Archive for July 2007
Merchants, we’ve added a configuration option for HTML ads, in addition to banner and text creative. This new option will allow you to add advanced creative for Affiliates like merchant site-search tools, content displays and various other advanced link creative that you may want to configure. It’s just a matter of pasting HTML code that uses absolute references to images into your management interface, then saving the campaign. From that point, the HTML ad will become available for Affiliates to grab and use on their sites, just as they can grab and use banners or text links.
Merchants/AMs, in order to add an HTML ad campaign to your creative list follow these simple steps:
- Login to your merchant account and click on ‘Tools’ from the main menu.
- Click on ‘Add/Edit Ad Campaigns’ from the Merchant Advertising Tools list.
- Click on ‘Create a new Ad Campaign’.
- For Ad Type:, select ‘Html’ from the drop down menu.
- Paste your HTML with absolute references to images in the Ad Html: field.
There’s a ‘Preview HTML’ option available for you to view what you’ve submitted before saving the campaign. Pretty nifty little tool for AvantLink merchants. Let us know what you think, or if you have any questions. Thanks!
Gary & AvantLink
Another great promo from another great merchant in the Outdoor/Recreation category! Greg T and the Altrec Affiliate Program are offering a killer sale on The North Face. Back to school deals are on! Here are the specifics of this promo, hot off the press:
Back to School means people are shoppin, North Face on the cheap means people are buyin. Get on it immediately - take advantage of the hundreds of North Face products currently on Sale. See the selection for yourself. Details are simple. For the next two weeks, all this North Face will be up to 40% off (Sale ends August 10th).
Creative for the sale have been added, and the datafeed and coupon feed are both featuring these deals on The North Face.
Greg Toledo
Altrec.com Outdoors
541.316.2400 x146
gregt[at]altrec.com
Let us know if you have any questions, or drop Greg a line directly!
Affiliates take note. Backcountry just announced a couple of sales today so I wanted to be sure you were aware. One is for Backcountry.com (Backcountry.com Summer Shoe Clearance) and the other is for Dogfunk.com (Gotta Haves Sale at Dogfunk.com).
Details are available on Brian’s ABestWeb threads, which I’ve linked to above accordingly. Some of the brands on sale include The North Face, Chaco, Burton and Reef. These are all hard to find discounted brands, so you should see good conversion.
Brian has updated their coupon feeds accordingly (he’s the man!), and also added new creative for these promos.. so have at them!
Should you have any questions, here is Brian Boyd’s (Affiliate Manager for Backcountry stores) contact info:
Affiliate Coordinator
bboyd[at]backcountry.com
801-746-7580 x 5194
Brian and Backcountry.com have been running weekly exclusive coupons for their outlet store. These are product-specific discounts with a minimum of 50% off retail. Not too shaby. Here is this week’s Affiliate coupon:
Vestal Maxell Jr. Watch, 55% discount!
- Get 55% Off The Regular Price On The Vestal Maxell Jr. Watch
- Your customers can use Coupon Code: 1QZ-1-GACS6
- Starts: 7/25/07 - Ends: 7/31/07
New heavily discount coupon every week. Stay up-to-date on these Backcountry.com Affiliate exclusive coupons by watching the Backcountry Forum @ ABestWeb or our Promotions category on this blog. (Click for Promotions RSS feed from our blog!).
Brian has added this to the BackcountryOutlet coupon feed, or you can create a custom link using the product detail page as the destination URL.
Feel free to get in touch with the Backcountry Affiliate program manager Brian Boyd if you have any questions:
Brian Boyd, bboyd[at]backcountry.com
801-746-7580 x 5194
Affiliates, please take note that we now have Direct Deposit (U.S. banks only) and PayPal payment options now available. To configure one of these new payment options follow these simple steps:
- Login and click on ‘Account’ from the main menu.
- Click on ‘Contact/Payment Information’.
- Under Payment Preferences, select either direct deposit or PayPal from ‘Payment Method:’.
- Depending on your choice, a smart form will display.
- Fill out the required information and click ‘Update’.
That’s all there is to it. Let us know if you have any questions.
Gary & AvantLink
A couple days ago we rolled out a few minor upgrades to the Product Display Builder that should make it easier for Affiliates to build displays around the specific products they would like to target.
- We’ve added an ‘All Categories’ option to the Filter By Category selection. This will allow you to start with a broader range of products and fine tune it with the other filter options the tool provides.
- We’ve added a ‘Show only on sale’ product filter. This will allow you to feature on sale products from merchants that supply us with an on sale column in their datafeeds.
- We’ve replaced the Product Name Search with a ‘Filter By Keywords’ search. The new search functionality searches across multiple fields (Eg. Product Name, Brand, Short Description, etc.) in the datafeeds instead of just the product name.
- Also, we added a informational box that shows the number of available products for your current filter choices so that you can see if you’ve restricted the product display to the point where there aren’t any products available.
We have quite a few other features that we’re planning to roll into a more major upgrade of the Product Display Builder in the future. If you have any suggestions for functionality you would like to see in that upgrade let us know.
Scott & AvantLink
On June 13th we quietly rolled out a new Affiliate Network API that compliments perfectly our existing tool set. Now, Affiliates are given the ultimate choice! They can either take advantage of our existing feature set of industry leading tools, or they can use the AvantLink API to create an unlimited number of creative displays using up-to-date merchant product data.
In addition to product level data pulled from the API, Affiliates can also configure reporting subscriptions that will allow them access to network stats without even logging in to their account. Also, Affiliates can get banner/text/deal of the day links using filters and keywords search options right from the API. Links to module detail pages provided below.
