AC Lens coupon affiliates will be pleased to here we’ve added a coupon code box! In one of the biggest changes to the affiliate program in a while, the coupon code box should help affiliates who are concerned with the old setup where shoppers had to enter the code in our “Special Instructions” section.

The coupon code box is set with a cookie so PPC and other affiliates need not worry about losing orders to those searching for a coupon code. Here’s how to set a coupon code box on AC Lens.

http://www.aclens.com/go.asp?MID=138&kw=1&CB=1&GO=default.asp

Let’s break down the link:

go.asp – The URL must pass through the go.asp parameter to set the cookie correctly.

MID – This should be one of our affiliate network ID’s which is 138 for Commission Junction and 147 for ShareASale.

KW/CB – Both of these parameters must be set to 1.

GO= – This directs the link anywhere on our site. In the example above, it’s going to default.asp which is the home page. If you want it to go to an internal page, say this one, http://www.aclens.com/displaylens.asp?LensID=282, you would take everything after the slash (displaylens.asp?LensID=282) and change any question marks to & so that it would look like this: http://www.aclens.com/go.asp?MID=138&kw=1&CB=1&GO=displaylens.asp&LensID=282. There should only be one question mark in the URL at any time.

This is a big change for the affiliate program and we think coupon affiliates will notice an increased conversion rate. All of the standard links in ShareASale and Commission Junction have been changed so if you use those, you don’t need to do anything. If you created your own custom links, and use coupons, you can follow the instructions above to take advantage of this new feature.

Good luck selling.

October has been great for AC Lens affiliates and we should see an even better second half. We’re having a site-wide Fall sale with savings up to 25% off our already low prices. Coupons may not be combined with the sale offer but the grocery coupon special can be used the rest of the month.

Check Commission Junction or ShareASale for fall sales creatives.

A slower than expected July for AC Lens affiliates. It’s Back to School season though and there’s no doubt we’ll be setting new records in paid commissions in August. Not only will we be running a Back to School sale, affiliates can have their visitors combine coupons with sale prices for the absolute lowest prices of the year!

Here’s what to expect in August:

Coupon Code: ACLS5
Expiration: 12/31/10
Description: Order contact lenses online and save $5 off any order over $50 at AC Lens. Enter coupon code ACLS5 at checkout. Offer expires 12/31/2010.

Monthly -
Coupon Code: SCHOOL
Expiration: 8/31/10
Description: Save 10% off contact lenses for Back to School at AC Lens. Enter coupon SCHOOL in instructions field at checkout. Expires 8/31/10.

Semi-Monthly -
Coupon Code: N/A
Expiration: 8/31/10
Limited Time Offer! Back to School Sale at AC Lens. Save up to 25% off contact lenses online. Sale ends 8/31/2010.

We’ll have more as the month progresses. Be sure to feature AC Lens in your Back to School sections, homepage, or any where else you plan to push Back to School shoppers this year.

Starting today, AC Lens is having an unannounced contact lens sale. Contact lenses will be discounted up to 20% off our already low prices. Coupons and free shipping will not be eligible during the sale. Offer expires 3/31/09.

Coupon banners and text creatives will be changed to sale creatives the rest of the month. If you’re using these nothing needs to be done but if you manually create links, you’ll need to update your site accordingly.

Contact me if you have questions.

AC Lens will be having a three day sale on contact lenses from October 29-31 (midnight to midnight PST). The offer is good on any size order and a coupon will not be needed. Offer may not be combined with other sales, discounts, or coupons and is exempt from items in our sunglasses department.

The sale will be featured on product pages and on the home page. Start promoting the offer now to take advantage of higher conversions on the three sale days. Visit CJ or SAS to grab the creative or create a trackable link yourself with this banner:

Good luck selling!

Bob

Pop Shops is a great way for affiliates to add individual products to their site quickly and easily in a format that fits the look and feel of your site. AC Lens has both the CJ and SAS product feeds listed in PopShops including sunglasses from each.

This tutorial will describe exactly how to add a limited product set from ACLens.com on your site via Pop Shops.

First, you will need to sign up for an account at www.popshops.com. There are several options to choose from but for our purposes, we’ll use the free version. Once signed up, you’ll need to make sure your CJ PID and SAS account numbers are entered in their system. To do this, go to “account” at the top of the page and scroll down to “Default Affiliate ID’s” where you can then enter that information.

From there, click on “Dashboard” at the top of the page where you will now be on the “create new shops” page. Click “Go” where you will be prompted to enter a shop name – we’re using AC Lens as our name.

PopShops will now bring you to a page with all the merchants on their network. In the left hand list, scroll down to “CJ AC Lens” or “SAS ACLens.com” depending on your network of choice. Clicking on the plus signs will drill down to the product line of choice.

Alternatively, you can type in a keyword at the top left side to bring up any product that you may wish to add. For instance, typing in “Acuvue Contact Lenses” would bring up all Acuvue Contact Lenses from ACLens.com.

Once you have your product line, choose the number of rows and columns you’d like in your product page. We’re going with a 2×2 list of products from Acuvue. In the center column, click on the “ADD” button to put any of those products into your product page.

With all your products added, you can now customize the look of your product page. Click on “Customize” at the top middle part of the page. Pop Shops has several different templates which you can choose for your look. Find the one that works best for your situation from the drop down. Click on “Styles” to make changes to color, font, add “No Follow”, and several other options.

