Linux, per many of my other blogs, is truly the King of operating systems to couple with any stable email marketing endeavors.

As an email marketer, you will often find yourself having to locate opt-in information or pinpoint email records quickly. Here’s a quick tip on how to find a record really fast using my favorite text utility, VIM (don’t copy the quotes):

- Open your file by running the command:
“vim fileNameHere”
- Search for your text by executing:
“/email@address.com/e”
- The above text searches for the string, “email@address.com”. The ‘/e’ at the end makes your cursor land on the found record to make your data hunt even easier.

Special Note :: VIM is, of course, available on Mac OSX, as it runs on a Unix core, bundled with quite a bit of shell/terminal applications!

That’s it! You can search for any string very easily using the above snippet. Questions? Email me.

10 years ago, I was a bright eyed and bushy tailed 16-year old off to study abroad to the Ukraine. I can remember standing in line for hours a passport (because of course we waited too late and had to get the same day passport), and how thrilled I was to open it, never going farther from home by myself than summercamp at Lake Geneva, WI.

I have since lived abroad in three different cities overseas, travelled all over Russia, Europe and South America, and went to school in Texas (where I may have experienced the most culture shock yet), and my passport has officially expired. I must be getting old. Indeed, in affiliate marketing 26 sounds ancient… affiliate marketing years equate to dog years.

But like a fine wine, I’ve improved with age…and baby, I’m a big bold red. So in honor of getting better with time, I wanted to reminisce on something else that has improved over these past ten years. That is to say, the internet! For example, has anyone even heard the term “World Wide Web,” recently? Ooh, or here’s a good one for you. The “information superhighway.” Ya, it’s really just the internet.

When is the last time you heard someone talk about “surfing the Web”? You know the term is out of date when the last time you heard it was when you were on dial up. Shudder.

And even the blog seems passe, who has time for a blog these days when there are 140-character twitter updates to tweet?

Remember PDAs like the old school palm pilot? I had to wikipedia this one. Turns out it stands for Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), coined by former Apple CEO John Sculley back in 1992 when he unveiled the Apple Newton, a handheld computer. Who knew? Today, the preferred generic term for a handheld is a “smartphone,” however, it’s really either a Blackberry or an iPhone. Period.

Mmm, a glass of vino is sounding very good right now. Luckily for me, I’m jet setting off to Napa tomorrow. That’s not something I did a lot at 21. See how fabulous things can be as we get older?
Cheersies!
E-not Noir

Follow Me On Twitter! http://twitter.com/AKMGAlerts

Time after time, we Americans get bored rather quickly when it comes to trends, brands, and products. The advertising for them is no exception. These days, there are very few campaigns that are unique to the U.S online advertising market.

Lucky for us, there is the rest of world.

We’re putting heavy focus on international campaigns here at AKMG, and are excited to introduce our new International Sales Director (you will be getting a formal introduction from her on Friday)! And I am beginning to notice that many campaigns that have ran their course in the U.S are still in big demand with international affiliates.

Advertisers, affiliates - it’s time to step out of your comfort zone of domestic traffic and into the unfamiliar, exciting world of international traffic.

Got international traffic? Got international campaigns?

Let’s talk!

As someone who has seen their fair share of creatives, let me tell you a few important tips about successful creative content. First of all, having great email or banner creatives can be a huge determining factor in the success of the offer being promoted. You want your creatives to be, well, creative. Make it something that will grab the viewers’ attention.

What I have found is that an animated version of a banner creative seems to have better clickthrough rates than static ads. This means that the animation helps grab the viewers attention - not to mention that you can fit more information into one small area and dynamically change or rotate the words that are displayed. This doesn’t mean to cut out the static versions - those can be just as successful, but it is always a good idea to offer both static and animated versions for your affiliates.

Proper creative management is another huge factor in an offer’s success. Quality creatives will drive consumers to your site. Plain and simple. It can also set your program apart from your competition. Having a wide variety with a diverse selection of current and timely material is a lot more attractive to affiliates. For example, maybe there is a promotion going on for one of your campaigns - go ahead and rotate those into the mix with your other creatives. Keeping your creatives fresh, unique and timely will lead to higher conversion rates and overall greater sales revenue.

