msdanielle - just another ego blog site

So I was reading one of the many newsletters I’m subscribed to, one of which is delivered via AWeber email software. I noticed something fishy at the end of the email (that only a marketer would probably catch). There were a series of single dashes going vertically down the email following the signature.

Now I’m very familiar with AWeber, and there are many things I’ve tested to lower unsubscribe rates (the number of newsletter recipients who unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of the email message). AWeber appends the unsubscribe link automatically to each email along with the publisher’s physical address (as you can sort of see in the image), and it’s the marketer’s job to make sure as few as possible people click on that link. That means creating awesome content, giving the user something useful for free, making sure they click on links inside the email rather than unsubscribing, etc. Or bumping the unsubscribe link so far down the page that the user doesn’t find it.

In the past I’ve tried things like inserting a series of spaces after the signature to bump down the link so it’s not visible within the frame of the content. Well, I guess it’s technically a no-no since email spam filters deem those techniques as spammy. The way to check this previously would be to include the spaces in AWeber and then check the SpamAssassin rating within AWeber. To do this, you would go into your Messages tab and view the rating under the “Spam?” link. The higher the number, the more likely the email is to be caught in a spam filter and not delivered to the inbox. It says to keep it under 5 but my recommendation is to try to keep it under 2.0.

AWeber has updated their system so it’s no longer possible to just leave spaces after the end of the message. It automatically deletes the lines that are spaces only. Therefore I’m guessing this publisher figured the way around it was to include miniscule text (i.e. dashes) after the content so it would still bump the link down. I went into AWeber and tested this. After adding the dashes below the end of the content, and checking the SpamAssassin filter, it still shows a rating of 0.

Not bad, huh? Sneaky! Now, I’m not condoning the use of tactics like this, only pointing out my observations. There are ways to lower your unsubscribe rate by improving your formatting, creating unique and useful content, and including relevant and highly clickable links. I would think that a technique like the above would still successfully get the email to the inbox, but it might have an effect of confusing the user, which isn’t such a great idea. If you do test out new tactics like this that don’t have detrimental affects to your users and also reduce your unsubscribe rates, then good for you. It’s all about finding what works.

If you’d like to find out more about AWeber email marketing software, click here to read about all of their benefits.

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Hey there all you Singapore-based affiliate marketers! If you’re new to the industry and are interested in getting your feet wet, you can try your hand at competing for a chance to win some really awesome prizes through Andrew Wee’s Affiliate Challenge, sponsored by MarketLeverage.

Basically you’ll have until August 7th to prove you know how to make money online by signing up and earning your commissions. Check out Andrew’s site www.WhoIsAndrewWee.com for the full details.

If you’re not based in Singapore, but are interested in becoming an affiliate of MarketLeverage, you can sign up here.

Good luck everyone. Let’s make some money in 2009!

[If you enjoy reading MsDanielle.com, please feel free to subscribe via RSS or get free email updates.]

As spoken word artist and author Gil Scott-Heron once said:

You will not be able to stay home, brother
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out
…Because the revolution will not be televised

The revolution will be no re-run brothers
The revolution will be live

That was 1971. In a time when consumer identity was truly beginning to either mirror or oppose the images that were spewed out from TV land, subcultures of anti-establishmentarianist dissidents were forming around the country, and around the world. Scott-Heron’s revolution was about self-identity, self-awareness and self-awakening. Identity isn’t found from without, it is found within.

His concept that the revolution against superficiality and mass consumption begins from within one’s self is almost more relevant today with the collapse of the financial institutions. The public’s passive acceptance of its desire to live outside of its means only fueled the collapse more quickly. It was the zenith of what plagues us in Scott-Heron’s poem; the zenith of our inevitable downfall.

So what does this have to do with Twitter? Technology is changing, advancing, and growing by the minute. We no longer rely on TV to bring us our daily dose of advertising. The global youth is more savvy, can’t be “sold” the way generations before them could. Today’s youth puts out information, pulls information from where they can find it, and shares it with people who they’ve never even met face to face.

Twitter, along with Flickr, YouTube, and a host of other social media sites, have helped angry voters in Iran get out their messages and images from the last few days, in ways they would never have been able to even a couple years ago. People are making their voices heard using real-time technology. The world is aware, connected, and informed. The message isn’t what’s for dinner, what will make you thin, or why no one likes you. Whatever your beliefs, soak it all up and as my friend Jimmy says, “be mindful.” This is reality; this is life; this is history. This is no re-run, my friends, this is now.

