It’s week two of our Holiday Blogging Event, and in our last blog of the week, we ask, what one incentive do online consumers want more than anything else?

According to Forrester Research, 75% of customers prefer to shop with an online retailer that offers this incentive, and The Conference Board Survey supports these same findings, reporting that 90% of consumers say this would also entice them to spend even more online.

The incentive here is free shipping. It’s an attractive enticement, and most consumers have come to expect it, especially around the peak holiday season.

Many merchants debate whether offering free shipping or a discounted purchase price will be more attractive to the consumer. David Bell, marketing professor at the Wharton School observes that

For whatever reason, a free shipping offer that saves a customer $6.99 is more appealing to many than a discount that cuts the purchase price by $10.

Bell also concludes that 60% of online retailers cite “free shipping with conditions” as their most successful marketing tool.

So why is a free shipping offer so important to an online retailer?

• 78% of online customers say that exorbitant shipping costs discourage them from online purchases. (Source: E-tailing Group, 2008)
• 75% of people prefer to shop with online retailers that offer free shipping, compared to 61% in 2007. (Source: Forrester Research, 2008)
• 43% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts because of unexpectedly high shipping charges. (Source: Paypal, comScore, 2008)
• 61 of the largest 100 online retailers offered free shipping as of the week of Monday, November 10, 2008. (Source: Internet Retailer)
• 90% of respondents say free shipping offers would entice them to spend more online. (Source: The Conference Board Survey, 2008)
• 72% of consumers say that if an e-commerce site eliminated free shipping, they would use another e-commerce site that did offer free shipping. (Source: comScore Survey, 2008)
• People are searching for ‘free shipping’ earlier in the Christmas shopping season, and for longer. Searches for free shipping began to rise in October of last year, and actually peaked in the first week of January. (source: eConsultancy.com, 2009)

Need more reasons to offer free shipping this holiday season? Check out Free Shipping.org for a list of retailers who are incorporating this incentive into their marketing strategy—and succeeding!

Is your affiliate marketing campaign ready for the holiday season? If not, this is the blogging event to get you ready for the busiest season of the year. Check out last week’s blogs, and make sure to tune in again next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for more tips and techniques to help you end Q4 with your most successful campaign yet!

As the cold air begins to flow, merchants are on the lookout for what kind of online shopping trends are on the horizon for this 2009 season. October is half over, and if you haven’t started to prep your Q4 campaigns already, it’s time to get started!

This year, it is estimated that US retail e-commerce sales (excluding travel) will total $132 billion, down 0.4% from 2008. eMarketer forecasts online sales will begin to rebound in 2010 and hit full stride in 2011 if the recession is to end in 2009 as economists have predicted.

Trends suggest consumers will be spending less this holiday season making it more of challenge for retailers to attract ideal customers to both brick and mortar and online stores. That, of course does not mean there will be no shoppers, but it means that consumers will be more selective. That simply means that this season, more than ever, it is important to stand out, and make educated decisions about where advertising money should be spent.

Trends also show a progressive shift in consumer research, and there are more value shoppers who will browse research and compare products on the Internet. Consumers are using social media more to search for deals and coupons via Twitter, Facebook. So, marketers may want to channel more resources into that avenue.

In preparation for the 2009 holiday shopping season, online retailers looking to create the most effective e-commerce site should take the following steps:

1. Optimize website with holiday focused content
2. Improve pay per click (PPC) advertising campaigns for holidays
3. Driving more sales through the Comparison Shopping Engines
4. Create more customer loyalty programs
5. Humanizing customer service
6. Increase free shipping offers
7. Offer exclusive holiday coupons
8. Plan long term on how to reach consumer AFTER the holiday season have passed

For more techniques, tools, tips and great resources to make sure you’re getting every last drop out of your affiliate marketing campaigns, be sure to come back to the Share Results blog. Until November 27, Share Results.com is throwing a big Holiday Blogging Event, packed with all kinds of seasonal information regarding trends for Q4, tips to get the best deals, consumer trends and how best optimize your affiliate marketing campaigns.

Affiliates! Merchants! Are you ready for Q4, aka the busiest season of the year for affiliate marketing?!

October is half over, and if you haven’t started to prep your campaigns already, it’s time to get started!

And do we have the event to get you in the holiday spirit. From October 14 to November 27, Share Results is throwing a big Holiday Blogging Event, packed with all kinds of seasonal information regarding trends for Q4, tips to get the best deals, consumer trends and how best optimize your affiliate marketing campaigns.

