Ecommerce Merchants Increase Use of Affiliate Programs

[mandy]

Affiliate marketing—using one site to drive traffic to another—has long been viewed as a cost-effective way to drive online sales and customer acquisition. But it never has captured the attention of retailers in the same way that sexier marketing tools such as e-mail and search engines have.

That may be changing as retailers discover that an affiliate program can be leveraged to enhance results of an overall marketing campaign. Retailers with successful affiliate marketing programs are aligning their overall e-commerce marketing objectives with their specific affiliate-marketing strategies...

In the past, retailers took the more-affiliates-the-better approach, reasoning they could capture more sales. Now, many online merchants monitor an affiliate’s track record for generating sales and drop the least productive ones, or select affiliates with content tied to the retailers’ products...

full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=22927