BEST PRACTICES | AUGUST 2008
By Sharon Uselman and Steve Manes

Effectively Optimizing Your Program Through SKU-Based Offers

Advertisers commonly extend flat-rate or tiered offers to publishers. An effective way to motivate publishers to promote select products is a SKU-based special offer.

1. Short-term Promotions

Consider extending offers where you have high inventory levels of a product that you want to move. Also if you have seasonal products that are in high-demand, such as backpacks or lunch totes for back to school, a SKU-based offer is a great way to incent publishers to promote these key products. You can extend these offers for several weeks or a month. If your baseline is 3%, these products could be extended at a higher rate commission of 4% or more.

2. Long-term Promotions

For products that have higher margin and strong inventory levels, consider an ongoing SKU-based offer. The extra margin allows you to continue to offer for an extended period of time and allows the publisher time to properly place and promote the offering on their site.

Which publishers should receive a SKU-based offer?
Generally it is hard to predict which publisher will successfully promote the products in the SKU offer. Therefore, we suggest extending the offer to as many publishers as possible for an initial offer. You can always assess their performance and re-extend the offer to the publishers who showed the greatest performance with the offer. Also, loyalty sites prefer to have a single flat rate commission offer for all products as the amount they pass through to the consumer is fixed. Therefore they will not be as receptive to these types of offers.

Do I need to produce special creative for the SKU-based offer?
Technically you do not. However, the offer will not likely see strong results unless you create some text links or banners associated with the products in the offer.

Do publishers need to opt-in to this SKU-based offer?
Yes, publishers must opt-in to this offer to receive the special commission rate. There is no way for you to automatically “force” a publisher into an offer. It is a good idea to remind publishers that they need to opt- in to the offer in your communications. Sometimes even the most seasoned publishers forget.

How do I create and manage my SKU-based offer?
Setting up SKU-based offers: You can set up a SKU-based offer by clicking on the “Create Special Offer” on the merchant interface main page. The Create Special Offer option allows you to present your publishers with promotions that include special commissions that last for a limited time for a particular product, group of products, or publisher registrations. You will come to a page that looks like this:

Once you are on this page, you need to take the following steps to set up your SKU-based offer.

1. Enter a name for your promotion in the space provided next to "Special Offer Name."

2. Select your Offer Type by clicking the radio button next to "Public" or "Private." A public offer allows any publisher in your program to opt in. If you select private, then only publishers you select will be allowed to participate.

3. Select your Offer Network.

4. Select your offer's Sale Type by clicking the radio button for "Product" or "Registration." Choose "Product" if for SKU based offers.

5. Enter the date that you want offer to begin and to expire.

6. Select the currency with which you will be paying your publishers.

7. Enter the number of return days that you will allow.

8. In the space provided under "Description," write a brief description that will be seen by publishers (255 characters maximum).

9. Upload an SKU list of the products or services for which this promotion and its terms are applicable. Please make sure that the SKU list is in plain text and in tab-delimited format as follows:
SKU[tab]Product Name[hard return]

10. Click the Next button to continue.

11. Choose how you want to compensate your publishers by selecting one - or any combination - of the options; % of sales (flat), % of sales (tiered), Flat Fee, CPC, or CPM.

12. Click Next to continue. A confirmation screen will appear.

13. Check the data on the confirmation screen to make sure that it is accurate.

14. Click the Submit button to activate the promotion immediately. You will then be asked to confirm that you would like to submit your promotion. Click OK to submit.

As you can see, it is really easy to set up a SKU-based offer.

What if I want to add or delete products in the SKU offer?
New products can be included simply by adding them to the existing SKU file in the offer. However, products can never be deleted from this offer. If you want to remove products the offer must be expired and recreated again. Is there an automated way to update the file on a daily basis? Yes, you can continue to update the offer with new products on a daily basis by creating a file and posting it to an FTP account. You can discuss the details with your account manager and their technical consultant to ensure the file is set-up correctly.

How do I determine the success of my offer?
There are two ways you can monitor your SKU based offer:

1. Transaction Report:

The first option is using the transaction report. In the transaction menu, you will click the Search Order History option. Once on that page, you can search the history of all transactions by dates. Once you set your dates, you can press ok. You will then get a report that has all transactions during the timeframe. You can then download this report to an excel spreadsheet. To see how each SKU is selling, you will need to do a pivot table. By doing a pivot table, you will be able to judge how each SKU is doing.

2. Program Success Report:

The second option is using the Program Success Report. This report will show the effectiveness of each of your program levels, including SKU-based offers. You can use this report to see how each program level is doing by comparing the number of impressions, click-throughs, orders, sales, and commissions generated. You can look this information up by timeframe. You need to know the SKU-based offer ID in order to know which offer it is.

Do I need to set up a SKU list for each family of offers?
No, you can upload multiple SKU lists into one offer. Each SKU list can be set to different commission rates as well. However if you need separate expiration dates for the offer, then you would create multiple SKU-based offers.

What if I want to place every product into a SKU-based offer?
In this case, you can set your baseline commission offer up as a SKU-based offer. As with any change to your baseline offer, all participating affiliates will automatically be updated with any changes. Therefore as you prepare for this, please send out an advance notification to your affiliates because once the change is initiated all affiliates with be moved into this SKU- based offer.