[Mike Abolafia]

Good Morning Everybody......The question that I wanted to put out there today is what type of communication do you feel is most beneficial to yourself as an affiliate.

We frequently run special promotions as well as offer affiliate coupons. For example for the month of July we are promoting 4 major coupons:

TSAOUT20 (case sensitive) - 20% additional saving off TheSportsAuthority.com Outlet.
JULYFOG10 (case sensitive) - $10 off a purchase of $50 or more at Fogdog.com
JULYOSH10 (case sensitive) - $10 off a purchase of $50 or more at Oshmans.com
JULYSPM10 (case sensitive) - $10 off a purchase of $50 or more Sportmart.com

What type of regular correspondence would you prefer to be used when notifying you of new coupons, creative, hot products, or any other news?
(Newsletter style emails, Reporting.net posts (BF), CJ Emails, Abestweb posts, all of the above?)

How often would you prefer to be emailed regarding coupons and specials? Once a month, Bi weekly, as a hot deal pops up?

Any feedback on positive correspondence with an affiliate program is appreciated.

Mike
AAE
GSI Commerce, Inc.

[ecomcity]

Posting here in your own section is best for overall hashing out strategy. Couponers love getting e-mail notifications unless their a BHO on the networks daily autofeeds. No BHO wants to here any drivel or pitch from their pool of merchants ...just the "cha ching" of the direct deposit into their accounts. They are too busy devising ways to infect shopper systems and throwing up billions of cookie setting popups to fool with affiliate marketing creatives.

Domain bound affiliates suffering through years of GSI pool of merchants with poor conversion ratios need an enticement to put back links. Those come in the form of automatically updated hot seller displays and HTML product showcases. Look over the ones Essential Apparel puts out for CJ ...or Overstock at Linkshare ...or TigerDirect and others use at BeFree. Only an idiot would take the time to build individual product links and category pages to GSI merchants until you publish their individual conversion ratios. (network average number of clicks to generate one sale)

Mike & Charlie ... http://abw.infopop.cc/smilies/parrot.gif

If they won't adopt and feed a bird ..flip them one! BBQ some Gator and remember to flush WhenU..

[Mike Abolafia]

Mike.....This post was directed towards affiliates like yourself. Although, there are plenty of reputable non-parasitic coupon sites on this board this post was not put out directly to them. If an individual site owner would like to be communicated with in a certain way I would be happy to accommodate them. This post is merely an attempt to get a better understanding of how the majority of affiliates would like to be communicated with.

Thank you for letting me know that you prefer to see news updates posted in this forum.

As far as your other comments they are noted and are definitely actions that are being looked into.

[happypoon]

I hate popups (as do consumers) and I hate having to update specific links on a regular "or irregular" interval too.

In my opinion more merchants need to create banners that are auto updating regarding current specials. There are a few merchants using these types of banners and they are "very effective" for both the merchant and the affiliate.

Specials with this method usually get prime exposure are are always in the eye of the consumer. The fact they stay current automatically also eases concerns by both parties regarding "outdated advertising" that needs to be updated.

On a side comment, I was going to email you but you dont have an email addr listed in your sig like most merchants do.

[Mike Abolafia]

Happy..... Although they aren’t HTML banners we do offer "Special Affiliate Deal" banners which promote hot categories. These banners are currently offered for a bunch of our sporting goods partners within CJ.

However, I posted the communication question because there are always other topics to let the affiliates know about such as individual hot products, coupons, or price cuts.

Feel free to email me at Affiliates@GSICommerce.com
Please either put "abestweb" or "Mike" in the subject.

Mike
AAE
Affiliates@GSICommerce.com

[jimbo2002]

The best communication is this. Put it on Abestweb, and keep it active.

The way i prefer to hear about coupons in via email. I never even heard of a fogdog coupon in the last 2+ years (maybe that would have helped me get the last $4.50 towards my check).

[dflsports]

I think emails about promotions works fine, on a monthly basis.

I'd say posts here would be great too.