15 creative uses for affiliate Datafeeds

Datafeeds (also known as a product catalog or product feed) can intimidate a new affiliate as they immediately scream “I’m not a coder” when the thoughts of XML, CSV, FTP, integration and site builds pop into their heads. It’s true! To maximize the use of a datafeed you HAVE to have tools in place to talk back and forth with the data source to update inventory, prices and include new items. In it’s simplest form a datafeed can be merely a spreadsheet, take a look at the example below, I opened in excel which gives you complete access to manipulate the data, find what you are looking for and glean what you need.

In the search for more tools and tricks to add to your affiliate business don’t dismiss the power of a datafeed because you can’t code, here are 15 uses for datafeeds to get your juices flowing.

1. Comparison Shopping engines – There are a ton of these out there, I’m sure are all fed by merchant datafeeds.

2. Build single, static content pages – Affiliate networks like Avantlink and Shareasale have great tools to help you build quick product display pages and easily embed them into your site, blog or social network profile.

3. Niche stores – create small stores based off of product category, price, brand, etc…If you can keep it small enough you don’t need to be ultra sensitive to automated updates.

4. Widget & Dynamic Creative development – dynamically feed product details into widgets, search boxes or other small “plugin” type creative.

5. Featured products – Create daily, weekly or monthly featured products based off of brand, category or product.

6. Discounted products – Almost every feed I have seen has a price and a sale price. Identify the deepest discounts, compare and promote through your email lists or SEM. Combine the sale price with affiliate coupons for an even bigger advantage!

7. Identify and leverage trends. I guarantee the hottest products get loaded into the biggest merchants’ feeds. Keep an eye on new products!

8. Keyword list building – many datafeeds have a field for keywords, even if yours is missing this you can still combine categories, brands, product names and other fields to come up with a creative keyword list.

9. “Adwords Editor” imports – if you have permission to direct link the merchants datafeed Is a great start to a Adwords Editor feed, tweak the format and import.

10. Build “lists” or product bundles – For example a list of all the back to school supplies kids will need this year, favorite music or video playlists or father and mother’s day gift idea lists.

11. Incorporate product reviews into your site – not all merchants have review feeds and most of the time you HAVE TO ASK your program manager!

12. Quickly find product specific links – easily plug a link into your next blog post or article, open feed, find product, copy/past link…

13. Shopping website – I had to throw this in as some people have the resources to build around a feed.

14. Product Review Blogs – Start blogging about product categories (“new womens shoes”), utilize the datafeed as a link and product information source.

15. Grab the optional data! - Altrec.com has a datafeed in the Avantlink affiliate network that has product video links, sizing charts and other information you can clip out of the feed and incorporate into your content.

Next time you are in Shareasale go apply for some feeds, download them and start playing with the data. You will be surprised at the volume of information and hopefully the ideas above will give you inspiration to get creative!

Tags: affiliat tools, datafeeds, shareasale

26.Apr.08 Affiliate Blog Comments (0)

Better Merchandising Ideas for your Affiliate Interface

Take advantage of opportunities within your affiliate interface to communicate the right message about your affiliate program. Just like any business there is a level of merchandising, selling or whatever you want to call it to ensure you are branding correctly & ultimately converting. The job for your affiliate interface should be to 1) educate, 2) motivate, 3) track lots of actions…

Here are a few things I do to educate & motivate within an affiliate interface:

1) Sell your product! Use Investor Relations, Product information, Media Kits and demographic information throughout your site so affiliates can learn about YOU. This is just another way to stay connected with your affiliates in hopes of a long term relationship.

2) Use Video that talk about your products, tools and FAQ’s. Take a look at the image below, it’s a screenshot of how I have incorporated a Doba overview video in the advertiser information page. This is great within CJ as affiliates that have NOT joined also get the exposure.

Image of how video looks inside of the CJ Program Detail Page. To see it in full action, log into CJ and find Doba in the advertisers section (under Auction).

3) Archive your newsletters. This is an easy way for new affiliates to dig around and learn what you have been up to over the last several months, past contest information and whatever else you may be sharing in your newsletters.

