231 New Posts Today

[Gary-AvantLink]

Hi Everyone,

The latest tool discussion I'd like to start is on our Coupon Feed Syndication tool we just launched. This is the first of several advanced tools that will allow online marketers to promote RSS subscriptions to merchant promos. It's been a little hard to communicate so I'll say it again: With this tool, Affiliates can promote RSS subscriptions to their site visitors for merchant coupons, discounts and sales. The power of this syndication tool, is that when your site visitors subscribe to receive merchant offers from you, YOUR AFFILIATE ID WILL BE EMBEDDED IN ALL OUTBOUND LINKS from the feed.

If your customer subscribes through your site, you'll own that customer for the life of the subscription.

This is the first Affiliate RSS feed syndication tool of its kind. And it's one of several we'll be offereing. Now, when you publish a Dynamic Coupon Feed from AvantLink, you can promote an RSS subsription to the feed itself with a call to action like 'Subscribe Now for the latest Coupons & Discounts'. We provide popular RSS subscribe icons in the tool center exactly like we provide banner creative. Simply grab the code and paste on your pages. Your Affiliate ID will be included with your favorite RSS subscription icon(s).

There is also a marked benefit from this tool for merchants running their Affiliate program through AvantLink. Some merchants do not have the capability to offer RSS promotional feeds to their customers. With this tool, it's a simple process for merchants to populate the Dynamic Coupon Feed in AvantLink by flagging specific text links to be included, and that's all there is to it. The network and our incredible Affiliates do the rest!

To get started using the Coupon Feed Syndication tool follow these
simple steps:

1. Login to your Affiliate account at www.AvantLink.com and click 'Tools' from the main menu.
2. Once in the tool center, under 'Coupon Feed Syndication' select the 'Get Merchant RSS Coupon Feed Syndication' link.
3. Choose the merchant and the site your building the feed subscripion for, then click 'Get HTML'.
4. Grab the code from the RSS subscribe icons displayed. This code includes your Affiliate ID as well as the RSS subscribe icon.
5. Paste on your web pages with a call to action like 'Subscribe Now for the Latest Coupons and Discounts'.

We're just scratching the surface with these types of syndication tools. Let me know what you think!

Sincerely,

Gary from AvantLink

[Gary-AvantLink]

Just wanted to add..

It's always good to see an example of new tools in action, so if you want to check out a cool example of a site using this technology drop me a line and I'll show you. Thanks!! Gary M

[Greg T]

Avantlink,
Excellent work!

I just used the RSS CouponFeed Syndication tool and had merchant coupons on my test site in under 5 minutes. This is a great opportunity for both merchant and affiliates to reach targeted customers. Thanks for the hard work.

Greg

altrec.com
greg (at) altrec.com

[Gary-AvantLink]

Greg, Thanks for your nice comment and testing out the Coupon Feed Syndication.. now that you've had a chance to work with it, I am sure it will help you more easily explain it to your Affiliates. Pretty simple, but incredibly powerful.

Thanks again!

Gary M

[Donuts]

From the June post that you link to in this latest news:
"Based on your integration method, you'll either be provided with a JavaScript to paste on your site, or a URL to point your RSS reader at."

So your coupon data is now jazzed up and ready to roll via RSS. Good for you!

The output from your system is either JavaScript or RSS, right? I happen to want neither, but am interested in the aggregated coupon data in a flat file format (csv, tab, excel, pipe, whatever). If that's an available option, let me know by replying here please.

[MichaelColey]

If you could give us an indication as to the number of merchants (and maybe list a few of them) and number of promotions, that would be helpful, too.

[Gary-AvantLink]

Hi guys,

Donuts, Just to clarify, we've been offering merchant ads using RSS feeds since Dec of last year. We provide a sample script to use (if Affiliates don't have their own or another already) that allows Affs to publish RSS feeds as spiderable content to their pages. In addition to being spiderable, the feeds are also dynamic. We encourage merchants to update their coupon offers regularly (All the AMs do is 'flag' certain text ads to be included in the feed) so that the content changes on the Affiliate sites regularly, too.

The JavaScript version of the feed is easier to integrate, still dynamic, but you don't get the spiderable benefits of the RSS version. Another cool thing about using RSS for these is that it's pretty easy to configure a feed then syndicate the feeds around the web through different sources.

Taking it one step further, the new feature that I announced in this thread allows Affiliates to publish popular 'RSS subscribe icons' on their pages. So when their site visitors subscribe to the coupon feed through them, their Affiliate tracking info will be embedded in the outbound links to the merchant. Getting the 'creative' that are these subscribe icons is the same as grabbing a banner. Just select and copy/paste the code. I am going to PM you and show you a live example of this tool in action..

As far as your request, we have had another request for a flat file delimited feed for coupon offers and we're working on adding that in the next few weeks. I'll keep you posted on that.

-

Michael, You can access a merchant index from our site using the following URL: http://www.avantlink.com/all_merchants.php
As far as the number of promotions, that varies greatly and the offers are constantly being updated and changed by the AMs. I will say, though, that every merchant in AvantLink has at least a few offers in their coupon feed...and some as many as two dozen.


Thanks for the comments!

Gary M

[Donuts]

Originally Posted by Gary-AvantLink

I am going to PM you and show you a live example of this tool in action..

Features are cool, but sometimes, we affiliates have existing sites with an existing architecture that spans many merchants and networks and often, this demands that we stick with the lowest common denominator for storing and manipulating data. So JavaScript and RSS is uber wonderful, easy to paste and all that, but it matters not, for me, in this case.

Originally Posted by Gary-AvantLink

As far as your request, we have had another request for a flat file delimited feed for coupon offers and we're working on adding that in the next few weeks. I'll keep you posted on that.

Great!

[Gary-AvantLink]

I hear ya Donuts..

I'll start a thread when the flat file delimited feed for coupons becomes available.

Gary M

[Gary-AvantLink]

Hi All,

I wanted to update this thread to let everyone know that we've published content pages that feature each of our integrated tools. The Coupon Feed Syndication page is available here:

http://www.avantlink.com/tools/coupo...yndication.php

Gary M

[Donuts]

Originally Posted by Gary-AvantLink

I hear ya Donuts..

I'll start a thread when the flat file delimited feed for coupons becomes available.

If you have an ETA, please share it. If not, I'll be here when it comes to fruition.

[Gary-AvantLink]

Donuts, it's in the queue for next week, should be done by Friday, Sept 8th..

I'll still start a new thread when we have it ready..

Gary M

[Gary-AvantLink]

Ok, Merchant coupon feeds are now available in flat file format configuration options. Here is the URL for the thread I started about the new delimited datafeeds for coupons/promos: http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=78412