Resources: 

• Gil Scott-Heron
• Tracking Iran Election through Social Media
• Media Clampdown Meets Internet Age

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Another conference has come and gone. And this time it was ad:tech San Francisco. The three days I spent in the bay area were pretty fantastic, and this was by far one of the most fun and most productive conferences I’ve been to yet. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but sometimes that can make for the most exciting times.

ad:tech Summary

I flew into San Francisco’s SFO airport from Long Beach for the first time. Little did I know, I could take the BART train from the airport to my hotel. And when I say “from the airport” I literally mean the BART station is inside the airport. How cool is that? And when I say “to my hotel” I mean that when I popped out from the station on Montgomery Street, I looked to my left to see my hotel doorway staring me back in the face. Sweet.

After dropping off my luggage I went to meet my friends Jasper and Nick at the conference hall, which was in Moscone West this year. I’m not sure if it’s because the main hall was already reserved for RSA, or if the conference itself was smaller, but it was still a large and busy expo hall regardless (on both floors).

I met my rep Eleah from AKMG for the first time, and she gave me a really cool skateboard which I’m not sure what I’ll do with. But it’s cool nonetheless and was by far the best on-the-floor buzz item at the show. However, for the women out there, I wouldn’t recommend picking up the board at the start of the walk if you’re in heels, especially if you’re going to be running around for five hours straight…. Just sayin…. But I was still able to make my rounds through the aisles of booths and scout for traffic sources. There were a few vendors there I haven’t yet worked with so that was good, but in all the expo hall was what I expected.

Day 1 of ad:tech ended with us party-hopping, beginning our night at Cat Club for the nickycakes party - a small venue with lots of guys and no air conditioner. There was jello wrestling, boobies, and an open bar. Too bad I’m not a guy because I would’ve appreciated it more, but the alcohol was great! Then we made our way over to Ruby Skye for ClickBooth’s party, which was a lot of fun. Thanks to all the sponsors who made the night a ton of fun!

The second day was much like Day 1, with the exception that I got to sleep in and have lunch with my friend Max. Once I caught up with the group it was back to networking at Moscone and planning the night’s events. The one great thing about these conferences is that there are a slew of people who are all of the same mind-set, and once you’ve met them in person, it makes all the difference in the world.

The guys at Tracking202 held a really cool Meetup202 at club Mighty. I’ll be posting videos from that event soon. We then ended up at Advertise.com’s AdverCircus party at 1015 Folsom, featuring a team of fire dancers and an open bar. I’d like to thank the organizers of ad:tech, as well as all the great account managers and affiliates. Keep an eye out for some photos and videos in the coming days!

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The t-shirt I’m wearing right now says, “Ms. Danielle’s blogging this.” And wouldn’t you figure, I am! I got this shirt in the mail last week from Dina at Market Leverage. If you’re in the affiliate marketing space, or are looking to get into affiliate marketing, make sure to check out Market Leverage. Their account managers are very helpful and will guide you as to which programs are doing well and will help you make the most of your marketing efforts.

Also just announced this past week is Tracking 202 Pro which is now out of beta testing. If you’re looking for a host of new PPC tracking tools, check them out. Let me know if you guys have any questions about third-party tracking software. I’m thinking of doing a post outline on how it works and why you need it. What do you think?

Anywho, if you’re going to be at the upcoming ad:tech conference this April in San Francisco, make sure to stop by the Market Leverage booth to chat. Thanks, Dina, and Market Leverage for the personalized threads. I hope 2009 kicks butt for you guys and all of your affiliates!

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I received an email from someone at Commission Junction (CJ dot com) yesterday informing me that my Google PPC ads were appearing for trademarked keyword phrases that I’m not bidding on, and that their merchant’s keyword policy is to enforce negative keyword matching for their trademarks. More specifically, the brand is Banana Republic and basically they’re asking me to negative match all of their trademarked terms in my campaigns, even though I am not bidding on any of their terms, using any of their terms in my ad copy, nor driving users to the Banana Republic store page in my site. Here is the ad that appeared (and that they sent me a screen shot of) when the CJ rep or someone at BR did a search for “banana republic promo code,” which leads to the page here:

And here are their keyword terms:

Banana Republic reserves exclusive rights as to the advertising of our trademarked company name within all pay-for-placement and all other search engines. These names include: Gap, gap.com, Old Navy, oldnavy.com, Banana Republic, bananarepublic.com, Piperlime, piperlime.com and any variation/misspelling of our trademarked names. Additionally, you may not claim to be Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, or Piperlime in any pay-for-placement or other search engines.

