Merchant Account Maintenance – Spring Cleaning Part II

Refresh your Creative Inventory & Coupons

Your Creative Inventory may have gathered dust during Q1. There are a few easy options that can help you clean up your various links –  whether they be text, banner, coupon, etc. It can be overwhelming to know where to start if your creative inventory has hundreds of links and banners. The best starting point is to use the Banner Performance Report to see which of your links are performing the strongest. This report only shows data for banners that have generated at least one click, so in order to find the actual non-performers you may have to take a deductive approach. 

Two quick ways to update links:

Defuncting banners: When you defunct a banner, it no longer shows up in your creative inventory nor will it be available for Affiliates to view in their interface. However, defunct banners will still be visible on any web page on which it currently exists. So, if an Affiliate picked it up and placed it on their site before you set it to defunct, it will remain on that Affiliate’s site until they take it down or replace it. It is also important to note that the banner will continue to function as an Affiliate link.

Editing existing links: In order to retain more control over what Affiliates are displaying on your behalf, we recommend that you edit the banner with updated information or imagery. Any change you make – even uploading a different banner graphic – will dynamically change for any Affiliate who is currently hosting the original banner. (When swapping banners, we recommend keeping the same size so that the change won’t disrupt how the Affiliates have it displayed on their website.)

Things to consider when updating banners: 

• Are your banners seasonally relevant? Or, are there any new seasonal landing pages you want to swap in for existing or outdated links?
• Do you offer a variety of sizes including those for mobile and social?
• Do your banner creatives reflect the most updated logo and branding?

Don’t forget about coupons and deals. Make sure your inventory is loaded with short-acting, seasonally relevant offers. Coupons that have a restricted time frame (i.e. not ongoing) may be more appealing to Affiliates because they create a sense of urgency.

Regardless of what changes you make, don’t leave your Affiliate partners in the dark! Send a newsletter announcing the newly refreshed creatives. You can even use macros to feature a few in the actual body content. 

Pro Tip: Do you wish you could easily change the landing page for all summer sale 2016 banners with a new 2017 summer sale landing page? Now in the Gen7 interface, you can mass edit Creatives with one simple action. Head to the last tab on your Creative Inventory marked “All Creatives,” sort and filter to view the links or banners you want to change, check the boxes, and click “Edit Selected.” 

Stay tuned for Part III of this series!