Add a search box to your blog

Under Template->Page Elements tab, click “Add a Page Element” at the place where you want your search box to appear. Select “HTML/JavaScript”.

There are several HTML codes posted on the net. I tried a few, and found the one that works as follows:-

<p align="left"> <form id="searchthis" action="YOUR BLOG URL/search" style="display:inline;" method="get"> <strong>NAME OF YOUR BLOG<br/></strong> <input id="b-query" maxlength="255" name="q" size="20" type="text"/> <input id="b-searchbtn" value="Search" type="submit"/> </form></p>

Remember to change YOUR BLOG URL to the URL or web address of your Blog. Also, change the NAME OF YOUR BLOG to that which you want to call your site. For instance, if your Blog Name is long, you may want to write something like “Search Here” or “Search this site”.

You can also change the “Search” button to say, “Hit” or “Go”, by changing the Value.

Save the code and refresh your page. If you want a longer or shorter search box, you can play around with the size. The above example of a width size="20" and value="Hit" will give you this:-

Search Here

Whereas a width size="30" and value="Go" will give you this:-

Search Here

The size of the search box is a matter of appearance. You may have noticed that the maxlength="255". This indicates that a user may enter up to 255 characters in the search box, which I think is sufficient and need not be altered.

10 great ways to explain Affiliate Marketing

1) “I lie and pretend to be a dentist.”

2) “Akin to a pippa dee (or Anne Summer party without the underwear and scary bits of buzzing plastic) where you swap your house for your website.”

3) “A pain in the sodding ass.”

4) “Like wearing a sandwich board offering directions and charging the destination for pointing people there.”

5) “Admitting you’ve put any kind of advertising/marketing on to sites such as mine is a bit like admitting to Auntie Gladys over tea that you’re an experienced bondage porn star."

6) “I say I’m the Avon Lady. I take a commission for selling stuff.”

7) “Most non-connected people don’t understand affiliate marketing, that’s good! I just tell them I’m an internet millionaire.”

8) “I don’t try – I have tried but nobody seems to understand it. Even my bank manager doesn’t understand it.”

9) “A goldmine.”

10) “Pimping other companies' products for cash.”

Some tips for recruiting paid search professionals

Recruiting paid search professionals can be a painful experience. Whether you're an agency specialising in search or a company looking to bring it in-house, the demand for paid search professionals has never been greater.

In these market conditions it’s easy to panic and jump on the first candidate who’s heard of Adwords, but there is another way.

As the MD of eConversions, a company specialising in paid search, I’m only too aware of the recruitment problems within the industry.

In fact, some time ago I took the decision to stop employing experience and start employing intelligence.

I can’t claim this was a purely philanthropic exercise to introduce the graduate world into the wonders of paid search.

Indeed, it was more aimed at ensuring my long term health after a number of heart scares, the result of candidates with three months experience outlining their salary expectations.

We’ve found this approach very effective but it requires a core base of experienced search talent to develop the training programme, not to mention an extreme amount of patience while explaining the idiosyncrasies of the Google Quality Score algorithm to someone who’s just finished their gap year in Australia.

The recruitment process is undoubtedly even harder for regular companies committed to taking search in-house.

I’ve heard countless horror stories ranging from the MD resorting to running the campaign themselves, right down to the office junior who had a MySpace account, and thus knew a bit about the internet, being charged with managing the company's six figure monthly search budget.

Assuming that you’re starting from scratch, and need to recruit someone with experience, here are a few simple tips that can go a long way in selecting the right paid search candidates:

1) Learn the basics – In an industry full of acronyms it’s easy to get lost. Check out introductory training workshops by organisations such as E-consultancy and get up to speed before you start the process.

2) Google Adwords professionals – It’s the entry level not the expert level. Any candidate you consider should have this but keep in mind that it's quite easy to obtain a 80% + score in two weeks' training having never touched paid search before.

3) Look for analysts not marketers – Yes, paid search is technically marketing but effectively running a good campaign requires far more analytical and statistical expertise than it does marketing. I’ve met plenty of great analysts who can write ad copy with a great CTR but not so many great copy writers who can maximise ROI on 100,000 keywords.

4) Experience that counts – Dig deep into the type of campaigns they have operated in the past. Don’t be impressed by hollow statements such as “I increased ROI by 300%”. This could simply mean they stopped running all the generic keywords because they were too hard work and focused on brand. The best type of experience is where the candidate can demonstrate they have taken either a tough campaign or one that was already a success and improved it.

