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By admin, March 31, 2010 9:55 am

Why They Work and How to Use Them

Someone’s good word can be incredibly powerful. As a consumer yourself, wouldn’t you rather purchase a product that has been recommended to you by a friend even if it is unfamiliar to you? Given a selection of similar products, wouldn’t you rather try one that has had some glowing reviews even if you’ve never heard of them before? Such is the power of testimonials when used in promoting affiliate sites.

These days, testimonials are a common strategy for building credibility and generating buzz about a product or a company. The world’s largest corporations spend billions of dollars in harnessing the power of a good word alone. In affiliate marketing, testimonials are regularly utilized to promote an affiliate’s site, attract new customers and recruits and compete directly with another known brand.

Why affiliate marketers use testimonials

The role of testimonials in promoting an affiliate marketing site is to try to influence consumers’ buying decisions and behavior. Carefully chosen testimonials can be very effective in convincing prospects to try the affiliate product, service or membership. It has such power that many affiliate marketing sites regularly publish testimonials from satisfied customers on their home pages for visitors to view.

Many of the affiliate marketing programs in the industry today are fairly new while others have been operating quietly under the radar. Their relative anonymity can work against them, particularly since the affiliate marketing field tends to be very competitive.

To stand out, affiliate marketing programs try to increase their credibility factor by inviting famous personalities to speak for them through testimonials. While this can be very effective particularly if the celebrity has a large fan base, it can also be quite expensive. Not every affiliate marketer can afford to pay a celebrity just to place their name on his site.

To compete, affiliate marketers turn to their own customers and members, specifically people who have had sufficient experience in the program and those who have experienced success. A fully satisfied customer’s testimonial, if it’s well-written and based on a true experience and event, can be as convincing and effective as that of any celebrity.

Using the power of testimonials for promoting an affiliate’s site
Building your credibility can be tricky, particularly since the affiliate marketing industry continues to evolve. However, if careful strategies are employed, there is a high likelihood that you can succeed as an affiliate. Consider the following factors:

Specifics

Testimonials exhibit much more power in promoting your affiliate’s site if they are expressed in more details. If a testimonial from a customer or another affiliate states that the program is ‘excellent’, it should be followed by a specific description of the program’s most useful features ? what makes it excellent, how it has helped the customer or affiliate, why it’s reliable, etc.

Skepticism

Believe it or not, skepticism is healthy when used with testimonials for promoting your affiliate’s site. Words such as, ‘I wasn’t convinced at first, BUT?’ or ‘I have always used XYZ product and didn’t think of switching to another brand. However, your product has ____ and ____ features that convinced me it was so much better.’

Even with the stated objection, a testimonial can be quite powerful if it is followed by a positive statement.

Keeping it real

Avoid using fake testimonials. ‘Designer’ testimonials are easy to write according to the specifics you require but someone will get wind of the fact and expose you. Once you’re found out, you lose your credibility. That simple act could haunt you for the rest of your life as a discredited affiliate marketer.

A few good words

Try to be selective with your choice of testimonials. They can be quite powerful when used for promoting your affiliate’s site but over-use can work against you. Find the best ones, especially the well-written and detailed testimonials and use these instead. Or, you could take the best sentences and phrases and post those in place of a whole paragraph.

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By admin, March 30, 2010 10:55 am

It requires dreadfully hard work to build a robust, responsive and high-quality mailing list. Just flooding thousands of emails to the list of recipients in the database won’t do the trick. The truth is that acquiring email addresses is just a small part of the large process of email marketing. It is very important to realize that the company should build an individual relationship with every person behind the email address. If the starting is wrong, every chance for building a rewarding relationship with the subscribers is instantly killed. And on the other side, if the company proves itself worthy to its list of subscribers, then many happy years lie ahead for both the parties.

For list building some key components need to be kept into account like the method of acquiring the email addresses, how new subscribers should be welcomed, and how the relationship is maintained after the opt-in process. Acquiring the list of addresses is the easiest part of list building. But the basic rule here is to take explicit permission from the owner to send emails. Violation of this rule is going against the U.S. CAN-SPAM law regarding commercial email. This also leads to breaking of the relationship with the customer.

Addresses can be collected by online and offline means. Links for email opt-in should be posted on every page of the website, including the registration page and every transactional page. Paid search can be used to reach elevate the position in search engines results. The land up page should include a vivid link to the sign up page. Alliances can be searched who have a similar or a complementary business so to promote one’s company in return of promoting the other company. Incentives such as email only discount and free shipping can be offered to increase the subscription list. If the list is being rented from another organization make sure the list contains subscribers which have given permission. Offline means include collecting email addresses from visitors to the company, trade show or on-site. Email addresses can be asked for in appropriate situations by the customer support employees and telephone sales workers. Links for subscription can be posted in all printed material such as newspapers, flyers, magazines, bags, store signs, customer survey and feedback forms, catalogs, etc.