Once you have the look and feel set, click on “Pop It In” to copy and paste the code into your site. Here’s the product page that we designed:

PopShops™ affiliate stores

 
We hope the PopShops tutorial helps you create vibrant, high selling pages.

Please contact us if you have any questions or for more detailed PopShops related issues, contact the PopShops team directly through your account.

Good luck selling!

Bob

I wanted to throw out a few simple conversion rate tips. It’s probably easier to give these tips on a case by case basis since all sites are different but hopefully these general tips get you thinking about how you can receive more sales from existing traffic. 

1. Landing Pages – Don’t send every link to the homepage. Visitors looking for Acuvue products are more than likely to order if you send them to the manufacturer or product page. Price and description are a click or two away from adding to cart and starting the order process. Make it as easy as possible for buyers to find what they want, order, and leave.

2. Copywriting – Copywriting doesn’t receive enough attention. Good clean sales copy is easily the best way to get existing traffic on your site to click through and place an order. Great copywriting has multiple benefits for an affiliate site. First, it qualifies the buyer by making sure they’re interested in contact lenses. Secondly, you can help pre-sell the buyer before they even reach our site, which has a big impact in the buying process. You can find numerous copywriting resources on the Internet and in any bookstore. A few good Free online resources include Copy Blogger and Copywriters Board

3. A/B testing – If you have the means, A/B testing will allow you to use a combination of links, copy, or any other combination of metrics to find what turns a viewer on your site into a buyer on ours. Multivariate testing will show your conversion rates for different types of presentations. You can then compare the numbers across several test campaigns to decide what your viewer’s want. Here’s a good A/B article to get you started:
Marketing Experiments A/B Testing

I hope these few simple ideas help get you started on a higher converting campaign with AC Lens. If you’d like us to review your current site or advertising campaign for conversion increase suggestions, feel free to contact us at affiliates@aclens.com

With the end of the Back To School Season. This month’s mid-month code focuses on increased order sizes. Toric and Bifocal lenses have the highest order sizes among all contact lenses.

Limited Time Offer! Save $10 off a $100 order of Toric Contact Lenses. Use coupon TORIC at checkout. Expires 9/30/08.

Good luck the rest of the month!

Bob

September Affiliate Deals and Coupons:

Acuvue Rebates expire at the end of this month. Promote these offers from the #1 manufacturer in contact lenses before it’s to late

Coupon Code: ACLS5
Expiration: 12/31/08
Description: Order contact lenses online and save $5 off any order over $50 at ACLens.com. Enter coupon code ACLS5 at checkout. Offer expires 12/31/2008.

Coupon Code: ACUVUE
Expiration: 9/30/08
Description: Save $15 off a $150 order of Acuvue brand contact lenses. Choose Acuvue Advance, Oasys, and more. Enter coupon code ACUVUE in the instructions field of our order form. Offer expires 9/30/2008.

Coupon Code: DAILY
Expiration: 9/15/08
Description: Limited Time Offer! Buy Focus Dailies Contact Lenses and receive $10 off your $100 order. Enter coupon code DAILY in the instructions section of our order form. Offer expires 9/15/2008.

As always, Free Shipping is available on all orders over $89.

This is the first in our ongoing series of educational pieces designed to increase sales for AC Lens affiliate partners. We encourage you to contact us if you have a specific question on this topic. Suggestions for future pieces are greatly appreciated.

One big advantage in an AC Lens partnership is our international capabilities including easy currency conversion. ACLens.com converts currency from USD to British Pounds, Euro’s, Japanese Yen, and Canadian Dollars. This type of flexibility allows our affiliate partners to promote all over the world in the currency of choice. It works great for sites with international sections and PPC affiliates can easily link right into the currency of the country they’re promoting.

Converting currency with affiliate links is quick and easy. For the homepage, all that needs to be done is the addition of a parameter at the end of .com. Affiliates would add /default.asp?NCurID=X where X is the currency being used so that the URL now looks like this: http://www.aclens.com/default.asp?NCurID=2.

Product URL’s are almost the same. Instead of /default.asp, only add &NCurID=X at the end of the URL so that it now looks like this: http://www.aclens.com/displaylens.asp?LensID=148&NCurID=2

Here are the current X value’s for all of our currencies:

Creating a custom link with Commission Junction and ShareASale.

Now that we’ve converted the link to your required currency, you can use that link with CJ or SAS links to track sales.

In CJ, append ?url= to a tracking URL and then add the currency converted AC Lens URL at the end. Your link should now look like this (XXXXXX would be your PID):

http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-XXXXXX-10300402?url=http://www.aclens.com/default.asp?NCurID=5

ShareASale affiliates can take any currency converted link and enter it in the custom link creator. Login to your SAS account and click on “Create A Custom Link To A Page”. From there, choose ACLens.com from the merchant drop down box and copy the URL, minus http://, into the website line. The link will convert to something similar to this (where XXXXX is your affiliate ID):

http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?u=XXXXX&b=58985&m=7335&afftrack=&urllink=www%2Eaclens%2Ecom%2Fdefault%2Easp%3FNCurID%3D2

Please test all URL’s when converting to ensure proper tracking. Datafeeds can be converted in exactly the same fashion but prices will not be in the required currency. Contact us if you need a custom currency product datafeed with both URL and Price conversions.