5) Understand affiliates - They don’t need to be experts in affiliate marketing but they need to understand how it can collide with paid search and what to do harmonise the two.

6) Technology savvy – Find out what bid management and analytics tools they’ve used and ask their opinion on what they would recommend. If they don’t have an opinion they don’t have experience.

7) Plan Ahead - Once you get them, ensure one of their first jobs is training a junior, otherwise expect spiralling wage demands and a period of pure fear when they start booking their holidays

Duncan Jennings is the managing director of eConversions, a specialist paid on performance search marketing company.

Yell.com launches affiliate search programme

Yell.com has launched an affiliate scheme with the aim of attracting more traffic to its 2m-strong business listings database.

The search site said partners would receive a fixed monthly payment in return for placing a banner ad with search controls on their site; those who do not meet Yell's criteria will not receive any income, however.

Yell.com is targeting retail, property and niche local business search sites as partners, saying it has so far signed up 500 to the free variant of the scheme.

Once a website visitor enters a search query into the rich banner, they are directed to search results on Yell.com.

"We want to allow affiliate sites to offer their users built-in access to our data and services," said Yell.com marketing head Ian Bowen-Morris.

"I see the new affiliates scheme as giving our customers a wider audience while increasing consumer awareness of Yell.com."

Affiliates can be your social media allies

Let's start with two quick recaps.

Affiliate Marketing is the deployment of a second, commission led sales force. I strongly believe that managed affiliate campaigns are better than those left to fend for themselves. Some brands have had absolutely horrible experiences with affiliate marketing and companies that have dispatched teams of highly motivated but poorly managed sales people have had dire experiences too.

Affiliates are website owners that drive traffic through to your site via a tracking mechanism, and earn an appropriate commission should that traffic turn into a lead, action or sale.

Social Media is the term given to the collective voice of the internet's bloggers, tagging sites like delicious and furl, social news sites like digg and newsvine, online communities, forums, chatrooms and the comment sections in ‘web-wise' newspapers like the Telegraph.

Here's the thing; affiliates are very active in the social media landscape.

How Affiliates Affect Social Media

When an affiliate marketing campaign is running well, your affiliates are motivated to defend your brand. An affiliate that is lucky enough to earn a revenue stream from you should have no reason to watch your brand get dragged through the mud. This affiliate has every reason to support you and protect their revenue stream.

Successful affiliates are pretty smart people. If your brand is being treated unfairly, then successful affiliates are the very people capable of injecting an eloquent observation of that injustice into the social media collective.

If an affiliate decides to defend you online then that's natural. That's its choice and its call. Your ally has stepped forward for you. This would not be you trying to subvert a forum discussion. This would be an established member of the forum deciding to put forward their argument. There is possibly an argument here which wonders whether affiliates that do this, and do this well, could be on a higher commission tier.

Affiliates tend to be savvy bloggers and social news site participants too. If an affiliate has reason to extol the virtues of your products of services (ie, it's also trying to sell your products and services) then they will.

On the other hand, if an affiliate has been left angered and annoyed after a campaign closed without final payments being made, then it should not come as a surprise when your brand name appears in a forum thread detailing everything the affiliate believes you have done wrong.

Affiliates can be valuable partners when it comes to broadcasting a message. One simple win is to ensure that affiliates are told of new products and services. Why not include affiliates in the distribution of an online press announcement/release? If you want to see websites talking about your new product by Wednesday then you can count on some of your affiliates to be the quickest to respond and respond with the incentive to sell the new product.

For example, if you wish your brand to be synonymous with launching the world's first holographic phone then let your affiliates know of the launch. No doubt you've channelled money into an offline campaign, an online campaign and suitably prepped your PR agency. An email to your affiliates is a very small action on top of all that work and a very good way to let these clued up social media players know about the phone.

Influential forums like the a4uforum allow the affiliate marketing community to quickly share news. Good news and incentives spread quickly and bad news spreads too.

It is fair to say that affiliates can have a negative effect on your social media optimisation plans too. For example, if poor affiliate management is put in place then all it takes is one rogue affiliate to aggressively spam broadcast your brand or unique product and you could well end up with forums all round the internet complaining about you. Affiliate management is the solution here – just as sales team supervision is.

Motivating the Right Affiliates

After E-consultancy's particularly successful Digital Cream this year I found myself in the pub and talking to the affiliate manager of a very large computer hardware company. This particular company wanted to push its high end PCs designed for the gaming market. I knew the affiliate program; it was structured so that the top end affiliates (those that managed plenty of sales) enjoyed slightly higher commission.

