ABOUT- JOHN DIBELLO

2012 Wrap-up: Software & SaaS on the Rise Comments (2) Welcome to the Avangate Blog, the place to hang out if you have a software business. Here’s one for you: subscribe to our RSS feed and get served immediately. Enjoy your reading! Here we are, back from Affiliate Summit East 2012: a good show with an ever growing number of attendees. But there’s one thing that stands out: the software vertical is getting stronger and stronger with each affiliate show. We’ve seen this reflected in the number of attendees specialized in the software & SaaS field: merchants, affiliates and service providers. This is very good news to us folks in the software industry, as they say, the more the merrier to the affiliate marketing table. So we keep adding to the 33,000+ software specialized affiliates and 22,000+ software products available for promotion in the Avangate Affiliate network. Going deeper in the software niche, last year we’ve seen the rise of affiliate business models monetizing traffic to free software products / digital goods, such as pay-per-install and pay-per-download. There are many high-traffic affiliates that work or at least test this model on freeware titles. Back to our show, Avangate takes pride in a strong attendance this time around as well, with a presentation on 5 ways to reactivate latent affiliates, presence in the hot and busy Meet Market and, of course, one-to-one meetings with prospects. Michael Ni, Avangate’s CMO for Products and Marketing, shared some useful insights on actions that yield great results in driving affiliates to promote your products: Incentivizing affiliates Offering exclusive conditions Getting them the right customized tools Engaging and educating affiliates to sell your products Here is the full presentation: All-in-all, it was a great conference. Great feedback also (thank you, guys!) on the dinner event at one of New York’s best steak houses – we’ll do it again! Check out some pictures on our Facebook page. We got (yet once more) the confirmation that we’re one of the top alternatives in the software & Saas with great perspectives. Don’t forget – we still have the Sky Affiliate Network offer open for software merchants (T&C apply) - contact us and let’s start growing your affiliate sales. Continue to full article Tags: Affiliate Marketing, affiliate network, affiliate sales, Affiliate Summit East, SaaS, software, software affiliate programs Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Software Marketing Author: Cristi Miculi Join Avangate for Affiliate Summit East 2012 No Comments Avangate will attend this year’s Affiliate Summit East conference in New York, August 12-14. This is the fourth such event we’re taking part into and the largest one to date, according to the organizers. As always, we want to play an active educational role in this event. Mike Ni, Avangate’s CMO will share “5 Ways to Reactivate Latent Affiliates” on Sunday, August 12th starting 11 AM in Murray Hill Suite. You can get more hands-on advice specific to your business from the Avangate team: drop by our Meet Market table #115 from 12 PM to 6 PM. Don’t just come for the good chat. we prepared lots of freebies and surprises there, especially for affiliates looking to promote software and SaaS products. Meet Market, 5:45 PM on August 12th, 2012 – this is the time when we select a winner for our iPad raffle. Get a chance to win this great prize: drop your business card at our table #115 in the Meet Market and/or schedule a meeting with us before the event (you can send me an email for this: cm [at] avangate.com). If you are a merchant selling software / SaaS, come and talk to us; we have a special offer for Affiliate Summit: waived setup fee for joining Sky Affiliate Network (T&C apply) and an invitation to an exclusive event on Sunday. Get more details by contacting us. See you in New York! Continue to full article Tags: affiliate network, affiliate programs, affiliate summit, Affiliate Summit East, Avangate at Affiliate Summit, event, promote SaaS products, promote software products, sell SaaS, sell software, selling SaaS, selling software, software affiliate programs, Software and SaaS products Posted in Affiliate Marketing Author: Cristi Miculi Affiliate Tracking Challenges for Software Merchants No Comments When software affiliates promote your products online, one of the most important aspects of this process is how you track the affiliate sales they refer to you. Accurate tracking is the keystone for a healthy and profitable relationship for both merchants and affiliates. In most cases, affiliate tracking is done via cookies – when the user clicks an affiliate link, he will get an tracking cookie placed on his machine. This cookie will be then “recognized” once the action takes place (sale is finished) and the affiliates will receive their commission. The general rule that applies is “last click wins” meaning that the affiliate that last redirected the customer to make the purchase will get the commission. But this isn’t always such a seamless flow; here are a couple of challenges from the affiliate tracking point of view for software vendors: The same order / lead comes with multiple affiliate referrals – this would mean duplicate commissions for affiliates – this can happen when you use multiple affiliate networks. It is possible that during the customer journey (that usually takes him to 2-3 websites before completing the action, according to a recent Forrester research), he gets 2 browser cookies from 2 affiliates in different networks. When the sale is complete you would have to send the commission to all affiliates involved. If you notice a high frequency for these cases, you should try and apply the “last click wins” principle, as in see which cookie has been set last and credit that affiliate for the sale. You can do that through an additional “local” cookie set on your website (see more details here) or check if the networks you’re working with have the ability to reject orders coming through affiliates when you know that cookie wasn’t the one generating the purchase. Merchant has local websites that work with different affiliate networks – this is a challenge for them, since they have to insure that all affiliates, regardless of the network they’re registered with, will be correctly tracked and paid. You could say that “each network has its territory” but it’s hard to