Effective Strategies & Tactics

Understanding Your Marketplace: Individuals

Whether you refer individuals or merchants, you must first understand the individuals who will ultimately become MakeLifeEasy customers. First customers are generally higher-income, highly educated consumers who can grasp the concept of automating their buying, and consider a MakeLifeEasy membership a cost-effective and attractive alternative to continuing their old shopping habits. We'll be providing more specific profile data in the near future.

Understanding Your Marketplace: Merchants

1. Consider referring merchants with a "philosophy" that will be a good fit for MakeLifeEasy. We believe that the best merchants will be no-nonsense, value-oriented, offering good prices, good customer service, emphasizing serving the needs of customers and de-emphasizing impulse buying, emotional buying, and so on. But you be the judge.
   
   
2. Refer merchants with the right products. Here are a few types of products that are good fits for management in MakeLifeEasy. If one or your favorite merchants sells any of these types of products, consider placing a link:
   
   
   • "Supplies", including groceries, health & beauty items, home & garden supplies, office supplies, and any specialized supplies for hobbies. etc. (e.g. art supplies).
   • Valuable items, including anything that you might want to record in a home inventory database.
   • Expiring items, including subscriptions, warranties, certain services, etc.
   
   
3. Act now! Contact your favorite merchants now and persuade them to join.
   
   
4. Small merchants are good, too. Consider looking for smaller merchants that sell products that are a good fit to manage in MakeLifeEasy. Most smaller merchants are still large enough to meet the qualifications of this program. Furthermore, you are likely to be the first or only referrer for a smaller merchant, and smaller merchants may give you more attention and be quicker to join. Then you'll free up your time to bring in even more merchants.
   
   
5. Work to get the merchant joined. If you earnestly believe that the merchant is a good fit, contact them often and through different methods.

Referring Customers (Case 1)

You will develop your own personal techniques for referring customers, and you may already have some good candidates in mind. Here are some simple guidelines to get you started.

Emailing (Active)

You can pro-actively send emails to individuals who you think would be interested in MakeLifeEasy. Assure that you include your affiliate link in the email.

Linking (Passive)

You can add links to your web site encouraging new members to join. Consider adding the link(s) most relevant to your site. For example, if you sell electronics, you could add a link to the topic "How to Manage... Home Inventory". You can create this link by navigating to the "Banners & Links" page and using the specifc URL in the "Link to page:" field to form the specific affiliate link. In this example, you would use "http://www.makelifeeasy.com/Resources/Art_HowTo_ManageYourHomeInventory.asp". Also, rather than use a graphic link, you would probably use a text link which is embedded in a discussion of the benefits of managing home inventory.

Referring Merchants (Case 2)

Even if you have experience with affiliate programs, MakeLifeEasy's program is unique since it runs in the reverse direction of most affiliate programs: instead of advertising for a merchant, you are advertising to a merchant. Here are two ideas for referring merchants to get you started. You can use e-mail, some other pro-active method, links from your site, or some other re-active method.

Emailing (Active)

If you are a MakeLifeEasy user who wants your favorite vendors to sign on, it will be most effective to contact them directly, perhaps by email. If you don't have a relevant personal contact within the company, you'll want to study their website and/or other materials to determine the best person (or mailbox) to contact. Lacking a specific person name, this might be sales@merchant.com, busdev@merchant.com, businessdevelopment@merchant.com, etc. You'll want to address your message specifically to the needs of the merchant you're contacting. Here is a sample that you can use as a starting point. Note that it's critical that you customize all aspects of the message and include your affiliate ID in the link to MakeLifeEasy:

[a sample email]

TO: MY_CONTACT@MY_MERCHANT.com
FROM: MY_EMAIL_ADDRESS
SUBJECT: Please Join the MakeLifeEasy Alliance

BODY:

Dear MY_CONTACT:

I am MY_NAME, and I have purchased products from you in the past. You are one of my favorite merchants, so I want you to know about a developing community that I would like you to join.

<if you are a member of this site, you may want to add your user name and/or member ID at that site>

MakeLifeEasy plans to streamline shopping by allowing us to form agreements with our favorite merchants, so that they can take care of us and automatically supply us what we need.

But right now, the first step is simple, effective, and free. Just become a MakeLifeEasy affiliate. You can read about MakeLifeEasy and join their affiliate program at http://localhost/ABInVSNet/ai.asp?aid=mc_test25&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emakelifeeasy%2Ecom%2FResources%2FAPM%5Fdefault%2Easp%3Faid%3DMY_AFFILIATE_ID.

Thanks for your consideration.

Sincerely, <add your signature and contact info>

Merchant Site Contact Form

The merchant's site may have a "Contact Us" type of form, where you enter a message directly into a web page and submit the form, instead of sending an email. In some cases this method can be more effective than an email since a representative of the merchant should be reviewing these regularly if they're doing their job. Here are a few things to keep in mind if you send one of these:

1. Make sure that you can embed a link to MakeLifeEasy with your affiliate ID embedded in it, so that you can get referral credit when they join the alliance. This usually means you have to insert the raw HTML URL starting with "http://", e.g., "http://localhost/ABInVSNet/ai.asp?aid=mc_test25&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emakelifeeasy%2Ecom%2FResources%2FMerchant%5FCustomerLoyalty%2Easp%3Faid%3DMY_AFFILIATE_ID". Use the "Banners & Links" page to assure you do this correctly.
2. Keep a copy of your message, and keep a record of the contacts you've made. If you can't send yourself a copy of your message text, consider copying and pasting a copy of your message text in a separate file.
3. If you don't get an answer, it's reasonable and proper to follow up with them.

Linking (Passive)

If you have a site that is visited by merchants, consider adding one of the merchant links to your site. This can be effective if you're an internet service provider (ISP), commerce web site builder, shopping cart software vendor, etc.