"Why don’t you offer the slightly higher commission to gaming forums and fan sites," I suggested. I thought it was a fair point. Most affiliate networks are pretty flexible when it comes to structures like that. This approach would either result in more gaming communities being exposed to the marketing message or it would result in the affiliate campaign continuing as normal.

Competitions can also work well for both the merchant and the affiliates. One of my favourite competitions came from an American company selling latex Halloween masks. They offered up a few hundred dollars in vouchers to the affiliate who had the spookiest website in place for Halloween. For some websites this was all the encouragement they needed to re-skin temporarily for Halloween. The Halloween mask merchant (and the affiliates) benefited from the increased conversions the spooky sites generated.

Ensuring affiliates can communicate with you and your agency is also advantageous. Everyone loses if there is a bug on your site; customers have a bad experience, affiliates risk losing commission and you risk losing sales. By allowing affiliates to report bugs quickly to you (such as a dedicated email address) you help affiliates protect their commissions and benefit from bugs being reported straight to you. This is often better than public forum discussions which detail problems with your site.

Conclusions

Burning bridges is generally a bad thing to do. Upsetting vocal communities on the internet is also generally a bad thing to do.

If you've found that your affiliate marketing campaign simply has no juice, that it does not seem to be worth the effort then try to avoid yanking the plug and doing a runner. Instead, ask some questions about your affiliate programme...

How has the campaign been managed? What has the communication with the affiliates been like?

Could the addition or removal of some affiliates, offers, networks or rules and regulations make a difference?

Is it possible to look at the affiliate marketing campaign as a supporting effort to your social media actions? You may well have some well placed allies out there on the wild wild web.

Google expands PPA system worldwide

Google has expanded the pay per action (PPA) ad system it started testing in March internationally.

The move, which allows advertisers to only pay fees to Google if users complete a defined task (such as signing up for a newsletter), follows a closed beta trial in the US.

In a statement, the web giant said the system could now be used by any advertiser worldwide, as long as they had generated more than 500 conversions from other Google campaigns in the last 30 days:

"Starting today, advertisers in the beta will see an alert in their AdWords account informing them that they can now create pay-per-action campaigns.

"Going forward, advertisers who have enabled AdWords conversion tracking and received more than 500 conversions from their CPC and CPM-based campaigns in the past 30 days will be automatically added to the beta on a rolling basis."

The PPA system clearly signals a move by Google into affiliate marketing - although it remains to be seen how it will affect existing affiliate networks.

Through it, the PPA ads are displayed separately from Google's CPM and CPC ads, and can take the form of text, images or in-line text links.

Bad email marketing can ruin product launches

One of the reasons for the failure of NatMags’ Jellyfish magazine has been blamed on email distribution problems.

What lessons does this hold for email marketers?

NatMags’ Jellyfish magazine was a digital magazine originally aimed at teenage girls (11 – 19). Earlier this month, it was pulled after a 20 week trial period.

The magazine was delivered by email and suffered delivery problems with Hotmail. Hotmail's spam filters were blocking Jellyfish, even when it was requested by users. It is one of the most high profile examples where deliverability has directly affected the commercial success of a product.

There has been lots of industry discussion on who is to blame for the failure. Was it NatMags’ choice of ESP? The product itself? The marketing strategy? Or was it the target market?

Some are blaming the medium itself, something easily refuted given the success of Dennis’ Monkey magazine, which is posting record ABC audit figures. Indeed, representatives from Dennis are strong in their beliefs, arguing that “Natmags' biggest problem was the quality of their data and the product”.

What interests me in this story is the impact deliverability has played in the failure of this product - even though Duncan Edwards, chief executive of NatMags, tried to put a positive spin on it. He said:

"(The trial) has been extremely valuable but we could not see a sustainable business model emerging. We have learnt a great deal about digital and email marketing, which will prove to be useful for our core business."

The bottom line is that problems in deliverability have wasted resource, budget, destroyed a revenue stream and perhaps most worryingly caused significant industry embarrassment for NatMags.

What can we learn from this?

The chosen email provider in this instance is receiving some really bad press. But why?

It would seem that it didn’t really work with the client pre-launch to avoid these problems. Pre-launch, it's essential to look at how the data was collected, what permission has been given, the copy used in the emails, monitoring recipient complaints as well as broadcasting with an appropriate technical set-up.

