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3 Main Phases Of A Product Launch

by on June 24, 2010 in Email Marketing, Internet Marketing

Most product launches have three main phases:

1. The Pre-Launch
2. The Launch
3. The Post-Launch

Let’s look at each phase and what it entails.

The Pre-Launch

The Pre-Launch is typically a 3-7 day period during which the prospects receive a lot of quality information and get excited about the upcoming product launch. The information  they receive during the pre-launch makes them think, “Man, if their free stuff is so good, imagine how great their PAID product must be!”

The paid product, however, is not available yet. Prospects are sent to a squeeze page that asks them to subscribe and receive a series of videos, special reports, and allows them to participate in tele-seminars and webinars.

The purpose of this phase is two-fold: Build a list for the launch and create ANTICIPATION on the part of prospects so that they are ready to pull out their credit card as soon as the product becomes available.

For this phase to have the proper effect on the prospects, you have to give away the best information, tips, tools, and advice you have. This may seem counter-intuitive, however, it’s critical that you do that.

The Launch

The day of the Launch comes and now all these thousands of people are going to rush to the website and get a copy of the product. Those who don’t buy it right away will receive an automated follow-up sequence of emails designed to persuade them to buy.

Usually, this is the phase when affiliates make all or most of their commissions. Holding contests that are based on the number of referrals or the amount of sales helps

The Post-Launch

This is a 1-4 week period after the product launch that allows the product owner to do more virtual seminars and interviews and generate more sales. Many launches skip this step and leave a lot of money on the table.

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Product Launch: Keep Your Hands Away From That Last Cookie!

by on June 23, 2010 in Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, Internet Marketing, Product Launch

All the big product launches we get to hear about are done via a network of joint venture partners with large lists.

It is not uncommon for the same subscriber to be on several lists and hence receive emails about the same promotion from several joint venture partners or affiliates at the same time. When a sale happens, the big question becomes, which affiliate is entitled to receive the commission on it: The first one to deliver this offer to the prospect or the last one who sealed the deal and convinced the prospect to take action?

Either approach has positive and negative aspects.

The “first cookie wins” approach allows you to give your major partners an incentive to mail early and to create the momentum for your launch. However, smaller partners who find out about the launch or start promoting it late, will have little if any incentive to participate because a lot of their own subscribers would have been cookied but the larger affiliates. This also invites “black hat” tactics like “cookie stuffing” that some of the less scrupulous affiliates may turn to in order to gain advantage over other partners.

The “last cookie wins” approach seems the most fair. After all, it’s the affiliate that gets the sale who should get paid on it, right? So it is no surprise most affiliate tracking packages work according to this scenario. Obviously, it may be a little harder for you to recruit some of the big list owners as your partners as now they’d have to work harder to make their commission from your launch.

It is also possible to use a combination of the two approaches by using the “last cookie wins” for tracking but recording the affiliate ID along with the contact details for the prospect in your autoresponder. When you send out follow up emails, you can drop in the affiliate code of the original affiliate in the purchase link. In this case it’s the affiliate who generated the lead is the one that ultimately gets paid the commission.

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Product Launch and Affiliate Tracking Software

by on June 22, 2010 in Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Product Launch, Referral Marketing

If you plan on launching an information product — be it a course, a membership website, a coaching program, or simply a book — through a network of joint venture partners, one of the more important considerations is the software used for affiliate tracking.

Your most important task is to make sure your affiliates are paid all the commissions they are entitled to. Alas, many software packages are much less than bulletproof when it comes to commission reporting and tracking.

Some shopping carts offer built-in affiliate systems. There are also a number of stand-alone affiliate tracking solutions that are either hosted for you or that you can host yourself.

Here is the list of the most important things to consider when choosing an affiliate solution:

1. Are the referrals tracked only via cookies or are there additional level of assurance like IP tracking?

2. How much control do you have over the way cookies behave? (How soon would they expire? Is it the first cookie or the last cookie that gets the sale?)

3. How many levels of commissions can you pay? (Many launches only pay one level of commissions, however, adding an extra level will allow you to approach joint venture brokers and off-load a lot of JV partner recruiting to them. You may want to stop at two levels as anything more than that and you will be considered a multi-level company with many regulations and restrictions around what you can and cannot do.)

4. Would you be able to set commissions to a different level for individual partners? (You may want to be able to offer some of your key partners a special deal and possibly pay them a higher percentage).

5. Is the reporting function adequate? (Many affiliate programs simply don’t give you much information or the information in the report may be delayed by 24 hours, which is almost eternity in a product launch scenario.)

6. Does it offer you an easy way to host media files (email copy, banners, text links, pre-written tweets, etc) with the affiliate’s link automatically built in?

7. Will it work with your current autoresponder / email marketing system?

8. Will it scale to handle the traffic and the load on the server?

9. Will it allow you to go into the system and manually verify the commissions by matching them to the orders from a particular affiliate? (Blindly trusting the software can be disastrous. Best practices include thorough testing preceding the launch and spot check throughout. Be aware that some affiliate tracking packages will report to you the number but may not give you enough information to know how this number was arrived at, rendering any manual verification impossible.)

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