertising, the best ad-campaigns, based on not just initial conversion but ultimately the highest yielding return can be optimized to increase your bottom line. This means you can intelligently and strategically invest more of your marketing dollars into the channels and promotions working the best for you.

Compliance: Most professional trades and services have rules and regulations regarding the advertising and marketing they’re allowed, and required, to follow. Failure to do so can lead to fines, lawsuits, and even loss of licensing. Hiding behind a third party you’ve paid to handle the advertising and lead aggregation is typically not a free pass. As mentioned earlier on, not all lead aggregators are the same. Some are very good and committed to best practices. Others may not know they are unwittingly allowing violations, and the worse are knowingly doing whatever it takes to generate what looks like a lead to sell to you.

Conclusion

Determining which model is best for you and your business needs to take into consideration many factors, but primarily boils down to the number of leads you’d like to acquire. As mentioned earlier, a well-rounded marketing plan should include multiple channels and models for you to find new customers, and for them to find you. Neither of the two options reviewed here are mutually exclusive. You may benefit from doing both simultaneously, especially when first starting.

Who We Are

We’re an online marketing agency specializing in search engine marketing and affiliate program development. We work very closely with our clients to build unique and branded programs with complete transparency and insight with a strict adherence to any and all marketing guidelines and compliance regulations as required per industry. Our clients completely own their programs at all times, and whenever requested, we offer a seamless transition and training services back to in-house teams. If you have any questions, and would like to discuss whether a direct program might be a good fit for your company, please give us a call at 303-379-9501, or visit us at www.tesseramarketing.com. All consultations are free with no obligation. We look forward to speaking with you.

 

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]]> https://tesseramarketing.com/direct-affiliate-programs-and-lead-generation/feed/ 0 288 How to Promote your Affiliate Program https://tesseramarketing.com/how-to-promote-your-affiliate-program/ https://tesseramarketing.com/how-to-promote-your-affiliate-program/#respond Thu, 06 Jun 2013 18:33:00 +0000 https://the7.io/business-advisors/?p=286

Promoting your Affiliate Program…

Whether you are building an affiliate network or a program as an individual merchant, promoting your affiliate program is best done by promoting your offers and campaigns. Sure, you can go ahead and claim to have the “Best Offers” and “Top Payouts” like everyone else, but just what those offers are will make the real difference.

Networks and Affiliates are always looking for new, unique, and exclusive offers. They know what types of offers work best for their traffic, and regularly review and evaluate dozens of potential offers on any given day. To get your offer noticed and get the network or affiliate interested in setting up the offer for promotion, you need to share the necessary information they’ll need to quickly recognize the opportunity of running the campaign.

Promoting your affiliate program

Be Clear and Direct. Promoting an affiliate program is like any other ad copy. You have limited time and space to get the reader’s attention. If they don’t even know what you’re selling, they’re not very likely to take any desirable action. Follow the old 5 W’s and H of journalism.

Promoting your affiliate program means promoting your offers

Keep your affiliate offer information clear, direct, and complete. Follow the 5 W’s and H of Journalism to help organize.

Be Clear and Direct. Promoting an affiliate program is like any other ad copy. You have limited time and space to get the reader’s attention. If they don’t even know what you’re selling, they’re not very likely to take any desirable action. Follow the old 5 W’s and H of journalism.

  • What? What is the offer? Start with the name and follow with a brief description, including the payout. Have both copy and graphic collateral available. If it’s an email offer, have your list of approved From and Subject lines already drafted, and be open to working with your affiliates to create their own as long as you review and pre-approve any new creative.
  • Who? Who is the offer for? Name both the target audience as well as the type of affiliate or traffic you know will perform well with the offer. Does it do well with coupon traffic? Email? Reg-path? Social? Display? Is there an age target or other qualifiers? Does it perform better for men or women? (And don’t be fooled just because it’s an offer for a woman or for a man, when it may be the husband or wife who actually purchases it as a gift.)
  • When? In this case, the ‘when’ is when the offer converts. In other words, where do you place the pixel and what is the desired action to conclude it as a successful action? Is it real time? Is it a one-page zip-submit? Do you require personally identifiable information or a credit card to purchase? Be specific and honest about what is required by the end user before your conversion pixel will fire.
  • Where? Do you have any geographic targets or restrictions? Do you take traffic in all 50 states or even internationally? In what countries do you accept traffic? Do you have restrictions such as specific zip codes or general metro areas?
  • Why? Again, answer this for both sides of the equation. Why does someone want to buy this offer, what are the features and benefits, and why does someone want to promote it? How does it perform? What’s the payout?
  • How? How does someone sign up? By all means include a link to your program and your contact information so anyone interested can learn more and register as an affiliate

Affiliates review multiple offers on any given day. If the opportunity with your offer is not immediately clear or understood, it is not likely they will choose to promote the campaign.