Getting these things wrong can sully the sender’s reputation (as happened in this case). Getting delivered into Hotmail is paramount for the success of any B2C email launch, as is Yahoo. Prevention is better than cure as, once tarnished, it’s a hell of a lot of work to repair it, and this may lead to a failed launch... like Jellyfish.

It is also important to have a deliverability strategy. Simple steps such as pre-send testing to check content against all major spam filters, monitoring your sender reputation and measuring inbox placement give you visibility on the health of your sender reputation.

Working closely with your ESP will also give you the opportunity to improve deliverability, turning this threat into an opportunity.

Lets hope everyone learns this lesson for the success of all their own new email promotions…

How often should you email your customers?

Controlling the frequency of emails that you send to your customers is a key aspect of any email marketing strategy, and the big question is how often should you do it?

There is no simple answer - send emails too often and you risk annoying the customers so much that they unsubscribe; not often enough and you run the risk that they will forget they signed up in the first place.

So how often is too often?
Email marketers can run the risk of damaging the relationship built up with a customer by sending emails too often, causing customers to ignore or delete them.

After a recent purchase from Figleaves.com, my wife has received a staggering 14 emails in the space of 3-4 weeks with a range of offers. This, to me at least, is far too often, and has led to her forwarding the emails straight to the deleted items folder, so it isn't good for Figleaves either.

Internet marketing author Dave Chaffey says:

"The reason why they may send emails weekly or even more often is simply that up to a point, the higher the frequency, the higher the monthly sales."

"Reminders, and an increased range of offers in the inbox do work. The risk, of course, is that those customers who don’t respond see the retailer as a spammer."

In DoubleClick's 2005 Email Consumer Survey, 49% of respondents classified spam as '"email from a company I have done business with but that comes to frequently''.

How often should retailers be sending out emails?
According to Chaffey, if you send emails too often for the customer, they will lose interest and the emails will lose their impact.:

"Weekly is possibly too often and five times or more per month is definitely too often, regardless of the product range or offers."

According to Darren Fell at pure360:

"This has all to do with the relevancy of the communication. If it is generic marketing communication then it should deliver exactly what they told you they would send. I'd say 1-2 mails per month for general information."

Are there risks in not sending emails often enough?
Obviously, sales volumes may be affected, but, according to Andrew Robinson at Facultas, this can affect the cleanliness of your list, as you will not be purging old addresses often enough.

This can also harm your sending IP reputation:

"You may also stimulate a complaint rate which is higher than normal because recipients have forgotten who you are or whether they signed up to receive email from you. This may cause your IP to be blocked at some providers."

Find the right level of frequency for your customers
Monitoring the level of unsubscribes is also a good indicator of how the customer feels about the emails they receive, though many people prefer to forward the mail to their deleted items folder or report spam, so this method is not perfect.

The answer may be for email marketers to take a more sophisticated approach - monitoring open and click rates and adjusting frequencies according to the responses.

More simply, you could ask your customers how often they want to receive emails. A simple check box during registration might be enough to ensure that this problem is overcome, with the customer in control and presumably happy.

Strategies for finding the right email frequency

Stefan Pollard at Email Labs has written a good article that looks at the factors that dictate how often you should send marketing emails.

Clearly, finding the right frequency for emails is vital - emailing customers too often can put them off, while not emailing often enough can cause the same problems.

Stefan outlines three strategies for determining the correct frequency:

1. Understand who controls frequency

Stefan points out that customers are becoming savvier when managing inboxes, and many will delete, unsubscribe from, or report as spam any emails they may find annoying.

In addition, customers will often consider annoying emails as spam, even if they have a relationship with that company. In a DoubleClick survey, 49% of respondents classified spam as '"email from a company I have done business with but that comes too frequently''.

This means that customers are the ones who should be determining the frequency of emails they receive.

2. Listen to customer feedback

Take note of what people are saying when they unsubscribe. They may be telling you they are receiving too many emails, or that the ones they receive are irrelevant to them.

Give customers a chance to tell you how many emails, and what kind of emails they are happy to receive, either when they opt-in in the first place, or through the emails you are sending them. The more relevant the messages you send, the more frequently you can send them.

3. Respect your subscribers' choices

You should stick to your promises about email frequency, even if you have a deal you know your customers will love. While many will forgive one or two extra emails, it could be the tipping point for others.

Stefan recommends:

"Instead of sneaking in another mailing, refine your list description that specifies a general number but allows you to reserve the right to send relevant messages between regular scheduled mailings.

