Posts Tagged ‘amazon’

Direct Marketers Rankings Soar In Public Opinion Poll

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

ricknew1The direct marketing industry should take heart in today’s announcement of Harris Interactive’s survey of The Reputations of the Most Visible Companies annual report.  Among the top 10 highest ranking companies, seven employ direct marketing and two — Google and amazon.com — are active members of the Electronic Retailing Association.  It is further proof that direct response has gone mainstream and is not the exclusive domain of As Seen On TV products.

Here is the top 10:

1.   Berkshire Hathaway
2.   Johnson & Johnson
3.   Google
4.   3M Company
5.   SC Johnson
6.   Intel Corporation
7.   Microsoft
8.   The Coca-Cola Company
9.   amazon.com
10. General Mills

Rick Petry is a freelance writer who specializes in direct marketing and is a past chairman of ERA.  He can be reached at (503) 740-9065 or online at rickpetry.com.  On Twitter at http://twitter.com/thepetrydish.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Direct Response, Marketer, Retailer, direct marketer, drtv | 1 Comment »

5 Easy-to-Implement Affiliate Marketing Tips for DRTV Marketers

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

molander.jpg Tired of the same old tips and tricks about web affiliate marketing programs? “Communicate with them, treat them with respect” yada-yada. What about what really works? I pulled together a group of my most experienced, thought-leading colleagues to find out what’s moving the needle in affiliate marketing today. The below innovations are what I discovered. I’m happy to share these best practices. Yes, they can be quickly and easily applied—helping you manage your affiliates and extract maximum sales efficiency. Stay tuned to Electronic Retailer’s blog for candid interviews with these experts where they’ll “go deep” to reveal their secrets to success.

1. Allow affiliates to access a knowledge-driven feedback loop to improve their ROI and, as a result, increase yours.
a. Let affiliates “connect the ROI dots” between their investments (media spending) and your ultimate success (sales or new customers).
b. Provide select, trusted affiliates with limited, yet unfettered, access to your internal metrics and customer behavior data.

2. Strengthen relationships with superstar affiliates and open doors for potential superstars by actively, yet cautiously, investing hard and soft dollars in them.
a. Invest in affiliates: Underwrite affordable, educational opportunities and conferences for them. Sponsoring affiliates is very popular in the European realm.
b. Sponsor low-cost, virtual innovation forums and webinars that offer training opportunities for top affiliates.
c. Provide limited access to web metrics (i.e., Google Analytics, Omniture) and optimization tools that are already at your disposal, yet possess a high perceived (and applied!) value among affiliates.
d. Invest in affiliates: Subsidize the media buying of select, high-value affiliates by providing matching contributions to their expenditures or allowing access to your media buying prowess.

3. Develop and communicate a clear, well-reasoned search marketing policy to affiliates.
a. Audit your affiliate program for confluence with paid (PPC) search advertising efforts.
b. Understand value driven by affiliates across various categories based on audit results that demonstrate “triggers” of sales transactions.
c. Create business rules that negate and approve affiliate commissions based on logical rules that are shared openly and pro-actively with affiliates.
d. Understand where your search engine optimization “sweet spot” is by identifying where you want to spend time, energy (money). Assign “long tail” search terms/keywords (those able to generate less referral volume) to affiliates for their monetization efforts.

4. Experiment with social media affiliates.
a. Scale your most precious resource, time: Use new tools, such as Syntryx, to rapidly prospect for qualified affiliates.
b. Provide affiliates with access to helpful, innovative Web 2.0 linking technologies like Linkshare’s FlexLinks or Amazon’s various tools ranging from “SiteStripe” to widgets.
c. Give affiliates access to product data, coupons and other content via flexible, RSS-enabled technologies.

5. Consider creative, new approaches to paying and bonusing affiliates based on performance.
a. Throttle up payouts among performers who drive volume at a reasonable cost, considering channel confluence issues, etc.
b. Throttle down payouts among under-performers who’ve been given a fair chance, but are not performing on a quarterly basis.

Stay tuned for more actionable tips and interviews with experts in a variety of performance-focused web marketing strategies.

Jeff Molander is a leading Web marketing expert, author and speaker. He is CEO of Molander & Associates Inc.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Direct Response, Electronic Retailer, Europe, Infomercials, Marketer, Online, Research, Support Services, Web Analytics | 18 Comments »

The Scoop on NewEgg – Streamlined Sales Tax

Monday, September 8th, 2008

picture.jpg As you may have heard, NewEgg has stopped collecting sales tax from New York customers. Unlike Amazon, which has initiated litigation challenging New York’s tax policies, or Overstock.com, which has cut New York affiliate programs in order to avoid the tax, NewEgg has taken a new path. Some insiders suggest it may also be “restructuring” its affiliate programs as well, but it seems likely the company also expects enforcement to be too costly for the New York state government. Because NewEgg is a California company that does not have a physical location in New York, any kind of enforcement will likely involve extensive legal challenges before the courts can even determine where the case should be tried. Then, there is an extremely strong Constitutional argument that the New York law cannot extend to businesses that do not have a physical nexus in the state. NewEgg will probably also argue that its affiliates are structured in a way that has never subjected the company to the law.

