Click-through customers.

• Author: Dysart, Joe
• Position: Feature - Banks experiment with this affiliate Web marketing approach

Banks are experimetting with an innovative online technique for acquiring new customers. Under this affiliate Web marketing approach, banks make agreements with unaffiliated websites to advertise the bank's services. For every browser who clicks through the ad and becomes a bank customer, the financial institution pays a referral fee to the outside website.

Some online bankers are paying outside websites a fee or every mouse-click that sends a customer their way--a concept known as Web affiliate or pay-for-performance marketing.

"Affiliate programs can do wonders for a business, if run properly," says Peter Kent, author of "Poor Richard's Internet Marketing and Promotions." Agrees Barry Silverstein, author of "Business-to-Business Internet Marketing," "The affiliate concept is so uncomplicated and easy for both parties that it is possible for everybody to be a winner. There is little risk on the part of either the affiliate program sponsor or the affiliate."

Bankers can benefit from affiliate programs it two ways:

They can start an affiliate program of their own, and pay other websites a commission to steer traffic their way.

They can join any number of the thousands of affiliate programs already established on the Web, and get paid for every Net cruiser they steer to the website of the affiliate program sponsor.

Like so many e-commerce things, one of the pioneers of affiliate marketing was bookseller Amazon.com. Under Amazon's model, websites can sign on as "associates," and offer links to Amazon's site from their own. Every time a website visitor clicks on the link and buys something from the bookseller, the Amazon associate gets a small commission.

Currently, Amazon's affiliate program is one of the most commonly used affiliate models on the Web. Commissions typically range between 1 and 15 percent. And derivatives of the model sometimes offer a two-tier commission structure-paying higher-trafficked websites higher commissions for referrals, says Susan Sweeney, author of "101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site."

So far, most financial services institutions are following the Amazon model. Citibank in New York uses affiliate marketing to promote its person-to-person online payment system called C2it. (See sidebar.) Citibank pays $5 to the website for each referred person who registers for C2it. U.S. Bank, Minneapolis, pays $5 for every checking account application and $5 for every current customer who signs up for online banking...