Affiliates, here’s what you can look forward to during our Holiday Blogging Event:

• Affiliate marketing strategies
• Tips on how to best communicate with merchants—and how to secure the best deals!
• Tips on what shoppers will be looking for most this holiday season
• Tips on achieving higher conversion rates
• Tips on earning more revenue

Merchants, we have customized tips that will help you end 2009 with a bang. Here’s what to expect:

• Time and affiliate program management tips
• Trends that apply to your program
• How to be best prepared to accommodate affiliates during Q4
• What tools to have in place to ensure your success
• How to communicate effectively with affiliates
• How to develop a detailed promotional strategy to maximize revenue-earning potential

If you haven’t visited our Share Results blog before, now is a great opportunity to get started. The blog is designed to give you techniques, tools, tips, industry news—and so much more. And it’s a great resource to make sure you’re getting every last drop out of your affiliate marketing campaigns.

Join us starting this Friday, to launch our Holiday Blogging Event. Our first blog will look at online shopping trends for 2009, how consumers are looking for holiday deals and what online retailers can do to create the most effective e-commerce site in preparation for the holiday shopping 2009 season.

We wanted to let you know about the latest Share Results Hot Deals for October 2009. There are some exciting promotions including the launch of one of our newest merchants offering luxury tea products – Language of the Leaf!

T-Shirt Monster

Customer Promotion: Breast Cancer Awareness Month Promote using Breast Cancer Awareness banners + landing page
Canadian Traffic Preferred – Offer expires October 31st, 2009

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Language of the Leaf

Customer Promotion: 10% Off on all orders over $30
Coupon Code – Available via the Share Results Coupon Feed
Offer expires November 30, 2009
Coupon code can only be used once by one customer and cannot be combined with other promotions

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InkPlusToner

Customer Promotion: 10% Off on all orders + FREE SHIPPING
Coupon Code – Available via the Share Results Coupon Feed
Offer expires December 31, 2009

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StyleFly

Customer Promotion: Customers receive 20% OFF Orders
Coupon Code – Available via the Share Results Coupon Feed
Canadian Traffic Only – Offer expires October 31, 2009

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SnagAJob.com

Affiliate Promotion: NEW banner creative for holiday-hiring season
US Traffic Only – Offer is ongoing

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The CuteKid

Affiliate Promotion:
*Send 25 sales, earn $25 Bonus
*Send 50 sales, earn $50 Bonus
*Send 100 sales, earn $150 Bonus
*Send 150 sales, earn $300 Bonus
*Send 200 sales, earn $500 Bonus

Offer expires November 1, 2009

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ZooBooks

2 Customer Promotions:
Free Shipping on orders over $25 (excluding subscriptions)
Offer expires October 31st, 2009

Customers get 10% off all products (excluding subscriptions)
Offer expires February 14th, 2010

Both coupon codes – Available via the Share Results Coupon Feed

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UnderGroundHipHop.com

3 Customer Promotions:

*$10 Off orders
*$75 or more $25 Off orders
*$150 or more 10% Off orders
Coupon Codes – Available via the Share Results Coupon Feed
Offer expires November 1, 2009

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Affiliate Promotion:

Earn a $25 bonus when you refer a minimum of $250 in sales
Offer expires November 1, 2009

To become an affiliate in Share Results, please sign up here to get access to our hot coupon offers! http://www.shareresults.com/affiliates/login.php

Looking for that cool new digital camera? Searching high and low for the latest and trendiest handbag? Bing has launched a new visual search engine that displays all results…visually! By using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, Bing has been able to create a sleek, time-saving way of comparison shopping and searching. Technology in general has emphasized the visual appeal (see iphone), so this development certainly makes sense from a consumer’s point of view. The integration of the visual aspect to search results creates a powerful combo that is sure to attract many users to the search engine.

If a picture is worth 1000 words, then Bing is on the way towards something significant in search engine history. This week’s BAMroll focuses on two blogs that have expressed their opinions on the matter. Read on to find out more!

Battellemedia’s blog post ‘Bing Gets Visual’ highlights the aspects of Bing’s new search engine addition. Written by John Battelle, the blog focuses on search engine news and thoughts on the intersection of search, media, technology, and more.

SearchEngineLand’s blog is a news and information site covering search engine marketing, searching issues and the search engine industry. Led by journalist Danny Sullivan, who has been covering search for the past 11 years, it is published by Third Door Media, which also produces the Search Marketing Expo conference series and the Search Marketing Now webcast events.

Affiliate marketers should be aware of this development, as visual results could provide new methods of recruiting high-potential affiliates.

As you may know the first game of the regular NFL season is on Thursday, September 10, 2009, at 8:30 pm EDT, with the Super Bowl XLIII champion Pittsburgh Steelers hosting the Tennessee Titans at Heinz Field. With the NFL starting back up it’s the perfect time for you to put up your favorite team banner and text link creatives for TundraGear.

