Merchants: Coupons & Deals Database Best Practices

If you are a merchant who would like to provide coupons or deals to your affiliates to promote, you will want to check out our Coupon & Deals Database. This database is the easiest way for affiliates to find your available deals and the best way for them to receive the links.

Why? For one, we publish an RSS feed that affiliates can opt into which notifies them in real time when a deal is released. This makes the Coupon & Deals Database a subtle recruitment tool since affiliates will see deals even if they are not already approved with the program. Affiliates can also search the deals database from inside their account and easily export a database of available deals.

For anyone looking to upload to the Coupon & Deals database, we have some quick and easy tips for you as best practices when using this tool.

Tips for Using the Coupon & Deals Database:

• Look for the *  The asterisk will indicate which fields are required.

• Dateless Deals. Non-Expiring coupons can be entered as “NEVER” in the date field. This may be used if you wanted to provide affiliates with a link to a permanent clearance or sales page.

• No Coupon Code. If you don’t have a coupon code, just leave this field blank. Many affiliates export the database and will display whatever code is listed which can leads to display results such as “None” “N/A”.
• Image. If a particular product is being marked down, be sure to include the product image. An image can also be uploaded to tie a specific creative to the sale.

• Stagger Deals. Many deals are uploaded at the beginning of the month.Try to stagger deals throughout the month to get more out of the RSS feed. Deals can get lost in the mix when uploaded during the heaviest times.
• Coupon Organization. Be sure to use the category and keyword fields to make your coupons even easier for affiliates to find. Category is a way to organize your deals, while keywords bring on the search ability for specific terms.
• Define Usage. At the bottom of the deal upload page there are options for creating a special commission for that specific deal as well as the option to make the deal public to all  approved affiliates or private for a select one or few. When a deal is selected to be exclusive for one affiliate, a feature is available to force exclusivity to that affiliate. This means if a transactions occurs with that specific Deal ID, the affiliate for whom the deal was set exclusive will receive the commission. No matter what.
• List Restrictions. Last but not least, always remember to include any restrictions or limitations for the deal, if any.

After Your Deals Are Posted

Once you have uploaded some coupons & deals, you can always view your current list of deals from inside the Deals Database by clicking on the blue “See Current Deals” link.From this page you will also be able to edit any current deals, if need be.

After deals and coupons are made available, performance for the deals can be tracked from the Banner Performance Report. This report will provide insight as to which deals are most popular among your affiliate and which have the highest conversion rate. Good information to know as you continue to build out a variety of coupon & deals in the creative library.