I’ve been selling on ClickBank for approximately 5 years, across a myriad of niches.

These are the best ways I’ve learned that vendors can lower refunds on ClickBank.

Work through this checklist and you are sure to slash the number of refunds and chargebacks you run into, hopefully with minimal effort.

Ask yourself, “How easy is it for my customer to get their order?”

Sounds simple but by far the most common reason I’ve come across for a customer refunding is that they cannot get access to their order. This is either because they never received an email containing their login info (either it went into the spam filter or perhaps your download delivery system failed), their browser crashed mid-order, or they did manage to access the download page but some technical issue stopped them from actually accessing the product. If you look at your refund reasons then you will very probably see that the vast majority of frustrated customers are frustrated not because they got the product and didn’t like it, but that they didn’t get the product, period. In a world of instant gratification you may find that not everyone takes action when they’ve digested your content – but the vast majority will at least try to download it. And if they can’t, they will refund. Sounds simple but this is definitely the first thing to look at. A customer who doesn’t get access to a product will almost always refund.

Approach your customers as if they are complete newbies

If you’re selling your own ebook on CB, then chances are you have a high degree of specialized knowledge about your field. In other words, you’re an expert. And when you’re an expert its tempting to think that the value you deliver is by giving people information which is advanced, brand new etc – information they can never find anywhere else. Indeed, your sales copy is probably positioned in line with this kind of thing.

But when it comes to the product side of things, being overly technical can do you more bad than good. I’ve found in almost every niche I’ve sold in that most customers (and often most of the best ones) are complete beginners – not intermediate or advanced users. So you’ll do better to teach them from the bottom up. I’ve found that refund reasons of “this is too complicated for me” outweigh refunds because “this isn’t advanced enough for me” by ratio of ten to one.

The conclusion? Treat your customer like they have absolutely no experience in the area. Start from the basics and explain everything in depth. Use simple images, diagrams and as many videos as you can. Write and talk like you would to a complete novice. Make everything idiot-proof as possible. By all means mix some more advanced stuff in there too (later on and ring-fenced from the beginner-focused stuff ideally). But if you approach your customers as if they are complete newbies you will actually lower refunds. And the more visual (video and step-by-step diagrams) you can explain everything, the better. Oh and one final point – if your product requires any technical plugins (Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime etc, give them very prominent and clear links to download whatever they need).

Is your sales letter too “blind”?

One instant way to lower refunds is by making it much clearer to the customer what they will get and how it will be delivered. If you keep it “blind” and don’t tell them what the product is about, then you will very likely generate more sales, but you’ll “catch a lot of people in the net” who really shouldn’t be buying your product. Of course this is a trade-off between generating sales and minimizing refunds, but if you find your refund creeping up, try and make your sales letter more specific.

One way to still get the sale but not suffer the refund is by talking about the experience the customer will have once they’ve ordered your product. For example…
“Once you order, you’ll be instantly be redirected to our download page. Just enter your name and email, then you’ll be presented with our full and complete e-course. Since our method is firmly based around getting free SEO traffic, we’ll present you with a series of beginner’s videos to explain the basics. If you already know the ropes, you can skip past these and head straight to the core method itself – which is presented in a series of videos and to-the-point PDF ebooks.”

A simple paragraph like this will prepare the customer for what happens after their order – and will make it all less “blind” and lower refunds.

If all else fails, go physical

One very underused trick is to create a physical version of your product. If it’s software, put it on a CD or DVD. If its an ebook, make it printed. Offering your product in physical form can lower refunds by up to 30% – and that’s even if customers don’t need to return it to get a refund.

The reason is simple. When a customer buys a physical product, it instantly has more perceived value than one that’s purely digital. Customers love physically holding something in their hand, and they are more likely to consume your product if its physical as opposed to just sitting somewhere on their desktop. Remember also that when a customer fires up their computer, they have a million and one distractions. But if you get a physical product in their hands, you have their undivided attention. One additional bonus of this is that it means you have their physical address, allowing you to send newsletters or even presents (such as cookies) – with their permission of course. This builds your relationship with the customer, separates you from others in your niche (who are surely not doing this) and will definitely lower refunds.

Respond to customers instantly (even if it’s automated)

This is another simple trick I’ve picked up along the way. Very often, customers go into panic mode if they can’t get their download, or need to solve a fundamental problem right away. A typical scenario goes like this: they buy an ebook, and can’t get instant access as promised. They email support and hear nothing back. They panic and either refund or chargeback. A simple solution is to setup a detailed autoresponder that explains exactly how your support ticket works – with open times, and expected response times (aim for under 24 hours). So any customer email to support will get an automated, instant autoresponder email back.

