Most affiliates leverage the Amazon Associates program to send interested buyers to specific products they recommend. This is where tools like the Amazon Link Engine WordPress Plugin are super helpful in creating a globally aware affiliate link that works around the world for Amazon’s various international Associates programs.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work well for special events or promotions, like Prime Day, where the international landing page may not be a product page with an ASIN (and therefore can’t be automagically found through link translation).
For example:
- Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DBYBNEE/
- Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/prime/pipeline/landing/
- Amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/prime/pipeline/landing
- Amazon.in: https://www.amazon.in/gp/prime/pipeline/landing
- Amazon.co.jp: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/prime/pipeline/landing
In these situations a premium intelligent link management service will provide the option to specifically define how your link should react in specific scenarios, such as clicks from various countries. We call this “Advanced Targeting,” and the rest of this post will show you, the savvy affiliate marketer, exactly how to use this powerful tool with Geniuslink
Using Advanced Targets for Prime Signups
To earn the healthy bounty that Amazon provides on new free trials of Prime signups, you’ll want to build an Amazon link with these specific scenarios defined. With a geni.us link, you’d build a link as you normally would, and then add “advanced targets.”
As long as you’ve added your affiliate tracking IDs for the appropriate countries into the Affiliate page of the Geniuslink dashboard each of your Prime landing pages will be properly affiliated for you and be displayed when you get a click from the respective country.
Testing
However, you customize your link you should always test your link before publishing it! You can easily test any geni.us link (details in our knowledge base) and for this example we’ll add “/iso2/XX” where “XX” is the two letter country code from where we want to test a click. Note that you should only add the “/iso2/XX” to a link when testing. When you post the link live, leave it off so we can do the geo-targeting. It’s also important to note that edits and updates to your Advanced Targeting scenarios in your link can take a few minutes to update around the world.
Advanced Targets for Non-Product Pages
Prime signups are just one example where a savvy affiliate marketer can easily monetize on their international audience. Advanced Targets can also be used for linking to category pages, Prime Video signups, special deals, and pretty much anything else.
For example, here is the Kitchen Gadgets category page across a few of the different international Amazon stores.
- United States: https://www.amazon.com/b/ref=lp_284507_ln_8?node=289754
- United Kingdom: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kitchen-Appliances-Home/b/ref=nav_shopall_khapp_t2?node=391784011
- Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/Kitchen-Utensils-Gadgets-Dining/b/ref=nav_shopall_utensils?ie=UTF8&node=2224106011
- India: https://www.amazon.in/b/ref=s9_acss_bw_ct_KD1111_ct_2_h?node=1380181031
- Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%82%AD%E3%83%83%E3%83%81%E3%83%B3-%E3%83%86%E3%83%BC%E3%83%96%E3%83%AB%E3%82%A6%E3%82%A7%E3%82%A2/b/ref=nav__hkp_kware?node=13938481
These can all be collected into a set of Advanced Targeting scenarios just as we demonstrated with the Amazon Prime example.
Enhancing Geniuslink’s Automagic Link Translation
While we continue to constantly refine our patented Link Translation Algorithms that automagically find the appropriate product in a user’s local Amazon Storefront, there are times where our confidence in a match isn’t high enough. In these situations we default to a link that assures good user experience. Advanced Targeting can be helpful in these situations for overriding our translation logic, and zeroing in on a specific item.
In some situations, like specific TV show episodes available from Prime Video, link translation is not as effective. This is due to the lack of information provided by Amazon’s Product API.
One example is an Amazon.com link for Game of Thrones episode 1, season 1. The link gets translated to the Game of Thrones season 1 DVD in Amazon.ca where there is no Prime Video (this comes from the “Decay” level of our translation). In the Amazon.co.uk store, however, the link results as a search for “Game of Thrones Season 1” despite Prime Video being available.
While the first result is exactly what we want, we can override the link translation logic and skip the search results page and go directly to the product. By adding advanced targets for specific countries, the purchase path is kept as short as possible – ideal for maximizing conversions. In addition, the link still defaults back to our link translation algorithms to take care of clicks from anywhere else in the world.
Additional Targeting Options
Advanced Targeting isn’t just limited to targeting by country. You can also target clicks by Device and Operating System as well as date, language, or any combination of these.
Targeting by date can be very helpful when linking to deal or promotion that will expire after a certain period. Deals are a great incentive to purchase and some sites rely exclusively on them to generate significant affiliate commissions.
However, Amazon isn’t a big fan of Associates promoting deals after they expire.
“You must remove from your site any links and related references to limited time promotions on or before the expiration date of that promotion.” – Associates Program Linking Requirements
In these cases you can send the user to a category page after the deal has expired. If you take this route, be careful with your wording as the terms of service are specific about the context around the link as well.
A link to a deal that changes based on the date might look like this:
Targeting by language* can be helpful in further improving conversion rates if you have an audience that lives in countries with multiple languages like Belgium or Switzerland (four official languages!).
For example, in Switzerland French, German and Italian are all common languages and while Switzerland doesn’t have it’s own Amazon storefront Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, and Amazon.it are all feasible options for shoppers based in Switzerland. A link that might get heavily clicked in Switzerland might be set up as shown in the screenshot to maximize conversions.
Get Creative
We are constantly amazed at the creative uses our clients find for using the Advanced Targeting feature and we encourage you to dive in and play around. Remember to always test your links, and don’t hesitate to reach out with questions, comments, or requests for new ways to target your traffic to further improve your conversion rates!
When our engineers hear stories about how our clients solve problems with the tools we’ve built they get excited to build more so keep those stories coming.
Cheers!
– Team Geniuslink
* – Targeting by language is only available to users on our Plus and Power plans.