With so many tracking systems dependent on cookie tracking, how can you still track consistently without having to rely on the end-consumer’s local browser settings? Don’t always use cookies.

To track without cookies (and accommodate almost any browser configuration/environment), one must take a look at what cookies do. This is a bit over simplified, but it works like this (I’ll be using an “opening/closing door” analogy):

- Consumer clicks through a URL
- Cookie is installed on local machine, opening the door
- Consumer performs any actions (reading the page, making a decision, etc)
- Consumer performs the CPA ( Cost-Per-Action ) submission
- “Thank You” page, also known as the “Confirmation Page” is reached, which houses the tracking pixel
- The cookie session is closed, telling the tracking system a “sale” or “action” has been made and the door is closed.

If you break this down, the linear nature of such tracking shouldn’t have to rely on cookies. In Linktrust 6.0, there is another option to cookie tracking called “ClickID” Tracking. This form of tracking involves the appending of data onto a URL and then later onto a pixel. So, the set up is the same as cookie tracking with these added values being the exception. This form of tracking still tells the tracking system the relationship between the inbound click and the conversion, or sale or payable action, that was made. Because the value of each ClickID is unique, this form of tracking is considered to be secure.

Questions? Email me!

Blog Update: Why stop with just one?

As you may be aware (unless you live under a rock), the Oprah crew has recently be laying down the Harpo Inc. Hammer on peddlers of dietary supplements.

I was doing some industry research - ok ok, you got me. Celeb gossip but that’s just a technicality - when I stumbled upon this little jewel that I couldn’t help but to do a little screen shot action. Notice the unfortunate ad placement to the right. Ahhh ironic comedy gold. Queue Alanis Morissette…

Similar headlines have been all over Good Morning America and the likes. The fact that this and many publications gratuitously write an expose on “colon crap” to sell headlines while eagerly raking in the revenue placing the very same product is simply “I-ronious.” Get it… erroneous, irony, anyone (crickets)? I wonder which poor ad intern that stumbled upon that little gem and put two and two together (2+2=…5?). Oops…

I find it equally amusing all the buzz of late on uncovering this “breaking news” of tabloid scandal proportions. Um hello, you call yourself reporters? This has been going on for years. Someone should have done their homework…and frankly, I should get back to mine. Celeb gossip hunting of course. Winks!

Ebaby

Follow Me On Twitter! http://twitter.com/AKMGAlerts

As gatekeeper for all of the campaigns that enter the AKMG network, I am constantly reviewing and analyzing landing pages and creatives. Many suggestions I recommend to the advertiser are subjective (brighter colors, larger arrows, more pictures, etc). However, one item is never subjective and an absolute must…perfect spelling.

Incorrect spelling gets under my skin. I get it, not everyone won the District Spelling Bee in 8^th grade like I did, but there are way too many resources out there to do the dirty work for you. When I see spelling errors, I automatically attribute it to laziness, carelessness and lack of professionalism – and so will a consumer. A spelling mistake causes your product and your site lose all credibility. In fact, it may compel a consumer to not purchase the product, solely on principle. It would for me.

You know how simple it is to spell check your copy, so there is just no excuse for spelling errors. When it comes to the importance of spelling in an ad, don’t take your consumer for a fool. After all, they are the ones that determine the difference between a click and a conversion.

The final days of summer means one thing for kids, that their care free summer is ending and the first day of school is nearing. While many children anticipate this day, parents may become anxious due to the additional expenses of back-to-school shopping. In these tough economic times parents must shell out additional dollars to cover expenses of books, clothes, school supplies and more. According to the National Retail Federation 2009 Back-to-school spending amongst the school aged and college aged consumers will reach $47.5 billion.

According to the survey, the economy is having a major impact on back to school spending as 4 out of 5 Americans have made changes in their spending habits. 56.2% will be hunting for sales, 49.6% plan to spend less, 41.7% will be shopping for generic brands, 40% will increase their use of coupons and 22.2% will be looking online for bargains.

