BEST PRACTICES | DECEMBER 2008


How to Leverage New Year Resolutions for Q1
With the holidays wrapping up, 2009 is just around the corner. And with a New Year, New Year resolutions start. Consumers truly believe in the saying “New Year, New You” and every merchant that sells cosmetics, health, exercise, and/or diet products should take advantage of this. According to Business Wire, each year 40-45% of Americans make New Year's resolutions, whether it is to lose weight, exercise or look good. And while a lot of retailers consider Q4 to be the months where they see the most sales, there are a number of merchants in the LinkShare Network that see a significant lift in revenues during Q1. Health, beauty and exercise advertisers see a spike in sales as they cater to consumers who want to make a change in the new year. According to health & beauty trends below, Q1 remains the 2nd most important quarter for Health & Beauty products outside of Q4 and 23% of beauty orders have come in Q1 over past 2 years.

If you are one of these merchants or if you have products that might be considered suitable for New Year’s resolutions, be sure to take advantage of the Q1 consumer trend. There are a number of things you can do to make Q1 even more successful than last year:

• Educate your customer about your product and how it can help them achieve their goals in the New Year
• Set up free shipping, coupon or sale promotions to turn consumer who are non-users into users of your product
• Set up special SKU offers that allow publishers to earn extra commission on specific New Year resolution products. You can also pair this special SKU offer with a consumer offer on the same product(s)
• Run either a contest or an activation program to activate dormant publishers in your program
• Partner with the right publishers who cater to the consumers who would purchase your product. Look for coupon, product or blog publishers who focus on new year resolutions, health and beauty. Offer higher commissions to the top performing affiliates in your program to drive sales
• Develop new creative that messages the benefits of your products to consumers. Besides banners and text links, LinkShare now supports rich media such as Flash, javascript and video via Flex links. Click here to learn more about Linkshare’s Flex links
• Set up a data feed to push products to affiliates. Click here to learn about LinkShare’s Merchandiser feed.
• Communicate your message via newsletters. Develop newsletters that feature your products that consumers might use to help with their New Year’s resolutions
• Include your message in the monthly Deal Dispatcher communication. Click here to learn about the LinkShare Deal Dispatcher.