With your sales copy in order, now you can begin promoting the offer.

  • Post on affiliate forums and boards. There are many out there and there is no harm in posting on all of them. There are groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as promotion sites like Offer Vault and ABestWeb.
  • Recruit from the competition. Who is promoting your competitor’s product or program? Contact those affiliates and share with them your opportunity.
  • Once you’ve identified the affiliates having success with your offer or your competitor’s, go get more like them that aren’t yet promoting either. Also, find the affiliates with complementary traffic. For example, a health-based site with traffic of folks looking for information regarding illness could very well also benefit from financial assistance. The assumption is they are sick, they are likely not working, and their medical bills may be adding up. Look for cross-promotional opportunities like this and you’ll find dozens of potential new affiliates.
  • Make your offer available to other affiliate networks. Networks are always looking for good new offers. If possible, structure your offer type to best match the affiliates and traffic available through the network. This way, each network you partner with has the opportunity to promote the offer as exclusive and you’ll get the maximum return for the effort.
Promote your affiliate programs on multiple sites, forums, and groups

If you have more than one product to promote, go back to step one and start over. And since you should now already have some affiliates promoting the first offer, make sure to start with them. If it is only the one offer, figure out if you can offer different types of promotion. For example, can you offer a higher payout for a successful purchase with a credit card, but maybe also offer a lower payout for anyone who only requests more information with just an email address? Affiliates will prefer different types of offers depending upon their traffic and ad placement.

There are many reasons to communicate with your affiliates

Frequent communication with your affiliates is key to a successful program. Make sure to keep it two-way and always be available to support your affiliates. 

Now that you have affiliates promoting your offers, be sure to keep the communication open and two-way. Emails and Instant Messages are fine, but nothing is better than phone calls or in-person meetings when possible. Get on the phone and speak with your affiliates on a regular basis. Any excuse will do. This is why gimmicks like affiliate contests and promotions work. It’s not about the prize at the end, but about a reason to start a conversation with your affiliate to help develop the relationship. Other good reasons to start a conversation include:

  • Change in performance. If you notice your affiliate’s conversion or quality rates are changing, and it is unique to them, give them a call to discuss. Either figure out how you can increase the volume if things are going well, or correct any issues causing the drop. Also, if optimization efforts have increased the conversion rates for your affiliate, definitely make sure they know and learn if they can increase traffic to take advantage of the new performance.
  • New Creative. If your design team has new banners, or a landing page to test, let your affiliates know and give them the option to test. If it is performing better on in-house tests, you’ll definitely want to share the opportunity.
  • New budgets or caps. If the offer has been capped, and there is room or need to increase the overall volume, give your affiliates a heads-up with time to react. This is especially true with your email affiliates, who may have their drop calendar scheduled weeks in advance. And, of course, if you can increase the payouts, discuss with your affiliates if an increase in rate will result in an increase in traffic.
  • Optimization feedback. If your affiliate is passing in subids for different placements and promotions (and they should), share with them how each are comparing. They’ll already know the conversion numbers, but let them know about any variances in disposition data if applicable.
  • Bad news. There is very little to be gained by holding off on sharing bad news. Definitely let them know if a campaign is shutting down or having technical issues, and certainly communicate any issues of severe quality questions or fraud.

Good news, assistance, and opportunities are great to share with your affiliates, but also never hesitate to discuss problems or quality issues.

By running an honest and consistent program with solid offers and support, the affiliates will start to come to directly to you. Make it easy for them by making sure your landing pages and web sites are well branded with complete contact information, and don’t hide behind anonymous registrations. Be ready to accommodate any unique requests which do not jeopardize or cannibalize your current efforts, and your program will continue to grow.

Who We Are

Tessera Marketing is an online marketing agency specializing in Affiliate Program Development. We build and manage direct affiliate programs for our clients. If you are interested in learning more about affiliate marketing and whether or not an affiliate program could help your business, please give us a call at 303-379-9501 or send a note by visiting www.tesseramarketing.com. We love learning more about your business and helping to determine if any of our services can be of any assistance. Consultations are always free, and introductory packages are available.

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