This year TheMediaCrew hosted it’s annual Christmas Party at Maggianos in Tampa. We had an incredible time. The food was excellent and the company was even better. We all enjoyed a ‘dirty santa’ gift exhange which provided some laughs. We are blessed to have such a great team and we look forward to an even better 2010. Thank you to all our clients, partners, advertisers and affiliates. We look forward to working with you in 2010.
TheMediaCrew & RevenueStreet want to wish you and your family a happy and safe holiday season.
Come by our booth # 503 & listen to our COO Rustam Irani speak on “Negotiation for the Best CPA and RevShare Models.”
Also, our COO Rustam Irani will be speaking at the Affiliate Convention in Los Angelas on Friday December 4th, at 9am on Negotiation for the Best CPA and RevShare Models. An overview of the discussion will include: “How do you get what you need in this business? You negotiate. That’s easier said than done, especially when you’re negotiating with a pro. This sessions give you the tips and tactics needed to get the best CPA or revshare you can. Learning these skills early will seriously improve your business bottom line for years to come.”
1. Competing With Your Affiliates.
This is by far the worst mistake made by companies that offer affiliate programs. I often see companies for products I am trying to promote compete with me in the search engine rankings and pay per click advertising programs.
Why companies invest money and resources in competing with their affiliates is beyond me. By competing with me, you’re trying to put me out of business. Have marketing directors ever thought of it in that way? Because if you succeed, you will no longer have an affiliate network to speak of.
The money would be better spent on supporting your affiliate network by creating a better product, providing more referral statistics, higher commission payouts, faster support, and more, fresh promotional creatives.
2. Not Providing Your Affiliates With Useful, Real-Time Statistics.
All marketers rely on statistics to measure the effectiveness of any marketing campaign. Yet most affiliate programs only provide their affiliates with basic statistics such as number of visitors sent, number of sales, and commission earned. These statistics aren’t much help to affiliates who want to measure the effectiveness of a particular pay per click campaign.
3. Not Compensating Your Affiliates Fairly For Their Hard Work.
The #1 incentive for any affiliate is cold hard cash. Money sells! So tell your marketing director to fire the search engine optimization firm and advertising department, and redirect the resources to paying your affiliates a higher commission rate.
4. Not Providing Enough Fresh Promotional Creatives.
Most affiliate managers seem to give their promotional creatives little thought. All they offer is a handful of 468×60 banners, buttons and text links. What happens is that affiliates end up using the same ads on hundreds, even thousands of web sites.
5. Not Providing Fast, Quality Support For Your Affiliates.
This is the 21st century. Don’t make your affiliates wait longer for an email reply than it takes to send a letter by snail-mail post.
Don’t outsource your affiliate support work. If you have to, then at least train your support staff so that they understand the ins and outs of your products and affiliate program. I’m often dumbfounded by affiliate support staff who can’t give me answers to simple questions.
As an internet marketing company, we rely heavily on our reputation to gain new clients and advertisers. A big part of building your reputation is increasing the amount of trust and credibility you or your business has in the industry. This reputation is the foundation to a successful and trusted partnership with your clients or employer. You can improve and maintain your reputation by following the 4 main trust principles outlined:
1. Integrity – This just happens to be one of our shared values. We pledge to always speak the truth and communicate openly and honestly with each other. In addition, integrity has to do with having congruency and “practicing what you preach.” Would you promote a campaign you would not run yourself?
2. Intent – What is your agenda, motive, and behavior? It is important in the online world to effectively communicate your agenda and the overall process being used to deliver the product or service.
“There are no moral shortcuts in the game of business – or life. There are basically, three kinds of people: the unsuccessful, the temporarily successful, and those who become and remain successful. The difference is character.” Jon Huntsman, Chairman, Huntsman Capital
3. Capabilities – Are you great at what you do? Do you provide industry knowledge and skills necessary to provide value to your customer/clients? You should constantly be improving your knowledge base and skills.
4. Results – What is your Track Record? Are you providing services in the time promised? Do you have systems in place to monitor and maintain time commitments? When you can establish a positive reputation of performing and being a producer, your reputation will precede you.
Take some time and ask yourself if you follow these 4 trust principles. This process will help you recognize your own credibility and focus on areas for improvement.
By: Rustam Irani| COO| TheMediaCrew
Deliverability remains a hot topic in the e-mail realm. Every other e-mail whitepaper these days has deliverability as the theme. But what to do when you’re not in control of the delivery? How do you send a stand-alone e-mail to a rented list and guarantee your message to new prospects gets delivered? Here are a few “must-do’s” to get the best results for your next prospecting e-mail campaign:
On the creative end, sending HTML e-mails with clean and favorable coding increases response rates significantly. Also, studies show you have less than three seconds to hook a reader. Many recipients view e-mails through preview screens while others only view a message’s top portion before deciding whether to scroll down or delete your message. Design enhancement can help maximize your message and increase response.
Also, avoid spam trap words. An oldie yet a goodie — avoiding specific words in the subject line and the body copy remains critical. For example, avoid the following: “FREE”; using the dollar sign character in the subject line; multiple exclamation points; “offer” or the excessive use of “click here.”
Budget in “send time.” When planning your campaign, allow at least four days to complete delivery for best results. The major Internet service providers — Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc. — have all recently clamped down on allowing too much commercial e-mail to come through. Take a page from the retention gurus and mail out over a series of days instead of hours.
Rememner, follow-up is more important than ever. Send a follow-up message to those who open your e-mail, with a new subject line and possibly a sweetened offer. Studies on this practice have proven at least a 15% increase in response to a multi-message strategy.
Spread out risk and send from multiple list sources, using a variety of ESPs to ensure success. Also, ask your list provider when these populations last received mailings, as using a list which has not been contacted for several months greatly increases your chances of causing spam complaints to ISPs or to spam watch groups.
Finally, be certain to use a centralized tracking tool to track results real-time online. This way, you’ll have visibility on opens and clicks. Many e-mail list rental vendors will have this tool. This way, you can monitor what lists remain in keeping with industry response rates as soon as they start deploying. Combined with always using reputable lists, these “must-dos” will increase the likelihood of your finding prospecting success and will help you achieve that ROI goal.
 |
 |
 |
Ad-Tech NYC ... Action footage
