AvantLink Coupon/Deal Feed Etiquette
Merchants, one of the most effective promotion ad management tools we offer is the Dynamic Coupon/Deal Feed, available in your account. This is a deal feed that you control, and it gets distributed via RSS and content feeds on Affiliate sites. Larger programs have hundreds of Affiliates using their deal feeds. Since you easily control the content of this feed, you can assure Affiliates are publishing accurate sale details or other promotions.
Integration options for Affiliates who use the deal feed include dynamic javascript and RSS, as well as flat database files that we update daily.
Inserting one of five ad units (image, text, html, flash or video) into your deal feed is as simple as flagging the “Yes” option on the ad configuration for “This is a coupon/deal campaign:” (click screen grab below to be taken to your merchant ad list-login required). In fact it’s almost too simple, so we decided to post some AvantLink deal feed etiquette for you to review. It’s important to remember that the deal feed is for deals only!
First, ad units flagged for the deal feed should actually be deals. Sales, coupons/codes, free shipping offers, free gift with purchase all qualify. New arrivals for spring 2010 or the top sellers for summer do not. It’s very important to avoid spamming your coupon feed to get the most productive use out of it.
Next, stay active and engaged with your deal feed. You can set start/end dates for campaigns, effectively automating or “staging” Affiliate program promotions for weeks or months in advance. You can even align an email notification to Affiliates to go out on the same day your promotion goes live.
Here is a real-time example of a coupon/deal feed (minus the formatting). The Backcountry Affiliate program manager is active with their deal feed, so if you come back to this blog post two months from now you’ll see different offers and campaigns.
By staying actively engaged in your Affiliate program management, you’ll begin to stand out as the authority program in your category…which in turn attracts and retains the best Affiliates. The Dynamic Coupon/Deal Feed in AvantLink is there, it’s powerful and it’s certainly an Affiliate program branding tool you should be using.
There are no dates or times on the feed example above. How often were those deals posted? What do affiliates prefer most: multiple postings per day, one post per day, or skip a few days every once in a while?
Hi Dave,
The reason you don’t see any expiration dates on (all but one of) the ads above, is because Backcountry does not have expiration dates configured for those ads. There is one up there that is set to expire November 18th (today) and that one shows the “Expires:” date below the campaign.
You should at a minimum feature all your deals (ie, sales, promos, free gifts, free shipping, coupons, etc.) as a text ad, and then flag those text ads for “Yes” inclusion in the deal feed.
If the promo is the same but there is a text ad and there are numerous image ads, should we flag them all as “yes” or just the text ad?
It’s up to you but usually Affiliates prefer to use text only for the feeds. They have the ability to filter out banners. I usually suggest mirroring any banner promotion as a text ad, and then flagging that text ad for the feed. That covers it pretty well. You can still categorize the banners as “Promotion” though, even if you don’t flag them “Yes” for the deal feed. GM
[...] Ad campaign lists that are dynamic, and update regularly with new promotions, special seasonal offers or the latest store codes are effective. Ad campaign lists that never update are not. The number of ads you maintain in your ad list is not important. What is important is having someone attentive, making sure every approved promotion your store offers is available via your ad list, at least as a text ad (which can then be flagged for inclusion in your deal feed). [...]