Another interesting study done by Compete, a site analytics software concluded that keywords for Staples.com increased by 332% while Walmart.com increased by 23% and target by 61%. This tells us that more and more consumers are shopping online for their back to school needs.

Affiliates should take advantage of this high spending season, and focus this month on running EDU and back-to school related campaigns. We have updated our Ink and Toner offer: Simply Ink, with all new back to school creative along with an additional 10% off coupon for even more savings on top of the already low prices. Contact your affiliate manager for more info.

When Mr. P and I started discussing the idea of a new car, it was really more of a monologue. I would explain why it was time to bite the bullet and take my current ride out back behind the shed and and put her out of her misery (or rather, me out of mine). Six months in, he finally saw the light.

So the Portillo’s spent the past 48 hours going from dealership to dealership, which sounds like an intoxicatingly exciting proposition at first, but how quickly that all fades into a gruelingly long and tedious reality. Granted, I was still in my post-show state, just back from a ROCKING Affiliate Summit (over 3,000 people this year - yowsa!), but dealing with the salespeople really wore me out.

There was one with gratuitous complements and terrible teeth. An overly pushy La Toya Jackson and Cousin It love child. A cliche snake oil salesman who completely ignored what I asked for and instead showed me something outside of my budget without the features I had on my wish list. I asked for black, they showed me white. After doing a little research post facto, it turns out the only one we trusted and liked was offering us the worst price.

And while I do agree with them (I really would look just fabulous in a red drop top well over my budget), we just couldn’t see eye to eye. It was simply exhausting trying to politely excuse myself from each dealership when they weren’t showing me what I was looking for.

I just didn’t trust that any of the sales people had my best interest at heart, so we walked away.

In doing so, I couldn’t help but reflect on how important trust is with my clients - that is to say, my affiliates! Just as I asked the dealers what the best car for me would be considering the parameters under which I was working, my affiliates ask me what the best offers for them to run are given the parameters in which they are working. The only way I can earn more of your business is to consistently deliver honesty and results to grow our mutual trust and respect.

In my oh so humble opinion, AKMG really listens to what our affiliate marketers have to say (and what is left unsaid). We know you’re busy, so we will tell you strait up if something isn’t working. If we know something will make you money, we’ll show you (not just tell you) why we are so confident in it. Not to mention, just like the perks of owning a luxury car, say lifetime maintenance or even just a head turn at the valet, AKMG definitely hooks up its affiliates (and AKMG has been known to turn a few heads). So let’s be strategic partners. Your success is our success.

E

Does your current tracking or ad-serving platform not offer you click analytics as a feature? While that is a large issue that should probably be addressed at the platform level, you still have options.

Since the operator of the given non-click analytic-ready platform controls all of the inbound links to the system, you can create a ’step’, or ‘agent’, in between the user’s click and the user’s landing on the offer page. This will then serve as a sort of ‘extension’ to your tracking platform, leaving the customization functionalities completely up to you. All that really needs to be done is the integration of a simply click analyzer, which can be any PHP/PERL/ASP script that records the click’s origin and time (and if you want to get really advanced, which conversion, if any, a click is associated with).

Set the ‘click agent’ to record the necessary info to a file or database, then set it to redirect to the appropriate page. This means that your script will need to receive a few values, not necessarily recording them, that identify the : creative, affiliate, campaign, sub ID, etc. Your script, after recording its information, will then continue to route the traffic to your client’s tracking URL, passing the parameter values to the next URL. The ‘click agent’ URL that could be set up in your system could look like this:

www.myClickAnalyzerDomain.com/scriptFile.php?campaignValue=xxxx&affiliateValue=xxxx&creativeIdentifier=xxxx&SUB=xxx

Since runtimes and page redirection times are one of the key players in conversion rates, it is important to optimize any script or extension you write for your tracking. Here’s how I suggest you optimize your click analytic tool:
- Use distributed systems
- 1 system or process will record the click data and perform any necessary routines
- 1 system or process will send the redirection forward

The idea here is that redirection will keep going while the other processes complete independently, not hindering runtime in any way.

Have any questions? More ideas to make your click analytic utility even better? Drop me a line