"Specify a range of mailings in a given time rather than a specific number, but be as realistic in your expectations as you can."

The article also warns against not sending emails often enough, as customers may forget they subscribed after a while and treat your email as spam. He recommends that customers should be emailed at least monthly.

Do you get what you pay for with email marketing?

A good online marketer makes their budget stretch a long way. Now I employ an account management team full of them, I’m always gobsmacked by how far they used to make a little money go in their previous positions.

At Adestra we’ve been involved in a number of pitches where the negotiations have been prolonged, complex and very different. However, there is one common attitude - getting the transmission rate as low as possible.

In doing this, online marketers run the very real risk of cutting their noses off to spite their faces. Sending emails is not free - you’ve got to look at what you’re getting for your money....

• How individual is that email?

More advanced email technology includes dynamic content capabilities allowing marketers to build mass-customised designs with multiple personalisations from many different data sets. Sending a highly relevant, targeted email is proven to improve campaign response. If your partner does not have this technology could you be missing out on revenue benefits?

• How quickly can it be sent out?

If your campaigns are time-sensitive, such as a last minute gambling offer before kick-off in the FA Cup, or a breaking news announcement, having slow broadcast speeds that take hours after the intended delivery date is pointless. If your partner can’t send at the rate you need, what effect will this have on your campaign performance?

• How likely is it to be delivered?

Deliverability is a hot issue. Getting delivered into the inbox and not getting caught in spam filters prevents brand damage and boosts campaign performance. High profile products like NatMag’s Jellyfish magazine failed because of problems with Hotmail.

Not all sending technology is the same, and a key differentiator is what deliverability offerings can be supported. The financial risk of being blacklisted and your emails no longer being delivered, or the lost revenue if they are delivered into junk items, could make a significant dent in your revenue.

• Do I have anywhere to turn to help take my email strategy on?

Having great technology is exciting but can’t be useful if you don’t know how to use it - it’s like having a Ferrari but not knowing how to drive it.

Having people to help support you on your email marketing journey providing hints, tips, tactical advice and strategic guidance is essential to getting the best use of this technology.

Sending email can be done using the BCC field. Sending highly effective, targeted one-to-one messages that are delivered into the inbox, generate a result and support your company’s corporate strategy cannot be done using the BCC field.

Trying to get the cheapest email transmission rate can cloud the other factors to consider, factors that will allow you to make the most from your email marketing.

Tips for a successful email campaign

Lisa Finfer at DMNews has jotted down a few tips for email marketers, with relevancy again being cited as a key factor in generating results.

In Lisa's article, she outlines a four step process for marketers to increase open rates and conversions.

These are....

• Know your audience
  According to Lisa, this is something many marketers overlook, although gathering data on buying habits and demographics is crucial. With this in mind, it is important to consider the type of questions to ask people when they consent to having emails sent.
  
  
• Only send out relevant information
  If you have good information on the customers on your list, you must use it to avoid sending out irrelevant emails, which are likely to have recipients ignoring them or pressing the spam button.
  
  For example, a recent Jupiter Research report found that untargeted emails generated average open rates of 20%, compared to 27% for campaigns triggered by user actions, and 33% for those integrating website clickstream data.
  
  
• Create a strong template
  Lisa recommends a relatively short email message, with a clearly placed call to action, as well as logo placement in the upper left of the email.
  
  
• Don't overload your audience
  Frequency of emails is important, as sending too many (or more than the recipient expects) will have them unsubscribing or reporting them as spam.
  
  It is therefore important to set customer expectations, and Lisa suggests that marketers should make recipients aware how frequently they can expect to recieve emails.
  
  Better still, customers could be asked how often they are willing to receive email offers when they first give their consent.

Also keep an eye out for the 2007 update to our Email Marketing Buyer's Guide for more info on best practice when it comes to email campaigns. It'll be out later this month.

Amazon launches widgets for bloggers

Amazon has launched a range of widgets in a bid to boost the reach of its affiliate marketing programme.

The widgets can be used to display the etailer's products on blogs, social networks and other websites, earning members of the company's Associates programme up to 10% in referral fees.

They include a quick linker, which directs readers to items that are relevant to blog content; tag clouds, which display clusters of relevant products; and wish-lists.

Video previews and slideshows are also on offer, though the videos are limited to the US at the moment.

It's a good move from Amazon. Widget use has taken off over the past year - more than a fifth of web users worldwide are using them, according to recent comScore stats.