Sometimes we nail a good way to explain some of our tools and Affiliate technology while emailing folks during the course of the work day. So we thought why not start adding good Q&A’s/excerpts to the blog. So here’s our first, and it’s in a new category called “Merchant Q&A“.

Merchant asked: “Are there internal communications vehicles that can be used to communicate these [deals and special promotions] other than the email channel?”

AvantLink answered: For merchants using our Standard Integration (self-managed) solution, you’ll want to be sure you flag any special offer, deal or coupon for inclusion in our Dynamic Coupon/Deal Feed. You can easily do this by flagging “Yes” in the ad configuration field for “This is a coupon/deal campaign:”. Once you select Yes the form will provide an additional field for the offer code, if you have one. If there is no offer code then you can leave it blank. Also note that you do not have to include an offer code in the actual ad text, it you include in the “Coupon Code:” field. We will auto embed the code in that case.

So you know, the Dynamic Coupon/Deal Feed is a very popular and heavily used merchant self-managed feed that offers Affiliate integration options of dynamic Javascript or RSS, and daily updated database files. So once you flag any ad for inclusion in this feed, as described above, you’ll effectively place that ad on any Affiliate’s site who is utilizing this tool. It’s a powerful way to keep all deal and promotional campaigns active and accurate out there.

We do offer a Branding Package Service Level for merchants that provides additional, high profile channels whereby you can distribute messages and content about your program’s news and promotions. But that is different from the standard integration service level.