2009 was an interesting year for changes in Federal regulations which affect Internet marketers. There were changes to CAN-SPAM, and a revision of rules by the Federal Trade Commission; both of which directly impact Internet marketers.
Below are three Federal regulations which Internet marketers must follow:
1. Email Sent Out Featuring Someone Else’s Product or Service
Email sent out featuring a third-party’s product or service must also include information about the entity that is actually sending out the email, otherwise the third-party can be deemed solely responsible under CAN-SPAM for handling all opt-outs. Put another way, if your product or service is advertised in email being sent out by someone else, be sure that they include information about themselves in the email, or you may find yourself legally liable for helping users opt out of the mailings. This is known as the “designated sender rule”.
2. Email Sent by Affiliates
Vendors are legally liable under the Federal CAN-SPAM law if their affiliates use spam to advertise the vendor’s product or to otherwise generate sales for the vendor. This means that if your affiliate sends email featuring your product or service, and that email is deemed to be spam, then you may be legally as guilty of spamming as your affiliate, especially if you knew or should have known that the affiliate was using spam to advertise your product.
3. Testimonials, Reviews, and Endorsements in Marketing on the Internet
The use of testimonials on the Internet is now being more strictly regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, and testimonials that suggest outstanding results that are not actual typical results must disclose that the results being featured in the testimonial are not typical, and must indicate what typical results can be expected.
Additionally, if you favorably review or endorse a product or service, and you have been in any way compensated or provided with a benefit in exchange for the review or endorsement (or even if you just have a relationship with the provider of that product or service) you must disclose that information.
For example, if Acme provided you for free with that nifty widget that you just reviewed, you must disclose in your review your relationship with Acme, and that Acme provided the widget at no charge.
While these three rules may seem onerous or burdensome, they are not really that difficult to follow once you understand them, and following them not only keeps you within the law, but distinguishes and identifies your business as being above-board and ethical.
Anne P. Mitchell is an Internet attorney and law professor, and runs the Institute for Social Internet Public Policy (ISIPP), best known for their SuretyMail Email Accreditation service.
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Working in the marketing department at a company whose core business is monitoring email compliance, I spend a lot of time studying global email marketing laws.
So, I asked reputable networks and publishers how conflicting laws and cultural nuances translate into reality for email. I got great feedback from Warren Corpus, Vice President of Business Development at Vayan and Kimberlee White, President of AKMG.
Warren: “Because of the different opt-in procedures and the different data collection laws in the UK, we find much smaller quantities in UK files and the files themselves harder to come by for list management.”
Kim: “There are definitely better open and click rates in the UK. More revenue is made off smaller amounts of data compared to US data. However, more often than not, I am seeing lower payouts for UK leads.”
Zack Bernato, Vice President of AdMarketers, gave me a run down on the pros and cons of publishing in the UK market. If you’re thinking about mailing in the UK, here are the essential takeaways from my interview with Zack:
The amount of data is much smaller, but the quality is better.
“The offers convert much better. They click on everything.”
Consumer data records have a much shorter lifespan in the UK.
“The open rates and click rates are great right off the bat, but a record in the UK is only responsive for about two weeks. In the US, it would take at least a month for a static list to go cold.”
The UK advertiser has a different time table for processing payouts (in pounds, not dollars).
“In the US, most payouts are net 10, net 15, or net 30, meaning you’ll have your money by January for traffic from December. In the UK, advertisers pay net 60, so payment for traffic is delayed considerably, and hinges on the exchange rate on the last day of the month.”
Follow CAN-SPAM and maintain a suppression file, in addition to following publisher-based UK opt-in laws.
“As a US company mailing in the UK, I don’t take chances with regulators on either side. It’s my responsibility to respect opt-outs from my offers by maintaining my own suppression file, even though the UK doesn’t require it.”
Utilize your own technology for tracking and reporting.
“Most traffic comes from the US to other countries because we understand the space. Hosting your own UK sites allows for better filtering and reporting, and ultimately better lead quality.”
If you’ve heard expanding into the UK is the right move, I’ll end with some words of wisdom from Zack that ring true in affiliate marketing and perhaps in all business ventures:
“Email in the UK is lucrative, if you work with the right people.”
Cari Birkner is the Marketing Coordinator at LashBack, LLC and contributes on the subject of email marketing compliance to Deliverability.com.
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With the start of a new year, it’s the perfect time to give your affiliate program a fresh new start. Here are 10 great ways to renovate your affiliate program and optimize it for success in 2010:
- Audit Your Affiliate Program – This is vital to the success of your program and it also holds the greatest potential impact. An affiliate program audit should look at every area of your affiliate program. The purpose of an audit is to identify areas within your program that you can alter or modify as well as identify additional opportunities that will grow the performance of your program. You should look at everything from a detailed competitive and banner/link analysis to a paid search analysis.
- Respond to Affiliate Inquiries Within 24 Hours – Taking care of your affiliates should always be your main priority. By answering their inquiries promptly you show them you value their partnership and will promptly assist them as they continue to work with you.
- Confirm that Your Creative and Links are Up to Date and Valid – This will make a huge difference in revenue for your affiliate program. Confirming that your creative and links are always up to date will make your users shopping experience easy and more productive.
- Tracking Testing Procedures – Creating a process that is frequent and consistent for your tracking procedures will boost confidence for your program’s affiliates. Affiliates rely on proper tracking for their livelihood and they won’t promote offers that aren’t easily monitored and tracking correctly.
- Ample Notice of Promotions to Affiliates – Giving affiliates plenty of advance notice about new promotions will ensure that they will keep your offers current. Two weeks at minimum is generally considered ample notice.