This kind of thing will stop customers going into a panic and cut a few percentage points of your current refund levels. Likewise, try to give a prominent link to a customer FAQ with your top 10 most common support questions (and answers). This will give many customers an answer without them having to wait to hear from you, which in turn will lower your support volume and lower refunds.

Review your customer support tickets at least once per month

This is really the one thing that you should be doing more than anything else – you need to be “in the trenches” with your customers. Its tempting to outsource your customer support, and I’m not going to argue the pluses and minuses to this approach. But if you do decide to do this, you need to keep a very close eye on what your support team are up to. At the very least, try to read through as many tickets as you can and compile a list of the most common complaints and refund reasons. Some will be long-term changes that take time to implement, but many will be tiny little changes you can make almost instantly. It definitely pays to stay in touch with your customer – if you want to lower your refunds, they’re the first person to ask.

So there you have it – my top tips for lowering refunds. Many of these are common sense but ask yourself “are you doing them?” If not, then start right away. Not feeling motivated enough? Well, ask yourself how much extra money you would make with 10%, 20% or even 50% fewer refunds. Hopefully thinking of this number will get you to take action and make it happen.

About the Author

Chris McNeeney is an affiliate and vendor. He has several websites, but right now he’s working on Affiliate X.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. ClickBank Refund Policy and Consumer Refunds
2. Update to ClickBank Refund Policy and Vendor Fees
3. Give the People What They Want

We’re back with another great episode of Affiliate Marketing Today for your listening pleasure! In this episode, Dush and I interview Mark McRae, a successful ClickBank vendor in the foreign exchange niche.

Mark recently had an extraordinarily successful launch of his new product, Forex Master Method, and he shares with us some great tips on planning and executing a successful launch, selling higher-priced “premium” products, working with physical products, and delivering a fantastic customer experience that keeps customers coming back for more. Mark even gives tips for affiliates on how to successfully promote these kinds of products and earn big profits!

Whether you’re a vendor or an affiliate, Mark’s advice is useful for anyone who wants to take their Internet marketing game to a higher level and stand out from the competition.

Click here to listen!

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1. New Podcast: Tips for Info Product Marketing Success
2. New Affiliate Marketing Today Podcast: Success as an Internet Marketing Couple
3. Affiliate Marketing Today Podcast: How to Attract Joint Venture Partners

Posted by: Michael Poston, Product Manager

Used by business professionals for decades, customer surveys allow you to benchmark your product or service’s competitive stance, respond to your customers’ needs, and increase customer satisfaction through participation.

For example, you could use a survey to identify how customers compare the strengths and weaknesses of your products to your competitors’ products. You can then highlight features that your customers feel are particularly strong in your promotional materials and on your Pitch Page. You can also identify and correct features that your customers feel need improvement.

While it’s nice to hear nothing but positive things from your customers, the negative feedback you receive from surveys can be even more important to your business. It is a rich source of information about who your customers really are and what they really want. You can then use this information to respond to your customers, let them know you’re listening, and tell them what you plan to do in the future! Your customers will appreciate your responsiveness, and as a result your product, brand, and customer loyalty will all be strengthened.

Another benefit of surveys is that they increase customer satisfaction through participation. Because customer communities are bound by common interest, they are looking to interact, learn, and provide feedback that has an impact. By surveying customers regularly, you maintain a two-way dialogue that fosters the success of your product and increases your customer’s investment in it.

An important final point is that surveys are most effective when you administer them on a regular schedule, so you can measure trends over time and ensure you’re meeting your customers’ needs. Regularly getting feedback from your customers is one of the best ways to make sure you’re doing everything you can to help your business succeed. Start harnessing the power of surveys! Your customers will thank you for it.

Happy selling, friends!

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3. Help Us Help You

Posted by: Jen Johannsen, VP of Operations

Early in August, I posted a blog entry about using some of the tools we provide that allow us to provide better customer service to your customers (“Help Us Help You”). Well, here I am again to announce the newest tool that we have added that will allow us to help you assist your customers more quickly.

Yesterday, our release included the addition of a field that will allow you to enter a Customer Service Web site. Input this information, and we will provide it to customers in notifications and via the order locator on the CLKBank.com page as an alternate source for technical support.

