Advice really needed on how to do a private Welcome page for an ad campaign

[macmike00]

Our site (docsavings.com) is going to be advertising to customers via banner ads. This will not be on a public site but a private network for doctors. The ads contain a 10% off enticement. When the customer clicks on the ad, I want to take him to a private welcome page that contains the coupon code and some welcome information just for these customers.

So, advice is needed on the best way to do that:

Should I:

a) Take the customer to a private page (privatewelcome.html). Then they have to click on a link within that page to access the merchant.mvc page in a new window.

b) Not even sure this is possible- take the customer to a private merchant.mvc page with their own welcome message in the center.

c) some other method I haven't thought about.

Suggestions will be much appreciated.

[wcw]

Re: Advice really needed on how to do a private Welcome page for an ad campaign

Create a page identical to your SFNT page. For example, make its screen code NEWDOC. For the content tab, change the message to say whatever you want for these new docs.

You run the risk of a customer going to that page to get a new coupon even if they have been there before. So you have to make a choice on what kind of coupon to use.
1) One per customer. You would use a fixed coupon that everybody who visited the NEWDOC page would get. But they could only use it once. That limits it to one per customer. But it does not prevent the publication of that coupon code on a coupon website so everybody (not just those who landed on that page) can use it once.
2) Use a unique, one time use coupon. Every time the page is visited, a unique coupon would be created. This would allow the doctor to visit that page before shopping and get a coupon for every visit; not an ideal situation. To prevent this you could write a cookie upon initial visit. Then on subsequent visits, read the cookie and if it was there, don't generate a coupon code. Easy to beat.
3) On the NEWDOC page, welcome them and tell them that if they create an account, they will get a coupon. The link to the account creation page could contain a variable that would be inserted into a customer custom field hidden input. Customers coming from somewhere other than NEWDOC page would not insert a value in that field when creating an account. Upon successful account creation with a value in the hidden input, you could generate a one time use coupon either a) in a welcome email or b) displayed directly on the screen. Granted, a customer could create a new account with every visit to that page. That would be hard to beat.

Just a reminder, make sure the page is gender neutral. You said, "I want to take him to a private welcome page" which implies doctors are male. My female classmates used to get irritated about stereotyping in the career field.

[macmike00]

Re: Advice really needed on how to do a private Welcome page for an ad campaign

Bill,

Great advice as always. And, like always, I don't have enough coding skill to pull that off on my first attempt.

I just tried to recreate the SFNT page as a private page. In doing so I lost the category links , the nav links and the displays of the global header and footer. Not sure if I'm supposed to manually code these things in (easy for the header and the footer, no idea how to do the Nav and Category links) or if I did something the wrong way.

As for the coupon choice- I don't mind if they use it more than once. Intend on keeping it the same code for the entire campaign.

I agree with you on the gender neutral idea as well. Almost 50% of our sales are to female docs. I will make sure to write that welcome correctly.

[wcw]

Re: Advice really needed on how to do a private Welcome page for an ad campaign

Click on Items tab at the top of your NEWDOC page. See which ones are assigned. Compare that with the items that are assigned on your SFNT page. Maybe some of the items did not get automatically assigned when you clicked to save the new page.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Advice really needed on how to do a private Welcome page for an ad campaign

If you are going to be doing a LOT of banner advertising, and you want to keep track of your ROI, then there might be a more robust solution for you.

You can get the Affiliate Manager module from Viking Coders, then you can create a link with an affiliate code in it, and assign a discount automatically.

Say someone clicks on a banner ad on Site X. That banner add has an affiliate code in the URL that points to your site.

The person who clicks that code will get an AUTOMATIC discount when they checkout (you can assign the discount amount to whatever you want).

You can take them to the home page of your site (or whatever page you want) and then with a little bit of conditional statements, you can have a big notice saying that they will get whatever percent off their order when they checkout.

The viking coders module allows you to see how much revenue was generated from people who clicked those links (you could do the same thing in google analytics if you know your way around GA well).

Personally, if you are going to be doing much banner advertising, then I would definitely look into the viking Coders affiliate manager module. I'm normally a BIG fan of the Emporium Plus modules and wholeheartedly recommend them for NEARLY ALL USES, but in this instance, I would suggest that going for the Affiliate Manager module might have the added benefits:

1) No need to create a new store page (just add a little conditional code instead)
2) Easier for shoppers (since they don't need to enter a special code - the discount is applied automatically when they click on the link in the banner ad)
3) Very easy to see which banners (and other advertising) are generating traffic and sales
4) If you do decide to have a full-fledged affiliate program, the Affiliate Manager will have you ready for that.
5) If you do adwords advertising (or newsletter advertising, or any other type of advertising where there is a link to your site), you can also use a specific code to track the ROI (you can do that with google analytics as well, but again, you need to know your way around GA quite well to get the info as easily as you can with the Affiliate Manager module).

Hope this helps.

[Gamelord]

Re: Advice really needed on how to do a private Welcome page for an ad campaign

As for creating a new page:

1) Create the new page
2) Select the items that need to be assigned to that page (category, header, footer, global header, etc...) Make sure to select the "content" item as well.
3) Copy the code from your SFNT page into your new page.
4) In the "content" tab, put your page code and info.

Page should render exactly like your SFNT page or whatever page you want to copy. By copying over your SFNT code, it will automatically put in all of the basic Miva code for you for all the items, affiliates, login, headers, footers, menubars, etc...

Hope this helps.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Advice really needed on how to do a private Welcome page for an ad campaign

Page should render exactly like your SFNT page or whatever page you want to copy.

be sure to include a meta noindex tab in the head section.

[William Davis]

Re: Advice really needed on how to do a private Welcome page for an ad campaign

You might also want to consider:

• Availability Groups: Ability to control specific category(ies)/product(s) that can be viewed/purchased by defined group(s) of customers once they are sign-in to the store (e.g.: Club Members, etc…).
• Price Groups: Ability to offer specified discounts to defined group(s) of customers once they are sign-in to the store (e.g.: Wholesale prices, etc...).

[macmike00]

Re: Advice really needed on how to do a private Welcome page for an ad campaign

Thanks to all for the great advice. With your help I was able to create a private welcome page. Mark, the Viking Coders affiliate idea seems like it would be an absolutely perfect solution. I'm up against a deadline for the launch of this campaign so hopefully I can learn it and implement it fast.

Thanks again to everyone for their great tips.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Advice really needed on how to do a private Welcome page for an ad campaign

Mark, the Viking Coders affiliate idea seems like it would be an absolutely perfect solution. I'm up against a deadline for the launch of this campaign so hopefully I can learn it and implement it fast.

when you get it installed, you will want to set up an "affiliate" for your different banner ads (to help track ROI). The first thing you need to do is set up a dummy "customer" account because the affiliate accounts are based on customers. then you "attach" the affiliate account to that dummy customer account.

so lets say you set up and affiliate named XYZ. There is by default a 4 digit code assigned to that affiliate XYZ. Let's say that four digit code is 1234

Make sure you assign a discount to that particular affiliate, too.

so on the link from the banner ad to your landing page, you have to make sure to append AFFIL=1234 to the URL

Now you will want to give them some sort of a note telling them about their discount. So on the landing page (and also on the basket and checkout pages), you will want to test if they came in via the banner link. You can test for the particular affiliate code by doing something like this:

<mvt:if expr="(g.AffiliateData:code EQ '1234')">
Put Your Note To shoppers Here mentioning their discount and that it will be applied during the CHECKOUT process.
</mvt:if>

that will get you up and running. Hope this helps.