Most affiliate
programs today seem to be geared towards promotion on web sites through the use of banner
ads. A recent survey of ClickQuick visitors confirmed
that using banner ads is the most frequently used method of affiliate program promotion.
However, as banner ads have flooded nearly every web site you visit (including mine) their
effectiveness has decreased significantly. Banners that are very targeted towards the
site's audience still often perform well, but there are other effective methods of
promotion that are often overlooked.
In past issues of the
newsletters we have looked at ways to improve affiliate program performance. Some of these
articles highlighted the importance of carefully selecting affiliate programs to best fit
your audience, and how to use personal testimonials successfully to improve click-through
and response rates. Another method that is becoming increasingly popular is to promote
affiliate programs through an email newsletter.
Deciding on What to Write About
The first step of course of
course is for you to begin a newsletter if you haven't already. Deciding on the subject of
your newsletter may be difficult, or fairly easy, depending on the nature of your site. If
your site is on a specific topic, say adventure travel, your newsletter should obviously
follow suit. If your site is more general, say a directory of other web sites, perhaps
your newsletter could profile some of the sites you have in your directory, and also
provide tips to those sites on how to better improve their visibility to customers.
Obviously, the choices are endless, and it will be a personal decision on what you would
like to write about. Perhaps the most important piece of advice I can give is to make sure
you choose a topic you enjoy, otherwise writing the newsletter will become a tedious
obligation, rather than a natural extension of your web site.
Managing Your Newsletter
Once you have decided what you
would like to write about, the next step is to decide how to manage your newsletter. There
are many ways to accomplish this. First, you can handle your newsletter entirely in-house
meaning that you handle adding new subscribers to your mailing list, handle the process of
removing those that decide to cancel their subscription, and perform the actual mailing
out of your newsletter. This is the route I chose for this newsletter, and it has
advantages and disadvantages both.
The
main advantage is that you have complete control, and don't have
to worry about the limitations of a service, or the possibility
that the service won't be available when you need them. You also
can guarantee utmost privacy to your subscribers, since you are
the only one with access to the mailing list. The disadvantage
is that it can be very time consuming, especially if you are unable
to automate many of the tasks at hand. Luckily, I was able to
automate many of these tasks through my familiarity with programs
such as Microsoft Access (database) and WorldMerge
(an excellent email program that allows you to automate sending
and personalizing email messages).
