A few weeks back we began a concerted effort to improve the quality of our merchant email tools. You may have already seen the first change in our spam analysis tool, and just this week we’ve taken a few other changes live.

First, we’ve added message tracking capabilities to the affiliate emails you send. This means that you can view whether or not a message was actually delivered to an affiliate’s email address, or if it was “bounced” back by the affiliate’s mail server as a bad email address. Additionally, if you send messages with an HTML component you gain the benefit of being able to see whether or not affiliates are actually opening your message. This tracking information is available as a report, so:

1. Login and click on ‘Reports’ from the main menu.
2. Choose ‘Affiliate Email Summary’ from the list of available reports.
3. Set the ‘Date’ to ‘This Month’ or some range long enough to encompass your most recent emails to affiliates.
4. Click ‘Select Report’ to see the breakdown of information for your email campaigns.

Now, there are some limitations to the above capabilities. For starters, our tracking processes were only finalized on April 21st, so any affiliate emails sent prior to that won’t be able to show any delivery statistics. And obtaining message open information requires the use of an image embedded in your email, so if affiliates don’t view the images in your HTML email they won’t count as having “opened” the message. Because of this it is possible that an affiliate could read a message you sent without being tallied in this report; we suggest you avoid leaving angry voice mails demanding why your emails aren’t being read!

In addition to the tracking changes, we’ve also upgraded our infrastructure to enhance the quality of our email. All of our outgoing email now utilizes both SPF (Sender Policy Framework) validation and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) signing. Both of these solutions help mail hosts verify that messages coming from AvantLink servers are not SPAM.

Let us know if you have any questions or comments.

David & AvantLink

We’ve added a new merchant tool in the account admin interface that allows program managers to view a spam analysis for their Affiliate email messages. We included this functionality as part of the “Email Affiliates” tool so merchants can better gage whether or not messages they are distributing to their Affiliates will be caught in various spam filters.

Merchants, you can find this spam analysis tool by following these steps:

1. Login and click on ‘Tools’ from the main menu.
2. Click on ‘Email Affiliates’ from the tool list.
3. Notice the ‘View Spam Analysis’ button at the bottom of the form.

Once you configure an email message you can view the spam analysis by clicking that button. Results from the analysis will look something like this:

Your message appears unlikely to be filtered as spam (score: 4.10 out of 5.00). Scoring details:
+1.30 - BODY: HTML: images with 2800-3200 bytes of words
+1.70 - BODY: Message only has text/html MIME parts
+1.10 - HTML-only message, but there is no HTML tag
Higher scores indicate a greater likelihood of this message being categorized as spam by your affiliate’s mail servers.

Note that you can also retrieve previously sent emails and run an analysis on those as well. Email your account rep if you have questions, or feel free to comment here.

Late last week we rolled out new functionality that allows merchants to create specialty subsets of their existing datafeeds in AvantLink. For example, merchants can now build datafeeds for Affiliates that feature only sale products, top selling products, etc.

Merchants, please find the Specialty Datafeed Administration in the tools and management interface. It’s very simple to configure any unique specialty feed you want, so let those creative juices flow. Follow these steps to configure specialty feeds in minutes:

1. Login, and click on ‘Tools’ from the main menu.
2. Towards the bottom of the tool list, click ‘Specialty Datafeed Administration’, where it says “You can create specialized subsets of your datafeeds to help call attention to certain products (e.g. featured products, top 10 lists, etc.)”.
3. This page will display your current configured feeds in AvantLink. Click the link next to the feed you want to work with that says ‘[Create new specialty feed]’.
4. At this point you’ll have the option of manually adding the skus you want to include in the specialty feed, or using the search tool we added that will allow you to automatically select products.

Affiliates, by all means share your ideas for specialty feeds with your merchant partners. I am sure they would be all ears! I’ll also mention that once a merchant you’re active with creates a new specialty feed, you’ll see that option in your configuration when setting up new datafeed subscriptions. You can also use special datafeeds to create more targeted displays with the Product Display Builder.

Please let us know what you think.

Gary M

Today we rolled out functionality that will allow each merchant to utilize a co-branded application page for their AvantLink Affiliate program. These co-branded application pages pull in respective merchant logos on our Affiliate application page, as long as the link reference uses the “mi” parameter with a merchant’s unique id.

So for example if the Peter Glenn Affiliate program used the following href on their site’s Affiliate information page, their logo will show up on the application form: <a href=”https://www.avantlink.com/affiliate_app.php?mi=10242″>. Click their logo below to see what I mean.

Merchants, if you don’t know your merchant id in AvantLink feel free to email support/at/avantlink.com and we’ll send it over. Or you can just go to your public branded detail page, click the gradient yellow “Apply Now” button, then note the URL in your browser’s address bar. Your public detail page is linked up from our Merchant Directory.

You may have already noticed, but we rolled out some improvements to our already robust reporting tools in AvantLink. These improvements include visuals for an array of charts, sale item details & hit trail data.

Look for this icon: in our reporting interface to access available charts/graphs. Charts/graphs now available include:

• Daily Ad Impressions and Click Throughs
• Daily Sales (# and Dollar Amounts)
• Breakdown of Ad Impressions by Tool Type
• Breakdown of Click Throughs by Tool Type
• Breakdown of # of Sales by Tool Type
• Breakdown of Sales by Tool Type

Look for this icon: in our reporting interface to access report details. The detail icon shows up if there are detail/sub-reports available for that report.

Two more things to take note of:

1. All mentions of “Page Views” in our reporting interface are now now labeled “Ad Impressions”.
2. There is new row hover/click functionality that is a combination of stylesheet and some PHP code changes. These formatting changes makes reading your report data easier.