believe that an affiliate’s traffic will originate 100% from one specific country / territory and so the clients coming from other countries will go to other websites and the affiliate that referred them will not be credited correctly. As a solution, we recommend tracking all the networks on all your local websites. You can keep the delimitation between networks on various territories, but the tracking codes should cover all the possible scenarios in order to have happy affiliates and correctly evaluate the performance of this sales channel. It is difficult/impossible to implement affiliate tracking with your payment processor – basically when you’re working with an affiliate network, you get a tracking code that you have to put on the order confirmation page (some call it “thank you” page). In order for that code to function properly, it may have some requirements associated to it. Make sure your payment processor can “deliver” in the thank you page the parameters required by the tracking script and that it’s easy for you to implement that script. Not all payment providers allow merchants to customize their confirmation pages. Landing page / custom build issues- you may have affiliates that are sending their traffic to dedicated landing pages on your domain or using custom builds for trial downloads. You have to insure that they will be correctly tracked upon the successful sale. Any flow originating from a landing page / trial application should be covered from the affiliates’ tracking point of view. To wrap up, before launching your program on multiple affiliate networks, test each purchase flow and make sure all the affiliates will be tracked and they will get their commissions. Continue to full article Tags: affiliate, affiliate network, affiliate programs, affiliate sales, affiliate tracking, duplication, how to track affiliate sales, how to track affiliates, issues, pixel, software affiliate, track affiliate sales, track affiliates, tracking Posted in Affiliate Marketing Author: Cristi Miculi How to Pitch Your Software Product to Power Affiliates Comments (2) Every affiliate has its specific needs when it comes to promoting products online. The best performing affiliates will not waste their time with every merchant that approaches them. This is why it is very important to pitch your software products to the affiliates in a way that will make power affiliates really consider your offer and get the things moving in the right direction. Here are 7 steps on how to approach software affiliates to promote your products or services; this assumes that you’ve already identified the affiliates you want to work with: Find out their promotion channels – check their website, see if they have any newsletters that they send, see if they’re using PPC advertising to promote products (you can use SEMrush for that). This will allow you to knowledgeably discuss every opportunity to promote your product depending on your goals, strategy and expectations. For example, a featured emailer sent to an affiliate’s database of 10 million customers should be more productive on a short term than a website listing. Check if they promote your competitors - if so, see how they do that: apart from listing them see if they’re running any special campaigns on the website or in the newsletters, etc. Also, check out the pricing of your competitor’s products and the default affiliate commission they offer – you will get an idea of what the software affiliate is responsive to and what you could request. Determine their specific needs – see what the power affiliate uses to promote software products online. A discount website needs exclusive coupons to promote your products. A download portal may need your products feed in order to automate your product listings. A reviews website may need some tutorial videos for your product (or if they will make it themselves, they would need a free license), test licenses, custom builds for trial files, banners. Outline your unique features and benefits – let the power affiliate know what he has to gain if they promote your products. Seeing the competitors they promote will surely help you with this. Your unique features and benefits can do the trick here – just don’t forget to add them to the pitch mix. Be sure you approach the right affiliate – if you spot a content affiliate promoting exclusively antiviruses on their website, don’t pitch them a video converter, because you have little chance to get it through, even as a complementary product. In such cases, it’s better to search whether the affiliate has websites on other niches also and try to match those. Also, if you have a policy of not giving away discounts for affiliates, then unless you can make some exceptions, coupon affiliates will not be a valid choice for you. Contact the decision maker directly – try to find out exactly who is behind the contact form on the power affiliate website. You may use a simple Google / LinkedIn search or a whois lookup. This will help you establish a more familiar connection to the affiliate by addressing them by their name and proving that you are really interested in working with them. Plus, by speaking with decision makers, you won’t have to wait for confirmations from others. Follow-up on idle affiliate conversations – most of the affiliates are very busy. This is why you shouldn’t be discouraged when you see that they haven’t replied in a couple of days. We recommend following-up on them after 3 days and again after one week. Do use the phone, if available – if they list it on their website, this means that they don’t have any problems in getting calls. In a nutshell – it is very important to present your offer to power affiliates from their own perspective, so they can understand how much will they earn from promoting your products. Continue to full article Tags: Affiliate Marketing, affiliate programs, pitch, power affiliate, products, services, software, software affiliates, software channels, software products Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Software Business Author: Cristi Miculi Barcelona – here we come! No Comments Following last year’s successful Munich event, we’re even more into A4U Expo Europe – this year in Barcelona. Starting from June 18th until June 20th, 2012, we will be available to meet and share insights into how to optimize your online buying experience, as well as how to grow a software