Moose on the Loose

Don’t you just love long cookie periods, generally it seems cookie lengths are gradually shortening with well mindless reasoning like “bringing into alignment with other programs within the channel” and so forth. Thankfully there are merchants who value the affiliates a little more and the value of the customer the affiliate sends them.

Lets take Buyagift, one of my favourite programs with good old Grey-ham as their affiliate manager, a top top bloke. The cookie length is a generous 9999 days! So tonight I looked back at last months sales and the click reports on Affiliate Window for Buyagift. There were a number of sales for 2007 which I thought was very good, as I scrolled further down there were also sales from 2006 and even 2005 .. superb I thought … then last of all there was one dated 2004 … 14/12/2004 (19:57:03) .. almost 4 years ago … absolutely Fanriffic!

I scoff at these other menial cookie lengths … 30 days or less .. bah humbug to you all .. but most of all thanks Buyagift, last month alone I am better off by a couple hundred of squid to stick in the cookie jar, and yet again another good reason to promote you more with these little fortune cookies.

Q. “The role of the traditional media agency. Should marketers go direct or not?

In the same way that they got to grips with search, media agencies are now becoming focused on the opportunities presented by affiliate marketing.

This has traditionally been an environment where brands work directly with affiliates, but is it time that media agencies got involved?

What value would a marketer get out of this?

Benefits: Gets dealt with alongside rest of digital media. Agencies will argue that having all your media together offers economy of scale, convenience etc

Cons: Another link in the chain; another cost?”

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Media agencies can’t all be tarred with the same brush, each has to be judged on their own individual merits though it is accepted that a significant portion have been weighed, measured and found wanting.

A rule of thumb I have established, is where the affiliate department or company is operated by a recognised affiliate (not just a previous network employee (s)) whom was previously or still does operate as an affiliate with grass roots experience & knowledge, this is a fairly recent trend which I am pleased to report is increasingly going upwards.

You’ll find that that these companies are more likely to have a mindset more attuned with affiliates and the industry, knowing what is required for the fruition of an affiliate program to achieve an optimum potential. Companies include the likes of Existem AM, APA (Affiliate Program Advice), Shine Marketing & Total Search Solutions . Though their client base may not be considered blue chip, they generally know how to communicate effectively and are professional in their approach. .

However on the opposite end of the spectrum you have a number of agencies who though may talk the talk, you know … the real wind bags with eloquent use of vocabulary with bells & whistles presentations, blind you with numbers, yet can’t walk the walk.

Affiliates are dynamic professionals, unlike some larger lethargic agencies, who effectively get down to the nuts & bolts in layman’s terms. Some Agencies can easily be perceived as setting their own agenda, by having really restrictive terms & conditions or disallowing usage of the display URL in paid search because they have an in-house search agency or sycophantic brand bidding groups milking the cash cow on low hanging fruit (and that is not just brand terms), leaving the unwanted christmas turkey giblets for affiliates to try and market. They do act as another layer or even a buffer between affiliate and the actual merchant, where really the circle needs to be complete with direct communication / dialogue between the merchant dmc (decision maker contact(s) & the affiliate, though some agencies & even networks are protective of this direct contact, even to the point of them chaperoning clients at affiliate events, avoiding the, well let’s say more vociferous affiliates.

I do see the point with reference to all internet marketing kept in-house, but though some claim to have the experience, they actually don’t, and I would recommend the merchant seeking alternatives like the aforementioned expert affiliate consultants when dealing purely with the affiliate channel. There are possibly a few larger agencies we might feel comfortable dealing with, others generally fairly lethargic at getting affiliate suggestions into action, maybe even claiming the idea themselves or getting the required reliable tools, promotions, incentives, voucher codes or product databases necessary for affiliate to market effectively.

Affiliate management definitely has a need for integration with other channels, for example manage search, online PR and PPC as well as AM for some clients and knowing what’s going on in each channel can arguably get positive results, but remember affiliates also deal with paid search & SEO and not just websites.

