You run a coupon website

We don’t offer any coupons with our service, so these types of websites are not a good fit for our program. We want to limit the chances that someone create fake coupons as well that leverage our free 30 day trial as a “one month of Raven free” coupon. At this time we don’t plan on providing coupons for affiliates (or anyone, for that matter) in the near future.

You didn’t include a relevant site in your application

We fully understand that your time is very valuable and it can be time intensive to personalize each application to an affiliate program. At the same time, if the only website you’ve included in your application is in an industry completely unrelated to the online marketing world, we won’t approve your application. We strongly encourage you to include any relevant sites that you want to promote the program with.

Your site looks spammy

We don’t want our brand associated with poorly designed, spammy websites. We look at each website you include in your application and if they fall into this category, we’re not likely to approve your application. We’re not looking to just drive traffic to our site, we’re looking for high-quality traffic that has a chance to convert.

Your account is not in good standing

While we do look at your overall affiliate score in ShareASale, we do understand that there are two sides to every story. So if you have a -1 feedback score, we’re still very likely to consider your application. However, if you combine that with an account that is not in good standing you’ll most likely be declined.

Disputing the approval decision

We have on a number of occasions heard back from affiliates whose application was declined. Most of the times they want to make us aware of a relevant site they manage that may have been omitted from their application. We’re more than happy to explain our decision to decline your application, and are also very open to approving your application after we’ve discussed it. So if you feel your application should have been approved, we strongly encourage you to reach out to us at affiliates@raventools.com. You’ll find that we are both friendly and very willing to approve your application.

More than just SEO tools

When Raven first started our core focus was creating a powerful suite of SEO tools. Over the last few years our SEO tools have grown by leaps and bounds, especially with the recent release of our dream SEO tool: Research Central. Our suite of tools has also quickly grown in diversity. Over the last two years we’ve greatly ramped up our social media tools offering (discussed later), rolled out the first iteration of our advertising tools and incorporated a few e-mail marketing providers as well. And that’s just the beginning. This creative campaign emphasizes the fact that we’ve grown beyond just SEO tools, and have become an Internet marketing platform.

Here’s a taste of what you’ll find from this campaign in the creative library on ShareASale:

More than just social media management

Just as our SEO tools have grown, so has our social media tools. At first Raven focused on offering tools to help manage social media through our persona manager, Twitter and Facebook management tools. Since then we’ve developed a real-time social stream that helps you stay on top of mentions across the web in real time so you can react quickly to both problems and opportunities. Our social media monitoring tool has also been revamped to offer automatic sentiment, bigger reach and better filtering options. This creative campaign focuses on the development of our social media tools offering to reflect the growth in that area of the toolset, as well as to emphasize the fact that we’re a multi-channel online marketing toolset.

Here’s a tast of what you’ll get in this social media campaign in the creative library on ShareASale:

At Raven we attend around a dozen trade shows each year. And at those trade shows we talk to hundreds of people and pitch Raven to them. So naturally, we know what makes a potential user’s ears perk up. Depending on your audience, here are a few of Raven’s key features to help convince that person to signup for a trial or paid account.

The three benefits we pitch to potential users about Raven the most are: more time, more data and more control.

More Time. Because Raven aggregates tools and services into one central location, you won’t need to spend as much time switching between tools, aggregating data and reporting. The reporting feature alone is a huge time saver as Raven creates actionable, client/boss-friendly reports that are easy to understand and customizable.

More Data. Raven brings together the most trusted data sources in the industry giving you multiple data sources to make important campaign decisions around. With the way Raven integrates these third party tools, it makes it easy to compare two different data sources in one view. No more having to record and analyze this data in Excel. Now you can do it all in one central location that can easily be shared with coworkers, clients and management.

More Control. With all of your data and tools in one location, you can quickly execute your online marketing tasks, collaborate with coworkers and easily share your data. Raven also gives you the ability to control access to the various tools and insights, and allows you to white-label both reports and the toolset itself.

A lead is defined as anyone who signs up for our 30 day trial after being referred to the Raven website using your affiliate link. For each lead you send to Raven, $0.01 is deposited into your ShareASale account. We do that so you can track how many trial signups you’ve referred to us.

A sale is defined as any user who enters their billing information into Raven, creating a paid account in Raven. This can happen at the beginning, during or conclusion of their trial. Trial users have 30 days from the conclusion of their trial to enter in billing information before their account data is permanently deleted.

When a sale occurs, you’ll receive 50% of their first months payment ($49.50 for a Pro account and $124.50 for a Agency account). You’ll also receive a 10% recurring commission for the life of the account ($9.90/mo for a Pro account and $24.50 for an Agency account).

What happens to current Solo accounts?

Current Solo account users have been offered three options:

1. Continue their Solo account as long as possible – They may remain a Solo account customer at $19 / month until July 31, 2012. As of August 1, 2012, to continue using Raven, they will need to upgrade to Pro at $99 / month.
2. Upgrade to Pro early (and get a discount) – At any time between now and July 31, 2012, they can upgrade to a Pro account at a discounted rate of $79 / month instead of $99 / month. This would then increase your recurring commission for the account.
3. Cancel their account now – Ending your recurring commission with that account.

What happens to the creatives we have?

At the end of the day we will be discontinuing any banner that says “Starting at $19/month” or references the Solo account. We have about half a dozen of these banners so please be sure to login to ShareASale and replace any banners you have.

Will you be making any other account changes?

Not at this time. Our Pro and Agency packages will continue to offer access to all of Raven’s features for the same affordable price.

If you have any other questions/comments/concerns email me at affiliates@raventools.com.

Thanks for your support!

These next few weeks we have a lot of major changes in store for our program, which should make selling Raven that much easier for you all. Here’s an overview of what you can expect:

• A brand new creative set
• Exclusive resources and documentation
• New videos to help sell Raven
• Walkthroughs of new features in Raven
• And more!

So have a look around and be sure to subscribe to our feed. I think you’ll like what we have in store for you. If you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to shoot me an email at affiliates@raventools.com.

Thanks for your support!