Keyen Farrell Offers Useful Tips For Incentive Marketing

A few years ago, Keyen Farrell authored a guide to incentive marketing titled Mastering Incentive Websites. In it, Keyen Farrell shared his observations of the business and detailed the steps he took to form Topaz Financial, a network of Incentive Websites that ultimately drove a lot of than 100,000 advertiser actions. Topaz Financial was also chronicled in the Spring 2006 Issue of Colby Magazine. As we tend to head into a replacement decade, Keyen Farrell desires to share two pieces of recommendation that he hopes those who currently are in or aspire to be in incentive promoting, might notice useful.

Free Trials are The New Leads
Many years ago there was no shortage of advertisers needing to partner with incentive marketers on a pay-per-lead basis. It’s readily apparent that the pay-per-lead has gone the way of the dodo. The few pay-per lead programs that remain grant payouts well below what is needed to actively promote them. Pay-per-lead offers have continually been the incentive marketer’s Holy Grail since they allow conversion rates that are many times those of pay-per-sale affiliate programs. Furthermore, pay-per-lead programs supply more consistency than pay-per-sale programs since the payouts are fixed instead of a share of a final sale. Fixed payouts are always a lot of attractive to users and convert at a significantly higher rate.

It should return as no surprise that in the Incentive promoting area, what matters at the end of the day is conversion rate. Every part of an Incentive Web site, from the visitor funnel to the individual offers must be tuned to drive the best conversion rate and ultimately the best revenue per visitor. In 2005 we experienced conversion rates as high as 20% on certain pay-per-lead offers.

As true pay-per-lead opportunities (assume lead generation) have evaporated, a connected model remains a viable source of conversions: free trials. Most obviously, free trials involve no immediate cash outlay from users, lifting conversion rates. Secondly, the acquisition funnel is way shorter and more direct than nearly all pay-per sale funnels. Free trials are an offer type where the merchant’s goals are directly aligned with yours. The issue with pay-per-sale affiliate programs is that the purchase funnel is long and can be downright confusing to the user. Many pay-per-sale affiliate links can direct users to a landing page that’s either irrelevant or too high in the purchase funnel. This is typically an intentional merchant tactic since not all sales or actions may be required to generate affiliate payouts. You should continuously scan the fine print in the terms of each pay-per-sale affiliate agreement. Free trials are a key strategy to stay your incentive promoting competitive this decade, and as models of digital media distribution still evolve, the opportunities can only grow.

Don’t Go In-House
If the degree of actions you drive becomes important, it’s more than possible that the merchant can get to bring your relationship in-house. Removing the affiliate network from the equation ends up in deep and immediate value savings for your merchant partner – since affiliate networks charge merchants as a lot of as 30% of every completed action, merchants can happily bump up your payout as an incentive to lure you in-house. My advice is simple: Don’t do it. While the prospect of upper payouts may appear alluring, in-house relationships can be fraught with hassle even among the foremost reputable merchant sets.

Affiliate networks provide a valuable service to you by acting as a robust intermediary. If you’ve gone in-house and a merchant decides to bilk you, there is no recourse. The merchant is only risking your relationship. After all, if you have got a blowout month in which you’re owed a giant commission check, an unscrupulous merchant could simply decide that the chance of losing your referrals is worth stiffing you on the check. In an affiliate network, this merchant’s actions would jeopardize their relationship with that network’s entire affiliate base. Smart networks can de-activate deadbeat merchants and fight for you if you have been wronged. Some merchants can reverse or cancel a lot of transactions than they must, and therefore the network could be a valuable arbiter of such disputes. You will possible notice that your network is raring to lend their ear when you have got issues. They recognize that the integrity of the network rests on a high quality publisher and merchant base. You can’t have a quality network without both. And don’t forget, the network gets paid when you are doing! Thus when the phone rings from your top payer’s affiliate manager, say yes to the free schwag, however say no to going in-house!