The next important step is to welcome the new subscriber. Because of the flood of emails filling one’s inbox, it is a tough to make one read the email and trust in it. A welcome message, with appropriate content, helps in building the relationship of trust with the subscriber. In fact, a complete welcome program must be build for this purpose. Welcoming a subscriber actually starts from the website’s registration page. This page should clearly explain the content, benefits and frequency to the subscribers. The opt-in page should be easy to navigate and shouldn’t be bothersome with numerous questions to be answered. For start four fields are sufficient: first name, last name, email address and format preferences. The other information can be collected via optional forms. After sign-up a thank you page must pop up immediately. This doses the confirmation job and leads the subscriber to the optional form. Next, a welcome email should be send to the customer. This email will not only build up the initial trust but will also check the validity of the email address. This email should include links to optional forms and the detailed preference page. It can also contain the subscription benefits and sample of the past best newsletters.

The next step of relationship management is the most important and delicate phase because of the personal relationship with every subscriber. If it is not taken care of properly, all the effort taken to collect email addresses for subscription list will be wasted. The subscriber’s preferences must be honored in order to expand the email program. The trends in bounces, inactivity and unsubscribing can be noted by the list statistics. Occasional special offers and surveys can be created for sustaining the interest of the readers. People who haven’t opened the emails for a long time should be concentrated upon, especially. Send follow-up emails and query messages.

Opt-in list building takes lots of time, energy and dedication. Certainly all the effort is worth it in the end, which can be seen by the healthy growth of the mailing list.

PPPPP

Word Count 730

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By admin, March 29, 2010 11:55 am

One of the biggest mistakes to do is to use email like the electronic version of direct marketing media such as postal mailers, catalogs, radio, television, newspaper inserts and even brochures. A world class brand builder can become a sure fire brand killer in no time if it is treated with ignorance, carelessness, and laziness. The brand killing capability is very much dependant on the email’s relationship with the recipients. The relationship is more personal because of the intimate relationship between the people and their computer. And because of this intimacy, positive and negative feelings are encourages by the company’s name. No mail is as irritating as junk mail and the penalties for such emails are getting much stiffer. A flood of spam complaints can affect the email program to the extent of shutting it down.

The email is becoming a personal medium, slowly. The recipient should be made in charge, he should be able to decide from whom he should receive email from, what kind of email he wants to receive and when he can stop receiving those emails. An email program which dose not includes all these conveniences will do severe damage to the company’s or brand’s name.

The first thing to concentrate upon is to remove poor permission practices. If this thing isn’t taken care of, nothing done after that will make up for the loss. In simple words, it is completely wrong to email a commercial message to anyone who hasn’t given the permission to do so. Sometimes, a person is simply signed up for receiving email while registering on the website because of checking boxes in a hurry. Thus, it is important for the registration page to display the privacy policy which says that the registration also includes agreement for receiving emails. And in spite of this, there is a high chance to get large complaints because of the unclear opt-in process. Some companies send emails to a person who has downloaded whitepaper or brochure form the website. It is better for the check box be not checked before hand. The job of checking the box should be left to the visitor.

In spite of taking these precautions sometimes it happen that the recipient will head straight to the report spam button when they do not want to receive email anymore. This happens when the recipient dose not trust the unsubscribe process. The first reason for the loss of trust is because of not sending the message in the desired format: text or HTML. The readers subscribe intrusting the company and when their email program fails to honor their trust, the company has to pay for this. It is very important to give the reader the option to choose from text or HTML format. Usually technical people prefer only text messages where as the teenagers prefer messages in the HTML format.

The content of the email should exactly meet the requested information. If a subscriber has asked for sales announcements then do not send them company news. Similarly, the frequency of email should also be kept in mind. If request has been made to receive a weekly newsletter, do not send bi-weekly newsletters. An occasional exception such as sales bulletins or news can be used sparingly. Customers complain a lot about the pouring of emails during the holiday season. It is better to focus on the quality rather than quantity.

It is not a compulsion that the content of the email look like spam and considered as a spam. If the recipients able to recognize the sender or dose not consider him to authentic, the mail directly goes to the spam folder. Three things should be considered to keep away from this problem. The sender or the subject shouldn’t appear vague. The content should be relevant to the brand name and its products. The unsubscribe procedure should be checked regularly. Failed unsubscribe and repeated requests for unsubscribing not only blocks the email program but also kills the brand name. Along with checking this link, it is highly recommended to check other links as well. Clicking on the link should take directly to the landing page and not on home page or a ‘Page Not Found’ page. Also, effort must be made in reducing the number of clicks done to achieve a certain action.

PPPPP

Word Count 723