Arthur Freydin’s Blog

Online marketing, gadgets, business, and thoughts.

Despite popular opinion, an affiliate program does not run by itself. Your affiliates need consistent communication from you to remind them why you’re such a great advertiser and why they should push your offers above your competition’s. Affiliate newsletters are a great way to maintain an open line of communication and should be sent out regularly.

First let’s talk about when and how often to send out your affiliate newsletters. Mondays and Fridays are bad for affiliates. Send out your newsletters on Tuesdays – Thursdays – it’s as simple as that. As far as frequency, that’s really up to you. If you have the bandwidth, send them out once a week! If you are the only person managing the affiliate program, send them bi-weekly or once a month if you’re really short on resources.

Now let’s get to the items (in no particular order) you absolutely need in an affiliate newsletter:

1. Top Converting Products & Categories
   Every ecommerce affiliate newsletter should be sharing top converting products & categories (categories should usually be two levels deep. i.e.: instead of Bath, it should be Bathroom Sinks). There is a very handy report in CJ (and every other network I’m sure) that provides performance stats by product. Use this report to obtain the top converting products for your newsletter. If you don’t have enough statistical data in this report, pull your top converting products from your web analytics or internal sales tool. Worst case scenario, just take a good guess at which products perform well on your site.
2. Coupons & Promotions
   Most affiliates live and die by whatever promotions & coupons you are running on your site. Affiliates like FatWallet, CouponCabin, Slickdeals, and Retailmenot will absolutely love you for providing this information. Just remember to always keep your profit margin in mind and make sure that the coupons you provide do not throw your profitability out the window. Look for another post in the future that will detail what types of coupons & promos affiliates long for.
3. About Us Section
   Always keep in mind that you are always accepting new applications from affiliates and your affiliate base is always increasing. New affiliates are reading your newsletter every time so you will need to target these as well. Let them know right off the bat why they’re going to do business with you over your competition. This section should detail your great conversion rate, commission structure, average order value (AOV), tracking period, and why your customers choose you over any0ne else. Get your affiliates excited about promoting you!
4. Top Performing Creative
   Once again, this section is crucial for first time readers as well as for more seasoned affiliates that have received tons of affiliate newsletters already. First-time affiliates will use this section to kick-start their efforts with top performing creative while seasoned affiliates can use this to make sure their efforts are in line with other top performers and will adjust their promotion methods if necessary.
5. New Creative
   This is a great way to keep your program fresh & updated. New creative should be posted monthly and should always be promoted in your affiliate newsletters. Examples of creative include new categories, sales, and other promotional messaging such as free shipping & closeout centers. Look for another post specifically on program creatives in the future.

So there you have it. This should provide a great jumping off point for you affiliate newsletter efforts. There are tons of great affiliate newsletters out there by hundreds of advertisers. My suggestion is to create a publisher account on whatever affiliate network you belong to and survey the competition. Chances are that you will find lots of great ideas in your space.

Such a huge fan of reviews done months after product release (and John Gruber agrees). Check this out for the Palm Pre: http://bit.ly/3PCdRf

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Very interesting indeed. Going to try & get in touch with a rep to figure out the economics. I’m purely guessing here, but I’m thinking that it might be more profitable to do business with Walmart than Amazon. Walmart is getting into a new channel here and will need to undercut their most obvious competitor.

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Disney To Acquire Marvel Entertainment For $4 Billion

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One of the main reasons why I haven’t been posting to the blog lately is because, well, it’s a chore.

No more.

From now on, all my posts will come from my Posterous. All (or almost all) posts will be syndicated automatically across Facebook, Twitter, Posterous, Flickr, and here at my blog. Gotta love convergence.

Download now or watch on posterous

IMG_0022.MOV (3810 KB)

Forgot the name of the monkey but goddamn was it cute. Enjoy

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Well, that title is a bit misleading. In reality, I trashed Sprint for AT&T. I’ve heard many people trash AT&T’s service in the NYC area (only about 30 minutes north of me) but I’ve had exceptional coverage in NJ. So that’s that; I’m back to AT&T and done with Sprint for good.

 As far as phones go, I loved the Palm Pre, even more than the iPhone. However, even aside from the service issues, the phone had a few glaring setbacks:
*Even after numerous updates, the Palm Pre would still have substantial lag when performing even basic tasks like scrolling through the contact list.
*The hardware was great to hold in hand but just didn’t feel like it would last the test of time or a single drop. Actually, after the only time I’ve dropped the phone, it would restart randomly without notice or cause.
*I made more mistakes on the Palm Pre keyboard than I did when I was first getting accustomed to my iPhone keyboard. The Palm Pre keyboard is just too damn small and its error recovery is pathetic.

 Even with the above in mind, I was very (and still am) optimistic about the WebOS platform and can’t wait to see the future. But for now, service is king and the phone comes second. I just wish I could have experienced the Palm Pre on a more competent network.

Posted via email from Arthur Freydin’s posterous

So I’m gonna start using Posterous from my iPhone (not the actual app, just through email) to post everywhere. We’ll see how it works out.

  
Thanks,
Arthur

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So I’ll admit that I’ve been out of touch with Twitter for the past couple of months. I signed up for an account a few months ago and had maybe like 20 tweets to my name.

I thought I might give it another go and here’s what I get:

There has been quite a bit of chatter going on about the market meltdown and its effect on the startups of Silicon Valley. Funding will be increasingly hard to come by, especially from venture capitalists that are affected by the public market such as Sequoia Capital (they invested in Google, Apple, etc.). A number of venture capital firms have released presentations and emails of doom to their portfolio companies urging them to buckle down and control burn rates. They also advise to sell if the opportunity presents itself, even if it’s at a loss. The outlook has been grim, especially to those startups with light, or no revenue streams whatsoever.

It’s scary out there, especially to anyone that has been considering launching their own startup. I hold a different view on things. I think that this is going to be a time that will weed out nonsense and promote actual companies that actually add value and generate revenue. Anyone can launch a social network, but it takes a certain kind of entrepreneur to actually launch successfully and fulfill an actual need. Fulfilling a need is where it’s at for a while – it’s no longer enough to present a service that a user may just want. This paves the way for startups that make our everyday tasks easier, more productive, and more efficient. Those are the startups to keep an eye on.

Now is the time for great ideas to flourish while all the dumb ventures get flushed down the drain. Who needs social networks when all they do is weaken your productivity? Now is the time for companies that you simply can’t do without.