All of this litigation would be extremely costly. The New York state government only expected to collect $50 million a year in total, and now companies are ditching their New York affiliates to avoid the tax, so the revenue generating potential of this tax is pretty low. The amount the state could collect from NewEgg if it wins the challenge would, of course, only be a fraction of that amount. Plus, there is evidence politicians are feeling pressure from constituents, including customers and advertising agencies, to suspend this tax. The New York State Senate has already passed a bill to repeal it. All this said, NewEgg might be taking a risk, but with extremely high consumer ratings and a steady stream of cash, it can probably afford it.

Tomi Turner works in ERA’s government affairs department.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in ERA, Government Affairs, Online, Retailer | 2 Comments »

New York’s Ambitious Sales Tax Law: Broader Than Amazon and the Internet?

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

congressional-hearing-2.jpg Amazon says it is advertising when it compensates New York-based websites for posting links that refer customers to Amazon.com. New York says it’s soliciting business. The distinction means all the difference in the world for sales taxes, for Amazon, and possibly even print media, television and radio.

Amazon.com sued New York State earlier this month, challenging a newly enacted law that has serious implications for online advertisements. In April, the New York legislature passed a law designed to increase sales tax revenue from Internet sales. The law is known as the “Amazon tax” because of the way it broadens the sales tax law to apply to Amazon’s Associates Program, thereby achieving the necessary legal nexus for New York to force Amazon (and other Internet retailers) to collect and remit taxes on all sales to N.Y. residents.

A little bit of history helps put this law into context. The Supreme Court has held that a state can only impose sales or use tax-collection obligations on an out-of-state retailer if the retailer has a “substantial nexus” with the state (the Quill decision). Nexus occurs from a sufficient physical presence, which can be an office or warehouse, but physical presence can also derive from soliciting a state’s consumers via sales representatives located in the state. However, it can’t be just any sales rep, according to another Supreme Court case—in-state representatives must be “significantly associated with the taxpayer’s ability to establish and maintain a market in the state,” according to Tyler Pipe v. Wash. Dept. of Rev.

Amazon doesn’t have an office, warehouse or other physical presence in New York, but it has thousands of New York-based members of its Advertising Associates program. Per the Quill decision, advertising alone is insufficient to establish a substantial nexus. So New York has changed the definition of what it means to be a sales representative to capture these in-state associates that Amazon says merely hosts its ads. Under the new law, New York has changed the presumption of what it means to be “soliciting business” in the state. (more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Advertising, Electronic Retailer, Government Affairs, Online, Payment Processing, Radio, Retailer | 6 Comments »

How Can I Buy it Now?

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

ais-ceo-mike-ferzacca.JPG After talking with clients and mobile advertising firms over the past year, I wasn’t surprised to see that, in addition to its mobile website, Amazon will now offer a more interactive buying experience. In the new TextBuyIt program, customers text Amazon (262966) with the item name, UPC or ISBN code of a product they want to buy and Amazon replies with product information and prices.

What really caught my eye about Amazon’s new program is the method used for order completion—a phone call. While mobile is all the buzz, the challenge for direct marketers has been how to translate that buzz into real sales activity. Amazon’s approach is similar to one AIS uses with its mobile marketing partners and clients, which blends the ease of the mobile’s “click to call” with our IVR platform to allow prospective customers to complete their transaction quickly and easily via a phone call. (Please note that mobile Click-to-Call is NOT the same as online CTC.)

Research shows that customers are already using mobile as a way to respond to ads they see on TV and that number is growing. For certain age groups, mobile texting far surpasses traditional phone and e-mail as the primary method of communication. But when prospective customers try to buy, they are often directed back to the online website or to a mobile website transferred directly over from an online site, with little consideration to the size limitations of the mobile screen. And almost always, there’s no clear and easy way to buy.

Amazon’s introduction of a phone component to its mobile offering and feedback we’ve received indicate that the nascent mobile e-commerce component is still a work in progress. That’s where the direct response industry can take the lead—bringing clarity and years of acquisition experience—to help mobile marketing deliver sales, not just buzz. With higher click-through rates than online and a captive audience, mobile has great potential to capture customers at the moment they want to buy.

Mike Ferzacca is CEO of Advanced Interactive Sciences

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Direct Response, Marketer, Mobile, Online, Retailer | 1 Comment »