- “Activate” Affiliates – Are your affiliates performing as well as they should? Reach out to those affiliates that you feel could be performing better and see what kind of offer you can provide them with in order to boost their performance and commissions.
- Correct & Complete Information for Promotions – When you are sending out coupons or promotions to affiliates, be sure that they have start/end dates, restrictions (if applicable), etc.
- Exclusive Offers to Top Performers – Offering your top performers exclusive offers is a great way to express your appreciation to them. Frequently contacting your top performers will ensure that they continue to promote your offers.
- Merchandising – Ensure that you are creating link templates for top products and sending them to your affiliates via weekly newsletters, affiliate blog, or Twitter.
- Content, Creative & Collateral – The more of these items that you create, the better! Keeping these items up to date will definitely help your program be successful.
I plan on implementing each of these steps for all of the programs I manage in 2010. I hope that you find this information helpful and prosperous with your programs too.
Shannon Simmons is an Assistant Affiliate Manager for the affiliate management agency JEBCommerce.com, MyAffilateCoach.com and NewsForAffiliates.com.
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Detecting affiliate abuse is one of the more challenging aspects of affiliate program management. Since the majority of affiliates add value to a program, identifying the abusive affiliates can feel a bit like finding a needle in a haystack.
The performance data provided by the affiliate networks is one of the most valuable aspects of the affiliate program, and can be used to identify affiliates engaged in abusive behavior.
Study the Inbound Referrers
Most visitors to your Web site come with information in their request that tells the Web site where the visitor came from. This information, known as the “referrer”, is used by programs such as Google Analytics to identify traffic sources. There are three important patterns to look for:
- Referrer from the Search Engines: If the referrer shows one of the search engines as the source, the affiliate is probably purchasing PPC ads and using an uncloaked affiliate link in their ad.
- Referrer from Webmail Clients: Affiliates using email as a marketing tool will often show referrers from web email clients.
- No referrer: A number of trademark bidders (or affiliates trying to mask the source of their traffic for other reasons) are using cloaked affiliate links with a referring technique that strips the referrer from the user’s session.
Not all networks provide full referrers, however they often provide a report that at least shows the domain the traffic came from.
Understand Abnormal Conversion Rates
Affiliates using different promotional methods will have different conversion rates in your program. Significant differences in conversion rate from your program average might indicate something is amiss.
For example, unusually high conversion rates can be indicative of trademark bidding, while unusually low conversion rates (coupled with high traffic) can be indicative of adware.
Many merchants group their affiliates into categories (email, SEM, coupons, website, etc.), and then study the performance of the affiliates in each group. This approach allows for a clearer identification of suspicious activity.
Study Transaction Timing
Just looking at when an affiliate’s transactions occurred can also be very informative. Two things to look out for:
- A temporary traffic surge: A quick, short burst of traffic could have come from an unauthorized email campaign or a successful social media campaign. Regardless, it is probably a good indication to look further.
- Off-hours transactions: Transactions that only occur at night or on weekends might be indicative of a day-parted PPC campaign.
There are plenty of good reasons why a non-abusive affiliate might be using a technique identified in this article. Simply discovering an affiliate that matches one of the patterns above does not confirm the affiliate was doing something wrong.
The best approach is to develop a relationship with the affiliate so that the merchant understands their promotional methods. These techniques should be used to identify affiliates that warrant closer investigation.
David Naffziger is CEO of BrandVerity, a firm that detects affiliate violations of merchant paid search policies.
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So what exactly is PPV advertising?
PPV (pay per view), also known as CPV (cost per view) is usually referred to as contextual advertising. PPV is technically adware; not to be confused with spyware. Adware comes from an ad-supported program that a user installed onto their PC, which they agreed to when installing it. PPV allows you to not only bid on keywords but also domains (URLs).
So what’s so good about PPV? From my experience, it is incredible if done right. I have some campaigns, for instance, where I spend approximately $50 on a day and they each generate thousands in revenue. Not bad, eh?
Why am I sharing this information? Probably because I am a mad man or maybe because I do well enough that I feel like giving people some inspiration. It has always helped me in the past.
Now that you know the basics, I will walk you through the steps to get started. You’re going to need to be signed up for a network. For beginners, I recommend signing up for MediaTraffic, and when you are more advanced, try out TrafficVance.
The first step is to choose which product or service you want to promote. The most recommended are simple and short-form submits; but don’t limit yourself to these.
After you have chosen an offer, it’s time to start researching keywords; and most importantly URLs. There are a number of ways to do this. If you are not familiar with the process, just search around the Web for keyword researching tools.
As far as finding URLs goes, it’s pretty simple, but does require some creativity. What I typically do is a simple search for my offer or things related and copy down the URLs that come up. Then I take those URLs over to Quantcast.com and get a ton more related Web sites using the “Audience Also Likes/Visits” feature on the right hand side.
Once you have your list of keywords/URLs, it’s time to setup your campaign. It is VERY important that you track everything, so you can eliminate the keywords/URLs that are not converting.
The most common question I get is “Should I direct link the offer or use a landing page?” and I always reply that if you’re not sure, why don’t you split test it and find out? Some offers work well direct linking to them, and some do much better with a jump page.
If you take PPV serious enough, you will likely experience a financial rollercoaster. You WILL lose money testing things. You WILL have unsuccessful campaigns. You WILL fail, and that’s life. But if you make it past all the failures and don’t give up, success could be right around the corner…
Bryn Youngblut is a full time entrepreneur and affiliate marketer, and he blogs at www.Bryn.me
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