We envision this being used in different ways by different publishers. We know some publishers have a helpdesk URL that can be listed as the Customer Service Web site. Others may want to add their FAQ page that answers their customers’ most commonly-asked questions. Some may add a page that has a script that will allow customers to generate a new password, in case they lose the original password that was generated at the time of the purchase. I’m sure there are other ways it can be used, as well.

Just remember that if you list a Customer Service Web site under the “My Account” section of your ClickBank account, the URL will be sent to the customer in the email notifications that are sent out by ClickBank.

Our hope is that you can use this to help your customers as quickly as possible – and hopefully keep more sales!

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1. Help Us Help You
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There is a saying that goes, “You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” I don’t know who originally spoke those words, but I believe they could have been in reference to ClickBank’s refund policy.

In my 8 years with ClickBank, one of our most controversial policies has always been the refund policy. Our clients tend to love it or hate it. If they hate it, they hate it for one of two reasons: either (1) they think the refund period is too long or (2) they think it’s too short. We have a refund policy that allows for returns within 60 days to protect both our clients and our customers, but we hear from both publishers who think this is way too long, and those that want the refund policy to last 6 months, a year, or more! Obviously, there are different opinions about what is a “fair” refund policy length.

While not everyone agrees on what the refund policy should be, the one common denominator we all share is that we want to reduce refunds as much as possible. With that in mind, this post is dedicated to sharing a few tips to help you in that endeavor.

1) Be easy to contact

• Prominently display your customer service email address on your Thank You page.
• Provide your customer service hours and a time frame in which customers can expect to receive a reply from you.
• Realize that email is not 100% reliable, and take advantage of the area within your ClickBank account where you can add a customer service phone number. This number is not provided to customers after the purchase or on their sales receipt; it is only provided to them by our customer service staff if the customer calls or emails stating that they are having trouble reaching you by email.
• Coming soon- as of September 9^th, you will be able to list a customer service/help desk URL in your ClickBank account. This URL will be provided to customers on the order confirmation page and on their sales receipt.

2) Provide an honest description of your product on your sales page

• Set your customers’ expectations appropriately. Many people are still skeptical of digital products and of buying products through the internet. Make sure you tell them what they’re going to get as thoroughly and honestly as possible, so they feel they got their money’s worth and walk away satisfied.
• Explain which programs or software applications the customer will need in order to download your product. For example, keep in mind that not everyone has MS Word.

3) Provide impeccable customer service

• Autoresponders are efficient, but they are extremely impersonal, and they do not and cannot address each individual issue that a customer may have. While it’s a good idea to use autoresponders to provide customers with answers to frequently asked questions, you should also make sure to provide customers with a way to get answers from a real person if the FAQ doesn’t help them.
• Offer courteous, professional, easy-to-follow answers to customer service inquiries. You may answer all of your customer service email, but if the instructions are not written in a way that the customer can understand, they will say, “Forget it,” and ask for a refund.

Despite our best efforts, it’s highly unlikely that any of us will be able to please all of our customers all of the time. However, following these tips will help you help you please some of the people all of the time, and save a significant percentage of your sales from unnecessary refunds.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Save More Sales
2. Help Us Help You
3. Customer Service Enhancements

In April of this year, ClickBank added some new enhancements that – when appropriate for your business model and when used properly – can help our customer service team prevent refunds on your products! The new enhancements include additional fields for publishers to add a customer service phone number, a customer service email address, and product titles and images for all of the products listed in their account. Information on all of these additions can be found in the 2008-04-15 ClickBank Release Summary.

Recently, I asked our customer service representatives to name the number one thing they felt publishers could do to help them save sales when customers call in. Unanimously the response was that the addition of a customer service phone number would be the most helpful! They said they hear from customers all the time that are discouraged by not being able to contact the publisher by phone. Often, they are frustrated by not receiving a response by email, so they decide to just have the purchase refunded instead.

We understand that a customer service phone number doesn’t work for all online businesses, and that helping customers by email is sometimes more streamlined and efficient. However, keep in mind that the customer service phone number that you provide in your ClickBank account is only given out to customers that contact ClickBank directly for assistance (typically when the customer states that they have been unable to get a response from the publisher by email). It is not provided to the customer during the order process, and you do not have to list the phone number on your Web site. However, when a customer calls ClickBank, and we are able to provide them another avenue to get the help they need, that gives your customers confidence that you are committed to their satisfaction!