Let us know if you have any questions or comments.

Yesterday we posted about Affiliate Program Branding for Merchants, and today we’re excited to announce that our one-off service that offers merchants a branding category on AvantShare is now live!

AvantShare has proven to be a powerful distribution channel for AvantLink this past year, quickly establishing itself as an authority site in the industry by archiving relevant industry news, technology features and details for dozens of quality Affiliate programs. For a very competitive price merchants can now secure their own dedicated (and branded) category on AvantShare.com to promote their Affiliate efforts, their link building campaigns and their overall business bottom line.

From our Solutions page, more information on merchant blog categories:

Branded AvantShare Blog Category - Dedicated and branded Affiliate program blog category on the AvantShare blog network. Use your dedicated category on AvantShare to post Affiliate relevant promotions, company news, product features, Affiliate coupons and any other content or links related to an Affiliate program or merchant site using the AvantLink platform. Costs associated with this one-off service include a one time $500 set-up fee, then a $300 annual renewal fee.

In addition to a brief post from yours truly introducing the new merchant blogs, two of our merchants launched their blog categories yesterday by posting intros (and even the first merchant promo!). The two progressive merchants who signed on early for a blog category include Altrec.com Outdoors and the fine folks from Massey’s Outfitters (and their three sister stores). Click the links below to read their official first posts to AvantShare.com blog network!

Altrec.com Outdoors: Altrec Outlet

Massey’s Outfitters: Massey’s Congratulates Avantlink

Merchants interested in sponsoring a dedicated category for their program(s) on AvantShare are encouraged to contact us to discuss the benefits of distributing news and promotions (in addition to powerful link building opportunities) through this channel. We also have a complete Affiliate Program Branding Package for merchants now, that includes a blog category on AvantShare as part of the package. Check out the thread and subsequent support for this package from the ABestWeb community!

Gary & AvantLink

We’re excited to announce a new one-off service level for merchants that will offer branded and dedicated blog categories within the AvantShare blog network for active Affiliate programs in AvantLink. AvantShare has hosted the AvantLink network blog since November of 2006 for the purpose of new merchant announcements, Affiliate technology news, press releases and general industry commentary.

With the array of cost per sale, targeted Affiliate marketing archives and relevant AvantLink news being posted for over a year now, the AvantShare.com site quickly gained authority and now ranks highly in the major search engines for many competitive industry terms.

The objective and natural progression of AvantShare is rightfully focused on providing a powerful distribution tool and aggregation point for some of the most technically savvy and progressive Affiliates and merchants in the business. This collaboration between AvantLink and our Affiliate and merchant partners is sure to elevate AvantShare to a new level of authority, with powerful linking options and vast reach for contributors to the blog (contributors will have the ability to build the link popularity to their own site(s) through their respective blog posts).

The AvantShare site will continue to host and categorized the AvantLink network blog, but will also now include merchant branded blogs as well as a channel for Affiliates to post news and information about their sites, technology or general comments related to their businesses. Affiliate participation in the new AvantShare aggregator is of course completely optional (and free!), and merchants will be required to pay a nominal fee for their dedicated branded category.

Merchants interested in utilizing this powerful branding tool from AvantShare, in conjunction with several high value branding initiatives with ABestWeb.com should consider our robust Branding Package now being offered with a substantial package discount on included services. For more information see our Solutions page for more information on the AvantLink’s Affiliate program branding package, or One Off Services which include a blog category on this site.

We are pleased to announce the release of a notification center for both Affiliates and Merchants that will allow you to keep up on important account events. The notification center consists of several RSS notification subscriptions as well as a Firefox browser plugin.

The Firefox browser plugin displays your current days performance summary stats and has a pop-up menu that allows you to run several reports directly without the need to login to your account.

Current Affiliate RSS notification feeds:

• Merchant Emails - Feed of all merchant email announcements.
• Modified Ads - Feed of all new or modified merchant ads.
• Transaction (sale, adjustment, bonus) listing - Feed of all transactions that occur.
• Association changes - Feed of merchant recruitment offers, application acceptances/denials, commission changes.
• Network emails - Feed of all AvantLink network email announcements.
• New merchants - A feed of the newest merchants to go live in the AvantLink network.
• AvantLink announcements - General AvantLink news.
• AvantShare blog entries - Industry news, insights, and program announcements.

Current Merchant RSS notification feeds:

• Ad expirations - Feed of ads that are about to expire.
• Affiliate applications - Feed of all affililate applications.
• Transaction (sale, adjustment, bonus) listing - Feed of all transactions that occur.
• AvantLink announcements - General AvantLink news.
• AvantShare blog entries - Industry news, insights, and program announcements.

You can find the notification center in your account interface under ‘Account -> Notification Center’

Scott & AvantLink

Just a quick note to let merchants know that we’ve added ad campaign filter options to the management interface. These filter options include ‘Active Ad Campaigns’,  ‘Expired Ad Campaigns’, and  ‘Ads expiring within 7 days’. This new filter gives program managers quick and easy visibility into campaigns currently available for Affiliates to review and access, which campaigns are expired (and not accessible or seen by Affiliates), and what campaigns are soon to expire and thus be hidden from Affiliate view.

Merchants/Program Managers…You can’t miss the Ad Filter Options. Have a look at this new feature by following these steps:

1. Login and click on ‘Tools’ from the main menu
2. Click on ‘Add/Edit Ad Campaigns’
3. On the ‘Your Current Ad Campaigns’ page your see Ad Filter Options

Let us know what you think or if you have any questions.

Gary & AvantLink