It’s not exactly rocket science, though ironically I have some experience in that subject, they simply need to provide affiliates the tools they request, reward them appropriately & affordably, treat them with respect, don’t have draconian t&c’s & you’ll find they will overall endeavour aim to portray the merchant’s brand in a favourably hue & in the correct manner whilst delivering cost effective results from the best performance marketing channel available. The downside though is that because some larger media agencies bring blue chip clients to a network, the network themselves (not all) can be too yellow bellied to stand up to the media agency (cos of a risk of losing future clients), but will quite merrily dictate & scold affiliates, using terminology like “abused” & “violated”, not very pleasant terms and words you would only associate with paedophiliacs.

Merchants maintaining affiliate program management in house is a nice ideal, but in reality most don’t have the resources to nurture staff or possess the required skill set, that’s why media agencies with staff / owners of sound affiliate grounding have the specialist skills and relations that an experienced affiliate manager will have. Clients (merchants) should focus on setting their strategy, positioning, and even down to the detail of the marketing calendar, then involve the experts to work their magic in their respective fields.

Merchants should also invite & speak with key affiliates first before deciding which media agency would be best to manage the affiliate channel. Please note : not a network’s pet affiliate. The proof of the pudding may also be which agencies will work purely on a CPA basis,especially in the current climate, with a nominal management fee, excluding brand bidding privileges to the agencies in house paid search team. These are just a few important points as part the decision making process.

Whoopie bloomin doo … so what … Chancellor Alistair Darling has announced a 2.5% cut in VAT … so that equates to £25 saving in every net £1000 spend .. in theory. ie £12.50 on the £500 net price LCD TV … £1.25 on the £50 net price weekly food shop. Yeah that is really going to stimulate the economy … probably not.

And what is stopping retailers from not actually passing on that saving in the sense they will raise the net price of products to pocket the difference in the same way some banks haven’t been passing on the interest rate cuts or increasing charges on their other services.

Was there any news on wholsesale income tax cuts or corporation tax cuts for businesses. Perhaps there should have been more focus of these?

Whereby reduction in corporation tax might be the make or break to stop some of the 100 businesses a day closing, as well as actually keeping people in a job?

Where were the exciting income tax cuts on what actually goes into peoples pockets, so they can make the decision on whether to spend, save or pay off debts?

Obviously we are all going to pay for it later. Have I missed something ?

Finally, this £500 billion bailout of the embattled banking industry, would it have been more effective to put towards reducing income tax & corporation tax for UK citizens, when as mentioned it is likely some banks will pocket a lot of this or have been inert in assisting their customers who will still pay for it long term.

Am I missing something, perhaps someone with sound ecomonics background can explain to me in laymans terms?

Yours Faithfully

An Unimpressed Moose

Did you know that the Books Direct Incentive is probably the most generous CASH incentive there has ever mean in UK Affiliate Marketing history. So far the Prize Pool after Octobers Figures is a staggering £11,860.35 where a number of lucky winners already have their Golden Ticket.

There is still time left to win your Golden Ticket for the big prize draw.

So don’t be a BUB and get in with your chance one of those last few Golden Tickets.

Related Links

Books Direct “Golden Ticket” Prize Pool Incentive – Estimated £10000 Plus 

Sharing the Wealth – The Solution to Brand Bidding Groups 

The traditional payment model in affiliate model is one of ‘last referrer wins’ or ‘last click wins’, with the final site that pushes a consumer through to the purchasing site being rewarded. But this model fails to take into account the vast array of sites that can influence a consumer up to the point of purchase. These can include price comparison sites, voucher code sites, other retailer sites, forums etc..

Nowadays & in the near future, marketers will want to know the exact route of how a consumer reaches their end destination. Eg – From Website A > Website B > price comparison site > voucher-code site > retailer site. There are different touchpoints consumers have en route to an online purchase and the following questions can be asked:

• Should payment be shared around sites more evenly, to reflect the whole journey?

• Will this lead to more incentive to push web users through to brand sites? Will it lead to more online sales?

• What are the benefits of tracking in this way to a marketer? Is it worth doing?  How does it work best?

For the idealists it’s maybe the utopia, but for the realists it’s probably impractical. With different touch points consumers have en route to an online purchase, there will unlikely be a universal agreement as to which point of a consumers journey, truly influenced the purchasing decision and it would be too complex for networks to implement alternatives across the board.

One point I must raise are those merchants & agencies who already de-dupe & don’t credit sales from affiliates who were the last referrer because one of the previous touch points was another source. This needs to be eradicated, together with merchant / agencies own PPC activity on brand which ends up as the last click when the affiliate did the pre sell.