4) Build out an FAQ. I don’t know about you but I get a lot of great of email questions, document them, record your answers and build out a simple FAQ. This can act as a “getting started guide” as well as a first round support tool.

5) The obvious: Focus on your tools, 3rd party tools, have plenty of support options, forums & blogs, communities and other essentials.

6) Visual Aids for your compensation plans. When I was at oneNetworkDirect we needed an easy way to explain our rewards program (see it below) so we built out a nice visual aid. As hybrid compensation plans become more prevalent you need a better way to explain the deal…

If you are relying on an affiliate network that doesn’t support these kind of customizations, then take the time to build out an affiliate portal attached to your main site. You can even rely on a social network such as Facebook or Myspace to host your affiliate portal, a great way to tie in the social aspect and encourage your recruiting efforts.

You must have some good ideas, what would WOW affiliates and encourage their return?

Tags: affiliate videos, commission junction

25.Apr.08 Merchant Blog Comments (0)

Exclusive Affiliate Coupons for you…& you…& you

There is a great deal of concern around issuing exclusive offers and coupons to affiliates as they too often fall into the wrong hands and you end up paying too much with upset affiliates. DirectTrack (DT) has built in technology to help protect links from abuse; it won’t eliminate the actual coupon usage through commerce but can stop the extra commissions you are doling out to abusers.

If you are DT client these features already exist in your network, you just need to learn how to use them. If you aren’t a DirectTrack client, I would encourage you to take a look at the capabilities around link protection and think if a standalone separate tracking tool for your coupons and offers is a good idea. You can easily (and inexpensively) launch a private tracking system for your coupon tracking in just a few weeks.

I have identified 7 features of DT that aid in the protection of links and can easily be adapted to support coupon protection.

Private Campaigns – This technology speaks for itself, you can easily create a different program term that is completely hidden from all other affiliates. Then just add creative that drives your coupons into this campaign, let the link validation do it’s job.

Hidden Links – Should not be used alone on a public campaign but gives you the ability to hide any link from all affiliates. Doing this requires you to hand hold the creation of the links, deliver them to affiliates and keep side notes so you can easily retrieve performance data.

Passing Unique Variables in Links – This is one of my favorite features. Because DirectTrack uses a link redirection for it’s core tracking, you can setup the links to pass a number of different variables from the affiliate site back to yours after the redirection happens. Here is a sample link that I am using on a client that has a several of the DT variables being tracked as well as a few of my own.

http://www.directtrack.com/?source_key=auniquesourcekey&source=auniquesourcename&bid=%PROGRAM&aid=%ADD_CODE&dt=%DTOPT

The variable values that begin with % are DirectTrack options, there are a total of 15 known variables that can be passed through links inluding the cookie ID, link name and number, program identifier, ad pools and more.

Link Checking & Validation – This is my own terminology for a unique way that DirectTrack talks back and forth between affiliates and links. For example a sample DT link might look like:

http://affiliate.directtrack.com/z/24/CD1

The “24” is a unique link identifier, that is assigned directly to a campaign that has affiliates (CD1) assigned to it. If there is a kink in the chain, for example: CD1 is not associated with the campaign that link #24 is associated with, the commission will not happen.

Referring URL’s – One of the VERY few affiliate platforms that allows you dig deeper into the click referrals. If you have DO see exclusive coupon code abuse slip through, it’s really easy to see where the traffic is coming from. DT provides IP, URL strings and more information for you to find who is taking advantage of you.

Approved Website Validation – Some other affiliate networks and platforms have incorporated this technology over the years. It requires affiliates to “register” their website, if an action is tracked outside of that URL that is registered sirens go off. Another great way to identify abuse!

Encrypted URL’s – There are tons of tools on the market that do this but none will ever work as good as coming directly from the network or tracking solution.

What are other networks and solutions doing to protect their links and offers?

Tags: affiliate-coupon-codes, affiliate-networks, directtrack, exclusive-coupon-codes

24.Apr.08 Merchant Blog Comments (0)