* No bidding on the brand terms (eg: “Banana Republic,” “bananarepublic.com,” etc.), misspellings and / or derivatives of the brand terms. These names include: Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Piperlime, gap.com, oldnavy.com, bananarepublic.com, piperlime.com, etc. and any variation/misspelling of our trademarked names.

* Brand terms, misspellings and / or derivative of brand terms must be set to negative match in keyword bids for all Search campaigns (exact and broad match on the brand terms are not allowed on trademarked terms such as “Banana Republic”, nor on misspellings and /or derivatives of the brand terms)

* Use of the brand terms, misspellings and / or derivatives is not allowed in ad title and ad copy of any Search campaigns

* Direct linking to the gap.com, oldnavy.com, bananarepublic.com, or piperlime.com domain is not allowed

* Cyber squatting through the misspelling or use of the brand terms, misspellings and / or derivatives within URL strings and domain names is not allowed

* Violations will be cause for affiliate’s immediate termination and any unpaid commissions will be unearned, disallowed and/or charged back.

So why does this annoy me so much? Well, what if I wasn’t their affiliate, and I had no BR/Gap/Piperlime deals on my site? Then they couldn’t enforce this rule; and my ads would be no different. However, since I coincidentally have their deals on my site and am signed up for their program, I am now required to negative match all of my existing campaigns for them? Also, their terms aren’t very clearly stated. Yes it says “Brand terms, misspellings and / or derivative of brand terms must be set to negative match in keyword bids for all Search campaigns,” but there is a qualifier immediately after that states “(exact and broad match on the brand terms are not allowed on trademarked terms such as “Banana Republic”, nor on misspellings and /or derivatives of the brand terms).” So what the hell are they saying?

I’m no lawyer, and I don’t want to get into some stupid trademark fight with Banana Republic so I’ll go ahead and do what they want, but what do you guys think? Honestly, this is jacked up in my opinion. BR just leaves a bad taste in my mouth now. I could understand if I was bidding on their trademarks or using them in my ads, but I’m not. I’ve never violated any trademark terms with any merchant and I take trademark policy very seriously, which is why I take such offense. Even Google recognizes the delicacy of these types of situations and has stated in their trademark policy that:

Advertisers may be restricted from using certain trademarks as ad text per the request of the trademark owner. In cases where the trademark owner claims rights to a term in countries outside the US, Canada,UK or Ireland, advertisers might not be allowed to use certain trademarks as keywords or as ad text per the request of the trademark owner.

In some instances, Google may not remove the ad or ads as requested. For example, with Google’s broad match keyword option, an ad can show on variations of a keyword term. As a result, an ad may show for a term that is a variation of an advertiser’s keyword. Even if the search query that shows the ad contains a trademarked term, Google will not remove an ad if the advertiser isn’t using a trademarked term as a keyword.

When Google receives a complaint from a trademark owner claiming rights in the US, Canada, UK and/or Ireland, Google will only investigate whether the advertisements at issue are using the trademarked term in the ad text. Google will not disable keywords in response to a trademark complaint.

I’d be interested to hear what you guys think. Do you think it’s OK for affiliate merchants (or merchants in general if we’re looking at the bigger picture) to be allowed to enforce negative keyword matching for ads that happen to appear when a user does a search that includes their brand names? Am I now to also negative match every “misspelling” I can think of in order to save my own ass? Are there a lot of merchants doing this? (This is the first time I’ve been requested to do so.) And does this set a precedence for other affiliate merchants and merchant sites to be able to tell any advertisers they want to actively omit any keywords relating to their trademarks? At what point can advertisers not be sued or attacked during non-active participation? Your feedback is welcome and greatly appreciated.

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An affiliate friend of mine called me a couple days ago, concerned with the issues of hiring a part-time employee and not giving away all of his wonderful affiliate secrets in the process. Basically, How do I hire someone and ensure they don’t steal my business formula for themselves? Here was my advice to him.

Why Are You Hiring?

I took a step back and asked him why he was hiring. An obvious question but one that needed to be asked. He was looking to expand on his affiliate business but needed help. Since many of us work individually in affiliate marketing, we sometimes don’t know what to do when we need help doing grunt work and freeing up our time. There’s always the option to offshore the work to some overseas company, but often that requires micromanagement of important tasks, not to mention the fact that by hiring an assistant you’re putting money back into the hands of someone in your local economy. Anyway, like many affiliates, my friend wants to hire someone to help, not to run his business.

