In case you haven’t yet heard, Affiliates4u.com has released its 2011 “Performance Marketing Guide”, and I’ve just picked up my copy.
It is an impressive 143-pages-long reference book on all things performance marketing, and the best part of it is that it’s available for a free-of-charge download (so, it’s an eBook of a kind).
On the first 60 pages of it, the Guide gives the reader an overview of Search Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Display Marketing, E-mail, Social Marketing, and Behavioural Retargeting.
Naturally, the largest part of the Guide is devoted to Affiliate Marketing. In it, the authors discuss different types of affiliates, affiliate networks, commission types, role of cookies, product feeds, and much more. There are plenty of examples, case studies, and up-to-date statistics that you don’t want to miss.
The part in the “Affiliate Marketing” section that I’ve appreciated the most was the “Analytics” part. Web analytics is an area that deserves significantly more attention that many affiliates and merchants currently devote to it. The authors of the Guide outline 4 processes and objectives of web analytics: (i) data gathering, (ii) identifying business goals, (iii) understanding your visitors and their intent, and (iv) making actions based on factual data [p. 122]
Here’s an excerpt from this part:
When it comes to performance marketing, wheather you are on the advertiser or publisher side, data analysis is essential to working well with the other party and producing the best results possible. Performance marketing is a win-win situation… but making it work well requires a lot of in-depth analysis and once you… have started tracking the visitors who are converting, you will need a program which will let you drill down the data to establish what people are buying, when they are buying it, where they are buying it from and how much you are paying out versus how much you are making. [pp. 127-128]
If you haven’t downloaded your copy of the Performance Marketing Guide yet, you may do so here. It’ll be worth your time. I’ve really enjoyed it.