The opening weekend game on NBC Sunday Night Football will feature the Chicago Bears at Green Bay Packers. The opening weekend doubleheader games on Monday Night Football will both be part of the AFL 50th Anniversary celebration: Buffalo Bills at New England Patriots in the first game, and San Diego Chargers at Oakland Raiders in the second game.

The months of September, October and November are peak times for Tundra Gear so if you haven’t started promoting their officially licensed NFL (NHL and College Pins too) winter hats this season, this week is the week to do it!

You can promote TundraGear using any of the following placements:

• Banner
• Text ads
• Paid search, PPC (brand name bidding permitted and direct linking to the homepage)
• Coupon placements
• Deep linking available on over 500+ creative

To learn more about the available promotions and the overall TundraGear affiliate program, please visit: http://www.shareresults.com/local_affiliate_desc.php?mid=10067. Go Bears!

It’s no secret that affiliate marketing is a rapidly growing industry. What makes it so unique and successful is the very foundation that it’s built upon – the affiliates. As such, it is vital for merchants and affiliate programs to appropriately search out and recruit affiliates that pertain to their vertical. But how are the affiliates supposed to choose between programs? What makes a good affiliate program? What affiliates are looking for—and remember that they are what drives the industry—are incentives. So, what kinds of incentives are crucial to successful recruitment during a launch?

To help you answer these questions, we have found two blogs that identify several key factors and give a comprehensive look at effective incentives.

Conversion Counts explains 10 Affiliate Incentives that Work for affiliate programs. Conversion Counts offer a wide array of online marketing solutions and publish a blog that is designed to help readers earn higher revenues and boost conversion rates.

Avangate Blog evaluates why programs with high commission rates don’t necessarily mean a successful program unless coupled with strong affiliate incentives. Founded by Bob Walsh, Avangate Blog is a great resource for software vendors on the Internet that focuses on how to sell software, ecommerce solutions for software vendors, internet marketing for the software industry, and reviews of important events.

If you want to keep up-to-date, you can download the OPML file on our BAMroll page.  We also have badges for your blog, if you’re already a BAMroller.

We announced a few weeks ago that we had unveiled a completely new look of our affiliate interface.

We wanted to take the opportunity to share with everyone in more detail a few of these new changes.

New Welcome Dashboard: The simple and easy-to-read design of the new welcome dashboard provides affiliates with instant access to critical account information and a list of the top performing creative along with important message alerts from the network. This new dashboard reduces the number of clicks and time spent searching; and with new graphical reporting, affiliates can analyze their campaign performances from the moment they log into their account.

Quick Stats: Displays vital program stats based on all the merchants whose programs an affiliate is subscribed to and for whom they are generating stats. This includes impressions, clicks, approved transactions, commission by percentage, commission by CPA, commissions by referral and total commission.

Period Comparison Chart: Displays a graphical trend of an affiliates ‘campaign stats over a specific period. Affiliates can view period trends for all merchants they promote or just one program.

Commission Breakdown: Graphical display of the commissions affiliates have earned for the total approved transactions for the current month. By hovering over the pie chart with the mouse, affiliates are able to see a breakdown of the amount of commissions earned from each merchant they are promoting.

This fall, we plan to continue developing the look of the Share Results software and various tools within the system to help affiliates navigate and manage their affiliate account more efficiently.

If you are an affiliate of Share Results we encourage you to take some time to log into your account and give us your feedback about the revamped appearance. Email us at: affliates@shareresults.com

We’re delighted to announce that the Share Results website and affiliate software will have a completely new look next week.

The new design focuses on enhancing software usability and reflects Share Results’ approach to relationships. Changes to the software interface include instant access to critical information and added customization features.

For a complete rundown of our upcoming updates, check out the full PR here.

We’re happy to announce Nero program has gone live on Share Results

Nero is an industry leader in software products for creating, editing, burning, sharing and enjoying digital media of all types. Nero offers solutions that are simple enough for a novice to

use but powerful enough to tackle even the most demanding projects.

Nero’s two most popular products Nero 9 and Move It are available to promote through SR

Placements permitted in this program include:

• Banner Creative
• Text Ads
• PPC/Search Marketing (Trademark on “Nero” are forbidden)
• Coupons (Customer can save an additional 10% off on Nero9 orders – Offer expires after July 2nd, 2009)
• Incentivized
• Email traffic not permitted
• 45-day Cookie
• Canadian traffic

Commission Offer

As a new affiliate to the Nero program, you will earn up to 20% commission on all Canadian sales

Publishers that promote in the software, coupon and search categories are ideal for this affiliate program.

For more info or to join, please visit: http://www.shareresults.com/local_affiliate_desc.php?mid=14602