We’ve also provided an API request builder for those that aren’t familiar with the technology. Current API modules for Affiliates include:
There are also Merchant Modules:
Merchant Parent Modules:
Private Modules:
A summary of the AvantLink API documentation is available. From there, Affiliates will be able to view all of the API modules that we currently have available (above links), find usage requirements, and explore sample code. Affiliates, to dig in and have a close look, follow these simple steps:
- Login to your Affiliate account and click on ‘Tools’ from the main menu.
- Under API in the tool list click on ‘API Request Builder’.
- The request builder allows you to construct API requests and familiarize yourself with the modules and parameters.
We had a soft launch with the API over a month ago, and we’re just now starting to get some Affiliate feedback and other news in place about the API. I’ll list a few links below, but I wanted to include a snippet specifically from Carsten Cumbrowski (if you haven’t check out his Internet Marketing Resources Portal it’s time to have a look!). He reviewed our API on his blog at ReveNews.com:
AvantLink kept the API simple and does not use any of the fancy XML and Web Services technology such as SOAP, REST or XML-RPC; although XML is one of the possible output formats if you prefer to work with XML data rather than CSV documents, tab delimited data or HTML. Requests are being made via simple HTTP (it is in other words just a link that has all the parameters and your account credentials embedded), that even intermediate programmers will be able to handle it…
We also distributed a press release at PRWeb.com this past weekend about the new API. Here is a quote from the article by David Clark:
“Our API is platform-independent,” says AvantLink CTO David Clark. “We’ve opened up our system to the Affiliates rather than locking them into a ‘boxed’ feature set. For instance, if an Affiliate doesn’t like the formatting of our Product Display Builder tool, they could essentially construct their own via the API,” he adds…
And another quote from Affiliate Dave MacLeay from Trailspace.com:
“What I like the most is that we can define exactly what data we want, when we want it, and in what format,” says Dave MacLeay, publisher of Trailspace.com. “As a developer who’s pulling reporting data from a number of different networks, I’ve found AvantLink’s solution to be the easiest to set up and integrate with our application.”
Read the entire press release at PRWeb: Affiliate Marketing Technology Leader AvantLink Offers API
A few more distribution points and news for this functionality at AvantLink:
- AvantLink API - ProgrammableWeb Profile
- Affiliate Marketing community @ BUMPzee!
- AvantLink API Available - ABestWeb
Let us know what you think!
Gary & AvantLink
BackcountryOutlet.com is currently offering a coupon that’s exclusive to their Affiliates. I thought I would post the details in case anyone was interested in testing out a product-specific promotion. By the sheer nature of the discount (50% off) there is a good chance it will convert. Here are the details:
We have an Affiliate Exclusive coupon for Backcountry Outlet: 50% off the regular price on the Zoo York Dispatcher Shorts (sku #ZOO0197).
Get 50% Off Men’s Zoo York Dispatcher Short. Use Coupon Code 1QG-1-WSNTX
Starts: July 16th 2007 Ends: July 23rd 2007
Landing Page: Men’s Zoo York Dispatcher Short
This deal is exclusive to the affiliate program only.
This offer has been added to BackcountryOutlet’s Coupon Feed already…so if you’re using the feed it’s already showing on your site page(s). More information is available on Backcountry’s ABW forum category: Affiliate Exclusive Coupon at BCO
We’ve posted time and again about the value of PRWeb in terms of news/content distribution around the web. We were happy to see that the GourmetStation Affiliate program recently posted an article on the new partnership between their leading food gift store and our network. As a reminder, there are several distribution companies that will allow you syndicate your news for a range of fees. The more you pay, the more you get. We use the $200 level at PRWeb, which allows you to add targeted link anchors within the article context. With the evolving semantic nature of search, these are high-value backlinks well worth the $200!
Check out the Effective Advertising category at AbestWeb…specifically, a thread called Press Releases and Your Site, that’s been sticked there for quite some time. And rightly so! This thread is jam packed with valuable information on press release options and best practices.
Here is a quote from the news piece we were just featured on by GourmetStation:
AvantLink believes the partnership with GourmetStation will be a win win solution providing AvantLink affiliates with a high quality gourmet merchant and GourmetStation with qualified affiliates. “Our high value Affiliates know a good program when they see it, so we’re glad to offer the GourmetStation Affiliate program through our platform,” says Gary Marcoccia of AvantLink. “Donna and her team know how to empower and support their Affiliates to a high degree, and this was evident right away,” he adds.
It’s also important to mention that this program is managed by Geno Prussakov of AM Navigator. If you don’t know Geno yet it’s time to apply to this program and get to know him! You’re in great hands with Geno and his Affiliate Marketing Management firm.
Read the full press release article on PRWeb: GourmetStation, Gourmet Food Gift Merchant & AvantLink, Affiliate Network Marketer, Join Forces
In addition to the Hit Trail visibility I mentioned yesterday, we’ve also upgraded to give you the ability to customize your report settings. This functionality is there for both Affiliates and merchants. Follow these simple steps to customize your report settings in AvantLink:
- Login and click ‘Reports’ from main menu.
- Click ‘Customize display settings for this report’ in the upper right corner of the ‘Performance Summary for Today’ table.
- The ‘Report customization’ pop up will allow you to modify your report settings.
This is a nice way to get the metrics most important to you listed in your default report page view, with the ability to update at any time.
Oh yeah and remember to play around with the API for report subscriptions. RSS, Email or Direct API request (HTML, Tab Delimited, Comma Separated, or XML). You could get your favorite report results delivered without even logging in to the network!
I also announced our customized reporting at ABestWeb today.
If you have any feedback or suggestions please let us know.
Gary & AvantLink
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