Most shoppers are on the hunt for bargains today. Consumers are waiting to use their credit cards until they have a coupon in hand. Our current economic climate has created exceptional opportunities for merchants to run promotions. When you arm your affiliate partners with a coupon code or free shipping offer, they are much better equipped to close the sale and increase revenues.
The Proof is in the Pudding
LinkConnector analyzed the results of our affiliates that are successfully using merchant promotions. We looked at data over a three month period. Consistently, LinkConnector found that affiliates using promotions gained a clear advantage in sales. In fact, we found that conversion rates increased from 0.50% to 4.00% when merchants’ coupons and other promotions were used—a 700% difference.
The numbers reveal that when affiliates use merchant promotions, they are significantly enabled to close sales and increase conversions.
Your Promo Manager
Enabling You to Maximize Your Use of Promotions
LinkConnector created a slick Promo Manager for our merchants. This management console, established in 2009, gives you one central location to manage all of your promotions. You can add new coupon codes, free shipping specials, offers, and deals (defined below). You can edit existing promotions or expire out-of-date ones. You can also view all (or a filtered group of) your promotions in one easy-to-manage place. When adding a new promotion, you can choose to associate it with only one of your campaigns, several, or all. Then, you can further choose to associate your promotion with one or more links within your selected campaign(s).
Read more about the Promo Manager here.
To navigate to the Promo Manager, login to your Merchant Manager and go to Campaigns > Promo Manager.
What Types of Promotions Does LinkConnector Support?
You can provide several types of promotions to your affiliates, beyond coupon codes, in an effort to bolster your conversion rates. Here is a quick list:
- Coupon Codes
- Free Shipping
- Offers*
- Deals**
* Monetary value off a sale price; discount (no coupon involved)
** Gift with purchase; free sample or free trial
How Can Affiliates Present Your Promotions?
In large part, this is up to you. If you have a coupon code, offer free shipping, or have another promotion uploaded in your account, your approved LinkConnector Affiliates can now programmatically display these promotions to their users—if you allow them to do so. If allowed, your approved partners have three different options in displaying your promotions: pop-ups, pop-unders, and splash. By adding a few parameters to new or existing affiliate links, affiliates may automatically show your coupon codes, free shipping offers, and other deals to visitors in an effort to increase conversion rates. This is a win-win for everyone.
The control, though, lies with you. Within your Promo Manager, you may select to allow your approved affiliates to programmatically display your promotions, or disallow them from doing this. Simply login and go to your Promo Manager (Campaigns > Promo Manager). For new promotions, click the ‘Add New’ text link in the upper left corner of the purple table. A new pop-up window will appear. Within this window you will be given options to allow or disallow pop-ups, pop-unders, or splash for your new promotion. For existing promotions, click the ‘Edit’ link in the ‘Actions’ column by the promotion you wish to adjust. A pop-up window will appear giving you the same options to allow or disallow pop-ups, pop-unders, and splash. Read more about this here.
Why Allow Affiliates to Present Your Promotions Automatically?
If you have coupon codes and other promotions uploaded into your account, you probably want your approved affiliates to put them to work for you. You want them to use these powerful conversion tools to help close sales and increase your revenues. With new functionality in place to automate your promotions, you:
- Encourage and increase affiliate usage of your coupon codes, free shipping programs, offers and deals—proven tools to increase your conversion rate.
- Ensure that affiliates are using your most up-to-date promotions. No more outdated promotions sitting stagnant on your partners’ sites.
- Eliminate manual error.
- Boost your conversions and revenues through increased use of your most up-to-date promotions.
Note About Checkout
If you maintain a field in your checkout process for ‘Coupon Codes’, consider the effect this may have on a consumer, close to making a purchase, but without a coupon code. They may exit your site in search of what they are obviously missing—a coupon code!
Consider only displaying the ‘Coupon Code’ field for users known to possess coupon codes. Technologies are available that would allow the link to contain the embedded coupon code, so the discount would be automatic.
Or, title the field something more ambiguous, such as ‘Referral Code’ or ‘Promotion’. Whatever your solution, find a way to avoid this easily preventable reason for shopping cart abandonment.