If You Don’t Want Your Secrets Out, Don’t Give Them Away

My simple advice to him was, if you don’t want someone to take your ideas, don’t give them away. You can hire helpers (domestic or abroad) to do the grunt work without giving them the knowledge or foundational principles of how you monetize your particular business. They will learn parts of your business no matter what (the egg), but they won’t be able to take your business from you (the farm). The discussion reminded me of the book and slogan “Only the Paranoid Survive.” Until you’ve built your business to where it is making a greatly profitable amount, protect it with everything you have as best you can.

For instance, if you’re running newsletter campaigns and you want to jump them to the next level, hiring someone to manage your newsletters and reduce your unsubscribe rates would be a helpful use of time. Give the person a few Seth Godin books, and see what they can do to your retention rates. It doesn’t mean they will understand how the article content and links within the newsletters are tracked and how they convert. It’s your job to optimize the monetization side of the business.

Later on down the line, when you’re ready to expand from the business and relationships you’ve been able to establish with your newfound free time, you can hire a more trusted business manager. Just remember to pull out that trusty NDA/non-compete.

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This afternoon I got to check out JT’s recent Polar Plunge video (eek!!). Seeing as how us Orange County natives don’t have much experience jumping into freezing cold water as a pastime, I thought I’d throw up a video response on how the weather is faring here in Southern California. It’s a good way for me to test out my new Flip Mino video camcorder, and also get some fresh air!

Currently it’s 56 degrees according to Weather.com, and that’s actually cooler than I thought it was. The wind is a bit chilly, but the sun is strong today. Yea, we are way spoiled here, I know.

If you guys would like to do a video response also on how the weather is in your part of the country, let us all know by posting your link in my comments section. I would love to see your surroundings through your eyes. Anyone who participates before this coming Friday at midnight will be added in this post at the end of the week (as long as it’s posted in your personal blog). Let us all know how Mother Nature is treating you this week!

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In the midst of a meeting with one of my clients today, my associate stopped to make a comment on the current status of his part of the project. In reference to an email between himself and another colleague concerning an action item, he mentioned her statement that “I haven’t forgotten about it yet.” Following up, he stated to the group, “I interpret that to mean that she plans to forget about it.”

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At Affiliate Summit West this January, I attended a few of the sessions that sparked my interest. One of the sessions I wanted to share entitled Advertising on Facebook on Day 2 of the conference. Panelists included Zac Johnson, Jeremy Schoemaker, and Alex Schultz of Facebook, with moderator Dan Murray of Ravenwood Marketing.

While topics included general discussions relating to findings, statistics, and testing, a couple pieces of information struck me that I wanted to share.

Actual Cost Per Click is Directly Related to Click Through Rate

Alex Schultz stated clearly that advertisers will pay a lower CPC in Facebook if they are able to boost their CTR. There is no mystical algorithm or “quality score” that advertisers need to achieve, like with Google AdWords. If you get users to click more often on your ad, your CPC will drop. This means testing various images, headlines and ad copy. If you’re wondering what a good CTR is, let’s just say that .03% is bad. If you’re able to achieve 1% then that wouldn’t be bad. (We all know “good” is subjective.) An average would be somewhere near .20-.25%.

However, since the Facebook system is still new, and the ad monitors are constantly pulling ads that either violate their TOS or are flagged as offensive, if you get an extremely high CTR, the ad will more likely undergo scrutiny. But they’re just making sure naughty ads have not infiltrated their system, and that it’s just a very enticing and effective advertisement that’s being displayed. In essense, don’t be surprised if your borderline shady ad that’s getting huge volume and high CTR suddenly gets pulled. You can always re-submit a similar ad until it gets approved.

There is a Massive Market Imbalance on Facebook - Take Advantage of It Now

Shoemoney made it clear that he still sees a massive market imbalance which favors advertisers. If there are campaigns that you’re thinking of testing, now is a great time to target your demographic and see if you can convert them.

The conclusion? Well, Alex stated that the Facebook ad system is still in its infancy. There are known issues, and many more features to come. However, it’s those marketers who take advantage of the system now (call them early adopters) while it’s still new that will reap the most benefit. Once the system is running smoothly, and a baby monkey can figure it out, the platform will be oversaturated with competition. So you have to submit the same ad 20 times to get approved? Whoever gets the ad up and running will get the clicks. Remember it’s a zero-sum game. If you’re not getting the clicks on Facebook, your competitor is.

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