business internationally. We are among the conference exhibitors this year: we have our own place on The Street – stand #52. Don’t hesitate to drop by and say hello – we have a lot of surprises for you. I will be accompanied by my colleague Ovidiu Marin, eCommerce Business Consultant for Avangate. Schedule a meeting with us by sending an email to events@avangate.com. See you there! Continue to full article Tags: a4u, affiliate network, Avangate, ecommerce provider, ecommerce software, grow your business, grow your software business, Software Business Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Avangate, Software Business Author: Cristi Miculi 6 Tips to Activate Stagnant Affiliates Comments (3) There isn’t a single merchant on this world selling through affiliate programs that hasn’t got idle affiliates. These are affiliates that are not active, meaning that they don’t generate any sales or, worst case, they don’t even refer traffic for the merchant (no exposure for the merchant’s products). When labeling an affiliate as “inactive” from the time’s point of view, you should take into consideration his sales history (if any) – the frequency / amount of sales he was generating at one point – and also the type of product / services you sell through them. In the software vertical, for example, an affiliate promoting consumer software get inactive quicker than an affiliate promoting enterprise products. Why do some affiliates become inactive? In order to activate an inactive software affiliate it’s best to address the issues they’re having. From what we’ve seen so far, the most frequent reasons why some affiliates have periods of time in which they don’t perform are: missing the tools to promote your products – e.g. for coupon affiliates you must provide them with a coupon; affiliate joins the merchant’s program but it takes a while until he actually starts promoting the products online; search engine algorithm updates impact their traffic / SEO efforts – Google Panda is most popular; affiliate finds another product to promote with better conditions – higher commission, special promotions, easier to sell product; lack of targeted traffic on the affiliate’s website. How can I activate affiliates? Here are 6 ideas to activate idle affiliates: Proactive approach: keep your affiliates close to you from the beginning – even if it could mean a lot of time spent for speaking with them, it’s worth it. You will be able to know what happened directly from them and help them better engage their traffic with your products. Send them a personal welcome message once they join your affiliate program and keep the communication open with them periodically. The newsletters are a good option for the mass of affiliates, but for your top affiliate a constant personal email approach is recommended. Incentivize affiliates for each little step taken into promoting your products – you may offer a flat commission percentage to begin with to which you can add increments of 5% to the commission for: sending an email back to you with an URL where they promote your product on your website, giving you feedback about your products after they test them, featuring your products on the page that gets the most relevant traffic, recommending your products on the homepage, etc. A good example for this is how VSO Software does it. Run sales contests within your affiliate programs but set realistic goals – the idea is to get those latent affiliates to start selling, so you might just want to address them. You have a flying pig’s chance to get things moving for inactive affiliates by setting a goal of “10,000 sales to reach within a week”. The way we’ve seen it work is to take a look at your sales numbers distribution among affiliates and set the goal to reach somewhere in the middle for inactive affiliates. Don’t forget to send at least a reminder for the contest to your latent affiliates. Cash bonuses and special affiliate conditions work best – a recent survey we’ve been running inside our affiliate network shows that 45% of affiliates think that the most appealing prizes in a contest is money. And we can extend that even further if we’re talking about inactive affiliates – they need the cash to keep things rolling, further invest in PPC for example, etc. The second most appealing prize would be getting special conditions from the merchant: increased commissions, exclusive products, etc. This applies to the more experienced affiliates. Generate exclusive discount coupons for them to use – coupons are a great way to accelerate sales, especially in the software vertical, where there’s no physical or delivery cost involved. Some latent affiliates can be motivated by sending them time limited discount coupons. Try to also include the affiliate’s website / name in the coupon / coupon description – vanity coupons; affiliates really like those. Offer affiliates the chance to test your products themselves – there are lots of content affiliate websites nowadays which use reviews as their primary way of promoting products to their audiences. Sending them a fully functional version of your product can help accelerate the reviewing process, thus the listing on their websites. This is especially useful when you notice that potentially good affiliates are still inactive. I’ve also seen some merchants using negative motivation to try and activate affiliates – sending “ultimatum-type” emails, getting the affiliate commission lower than the default one and so on. I don’t recommend that mainly because in 99% of the cases it didn’t work – I think mostly because there are always alternatives to your products / services on the market which they can pick up and get better conditions. Here are more mistakes you should avoid when dealing with affiliates. Did you try activating your latent affiliates? What else did you do? Continue to full article Tags: affiliate, Affiliate Marketing, affiliate network, affiliate programs, affiliate sales, affiliate system, idle, reactivate, software affiliate programs Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Software Marketing Author: Cristi Miculi « Older Entries Popular Posts Five tested ways to convert more software trials to purchases 150+ Negative Keywords for Software Selling AdWords Campaigns 4 Tools to Get More from your Google Analytics Shopping Cart Customization – a MUST! 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