You should also be sure to add product titles for each of the products that you offer in each account. The product title not only offers the opportunity for you to provide clear information about the products your customers are purchasing before they buy, it also gives our customer service team the information they need to clearly describe the purchase that was made if customers call in and are unsure why ClickBank appears on their statement. If you don’t include a product title by listing one in your account or by passing a title through your sales link, the default “title” is [CB-nickname-item#], for example CB-test1-1. Think about how much more effective a conversation with a confused customer is when our customer service team can immediately provide them with the title of the item that was purchased, compared to the customer service person trying to figure out what the item is by looking at your Marketplace Title or Description.

Every little thing you do to lower your return rates can have a big impact on your profits! Take a few minutes to check your account and make sure you have as much information in place as possible to help us help you.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Customer Service Enhancements
2. Give the People What They Want
3. Save More Sales

I also had the privilege of meeting a group of ClickBank clients “live and in person” in London earlier this month. Several people at the meetings mentioned that it would be interesting to learn more about who we are as a company and as individuals, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to share a few of those things with everyone.

It is true… in the beginning (back in 1998), ClickBank was operated by a handful of innovators working out of a garage-like office. Over the last ten years, though, we have grown to a staff of over 75 people operating out of two locations. One location is based in Boise, Idaho, and the other is based in Broomfield, Colorado (near Denver). Both offices have dedicated and experienced teams working to  deliver consistent, client-focused business operations, and friendly, responsive customer service.

We are also committed to helping in our communities, and feel fortunate to employ a group of people that enjoy making our volunteer opportunities successful. In the last year, we have participated in many charity events, including events for the Children’s Hospital and the Cancer Center of the Rockies, The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, The Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Epilepsy Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, and our local food banks.

While we all enjoy working hard every day, and donating time outside of work to give back to our communities and local charities, we also have a great time getting together outside of work. ClickBank employees have been active this year playing for the company softball team and soccer team, as well as enjoying an occasional trip to the bowling alley.

While we’ve gotten to know thousands of terrific customers over the years, we look forward to meeting and helping out many more of you in the future!

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Live and In Person
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3. We Take Our Responsibility Seriously

Hello friends! I say that because I have been with ClickBank for a long time, and have developed relationships with so many of you. For those of you that I haven’t had the chance to work with – I hope that we also have an opportunity at some point!

In my “previous life” (pre-ClickBank), most of my experience was in restaurants and restaurant management, which I really enjoyed. I always loved trying to make certain each customer had a great experience after they walked through the door. That is what we expect at ClickBank, as well. I recognize, however, that we still have improvements to make to reach this goal.

As you may have noticed, we have made a significant effort to improve our outbound communications with our clients. We also have plans to improve our inbound customer service communications this year. Some of the ideas that we are working on include building a ticket system for handling incoming inquiries from our clients, offering online chat as a way for clients to ask questions and get answers more quickly, and further extending our customer service hours.

It is important to me that while we work on these projects, we are still addressing the questions and needs clients have right now. With that in mind, here are my best suggestions for getting the responses that you need from ClickBank as quickly as possible:

• First, be sure to always use the form on our Contact Us page. The emails that are sent through the form are guaranteed to get to us, whereas emails sent to a particular email address always have a possibility of getting improperly categorized or filtered along the way.

• When possible, ask all of your questions in one email and be as thorough with your questions as possible. This will allow one Customer Service Representative to answer all of your questions at one time. This is much more efficient than having multiple different Customer Service Representatives answer one question at a time.

• Only send one email for each inquiry. Until we have a ticket system, we are unable to tie two matching emails together. As a result, we spend time responding to each email that arrives, even if it’s already been answered, which slows us down for answering other unique emails.

• If you have a confusing question, or if you are having a difficult time understanding the information our team sends back, feel free to ask us for our phone number or send your phone number to us. The number is not currently published on the website because we literally get thousands of new sign ups a day. For every one phone call, we can handle ten to twenty emails… so for us, the best first shot at answering a question is by email. Not only can we handle more emails at a time than we can phone calls, but then you also have a written answer that you can refer back to. But when that doesn’t work, we are more than happy to help by phone. Just ask!

• If you are still having problems getting a response (and you’ve tried my recommendations above), I want to know about it! Leave a comment and we’ll try to track down why you didn’t receive your email or why you haven’t received a response.

I hope you find the information above helpful. I’m looking forward to implementing our improvements this year! Keep your eyes out for great things from ClickBank’s customer service team!

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Give the People What They Want
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