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Some years ago, Keyen Farrell authored a guide to incentive promoting titled Mastering Incentive Websites. In it, Keyen Farrell shared his observations of the industry and detailed the steps he took to create Topaz Financial, a network of Incentive Websites that ultimately drove more than 100,000 advertiser actions. Topaz Financial was conjointly chronicled within the Spring 2006 Issue of Colby Magazine. As we head into a brand new decade, Keyen Farrell desires to share 2 items of advice that he hopes people who currently are in or aspire to be in incentive marketing, may find useful.

Free Trials are The New Leads
Several years ago there was no shortage of advertisers needing to partner with incentive marketers on a pay-per-lead basis. It’s readily apparent that the pay-per-lead has gone the manner of the dodo. The few pay-per lead programs that stay grant payouts well below what’s required to actively promote them. Pay-per-lead offers have continuously been the inducement marketer’s Holy Grail since they permit conversion rates that are several times those of pay-per-sale affiliate programs. Furthermore, pay-per-lead programs provide more consistency than pay-per-sale programs since the payouts are fixed instead of a proportion of a final sale. Fastened payouts are always a lot of attractive to users and convert at a considerably higher rate.

It ought to come back as no surprise that in the Incentive promoting space, what matters at the tip of the day is conversion rate. Every element of an Incentive Web site, from the visitor funnel to the individual offers should be tuned to drive the highest conversion rate and ultimately the best revenue per visitor. In 2005 we experienced conversion rates as high as 20% on bound pay-per-lead offers.

As true pay-per-lead opportunities (suppose lead generation) have evaporated, a related model remains a viable supply of conversions: free trials. Most clearly, free trials involve no immediate cash outlay from users, lifting conversion rates. Secondly, the acquisition funnel is way shorter and more direct than nearly all pay-per sale funnels. Free trials are an offer type where the merchant’s goals are directly aligned with yours. The difficulty with pay-per-sale affiliate programs is that the acquisition funnel is long and can be downright confusing to the user. Many pay-per-sale affiliate links will direct users to a landing page that’s either irrelevant or too high in the acquisition funnel. This is often usually an intentional merchant tactic since not all sales or actions may be needed to get affiliate payouts. You should always browse the fine print in the terms of each pay-per-sale affiliate agreement. Free trials are a key strategy to keep your incentive selling competitive this decade, and as models of digital media distribution still evolve, the opportunities will solely grow.

Don’t Go In-House
If the volume of actions you drive becomes significant, it’s more than seemingly that the merchant will look for to bring your relationship in-house. Removing the affiliate network from the equation results in deep and immediate value savings for your merchant partner – since affiliate networks charge merchants as much as 30% of each completed action, merchants will happily bump up your payout as an incentive to lure you in-house. My advice is simple: Don’t do it. While the prospect of higher payouts might seem alluring, in-house relationships will be fraught with trouble even among the foremost reputable merchant sets.

Affiliate networks provide a valuable service to you by acting as a strong intermediary. If you’ve got gone in-house and a merchant decides to bilk you, there’s no recourse. The merchant is solely risking your relationship. In fact, if you have a blowout month in that you’re owed a giant commission check, an unscrupulous merchant might merely decide that the danger of losing your referrals is price stiffing you on the check. In an affiliate network, this merchant’s actions would jeopardize their relationship with that network’s entire affiliate base. Smart networks will de-activate deadbeat merchants and fight for you if you’ve been wronged. Some merchants will reverse or cancel a lot of transactions than they must, and the network could be a valuable arbiter of such disputes. You will probably find that your network is keen to lend their ear when you have issues. They acknowledge that the integrity of the network rests on a quality publisher and merchant base. You cannot have a high quality network while not both. And don’t forget, the network gets paid when you do! So when the phone rings from your top payer’s affiliate manager, say yes to the free schwag, but say no to going in-house!