Non-Intrusive Affiliate Marketing Program Development & Management
One of the questions we get fairly often is "How can we create an
affiliate tracking program with out using query string values to pass the
affiliate ID?" There are several reasons for this type of
affiliate marketing program setup. The most important are:
- The site owner doesn't want the user to know that the link is
anything more than a voluntary link from the referring site. If it is
a paid link, users tend to give them less relevance.
- The site owner wants to control the link text and link to aide in
search engine optimization. With the uncertainty of the effect of reciprocal
links for search engines, this type of affiliate marketing program can
add to a sites positioning efforts.
Both of these reasons can be worth far more than the additional cost of
developing a non-intrusive affiliate marketing program.
Many of today's surfers are sophisticated. Knowing that a
particular link is a "paid" link is generally a good reason for
the visitor not
to use the link. This is supported by the statistics for "sponsored" links on
search engines. These "sponsored" links are only used by
about a third of the search engine users. The majority of searchers seem to prefer the
"natural" search results.
A non-intrusive affiliate marketing program can use several techniques
to track where a link comes from. Our favorite is the "Referrer"
technique. This technique is not usable through email which, in our view,
is OK because it reduces the chances that your affiliates will use SPAM to
promote your affiliate program. Your web site checks to see where the link
came from (the referrer) and records a user ID with the referring domain.
This allows the referring site to send referrals from any number of pages
on the site through any kind of image, text or form link and still get
credit for the referral. Another popular technique used by many sites but
not recommended is the cross URL cookie. Many spy ware programs view these
cookies as spy ware and delete them. Our use of single site cookies that
contain only a user ID is not usually affected.
The programming and site preparation does become a little more involved
and does drive the cost of development up a degree. However, the
management of the affiliate program is no different. The site owner or affiliate
see no difference in the management and the site visitor never knows the
link is an affiliate.
In fact, when at all possible we suggest you use non-intrusive
affiliate marketing program technology. The cost is not dramatically
higher and the resulting benefits can be substantial.
For more information on creating a non-intrusive affiliate marketing
program for your web site contact sales@webtransitions.com.
|