Last click referrer is now too engrained in a mature affiliate industry for it all to change swiftly & smoothly to a model wholly acceptable.

We read & hear a lot of discussion about what is & isn’t unique content & that one source should maybe be attributed more commission than the other. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and a lot of debate comparing one site to another is very subjective. Perhaps there should instead be more focus on when an affiliate link is clicked it actually pre-fills the shopping cart or basket on the merchant’s site, rather than the consumer being pre-sold twice, this might actually improve conversions.

In other words, the variables are too numerous, which raises another question of who possesses the data on all the touch points. This would probably be only the merchant if they had sophisticated analytic tools at their disposal or an agency. Multi point’s payments will potentially see the demise of cashback sites & first cookie would a stuffers paradise. If new models were introduced there would be potentially more possibilities for opportunists to take advantage of.

However an incremental step towards an acceptable solution would be the introduction of hybrid commission structures by including a CPC in addition to or factored within the CPA. This would reward each of the touch points, granted this could be open to abuse if distributed to all affiliates, but merchants & networks can easily offer this option to trusted affiliates, implementation is straight forward as well as recording since clicks since they one of the uniform statistics appearing on reporting interfaces. The downside is trying to persuade merchants, because they had previously been sold the concept of performance marketing where they only pay a percentage commission on sale completion.

Another alternative is a queuing system for cookies where one cannot be overwritten for say 7 days, but goes next in a queue until the previous one expires.  i.e. multiple cookies in place.

The whole discussion of this subject seems to have escalated since the rise & popularity of voucher code & cashback sites, but that is a whole discussion within itself.

Another problem is do affiliates trust some agencies? Media Agencies are not key to seeing commission splitting working as there does seem to be a white collar, blue collar divide & trust issues with some of them.

I was speaking with a network who I was surprised on how open & candid they were, they said “most so called bigger agencies may set a priority to how sales come in and will give more “value” to CPM and SEO than to Affiliates and that the software is kicking about to be able to do this. They are really only out to make money for themselves & affiliate revenue is secondary. The problem with some agencies who deal in snake oil is they need to show it has worth so if they “help” decide the customer path to give affiliates a percentage of commission then they will take some for branding advert campaings that cost thousands and are a total waste of money, for 50p a click PPC campaigns on brands that affiliates could do for 20p etc.. these people are smoke and mirror experts”

So to summarise perhaps we should look at queuing systems for cookies & hybrid commission structures, these are realistic and simplistic steps towards appeasing most parties in rewarding the various touch points of a consumers journey. For myself personally I would be considerably more incentivised if there were hybrid commission structures in place.

Hi, I hope everyone is well? We’ve now calculated the prize fund for September and its looking very good indeed!!

So far the prize pool stands at a staggering £9,454.87 with still 3 months to go! In addition to this there have been 10 winners of £50, each with a Golden Ticket into the Big Prize Draw. Hopefully we shall surpass the current prize pool size predictions which was £10,000 to £12,000,

Full Details can be found by CLICKING HERE

Just to give you the heads up, it will be announced shortly that there will be more Golden Tickets up for grabs for ths best solus landing pages created for Books Direct. Maybe up to 5 single Golden Tickets in total plus a £50 bonus each. So get your creative juices flowing to be in with a chance.

With Christmas encroaching rapidly, it looks like one of the three wise men has come early. That is off course Zany Zak at Prezzybox with what is a truly tremendous promotion incentive whereby there are potentially UNLIMITED PRIZES and if acheivable sales targets are met you are GUARANTEED TO WIN.

Prizes Include:

• Star Prize 1 : £25,000 Sales Target – Win A Holiday to Dubai

• Star Prize 2 : £17,500 Sales Target – Skiing Holiday to France/Austria
• Gold Prize : £10,000 Sales Target – Golf Weekend at the Belfry OR Spa Day OR Trip to Paris for 2
• Silver Prize : £5000 Sales Target – Ferrari Racing Day/Spa Day
• Bronze : £3000 Sales Target – Mishake MP3 Player
• Wildcard : £500 Sales Target – Gets 1 entry into Dubai Prize Draw

That’s right. They’re not limiting it to 1 or 2 affiliates. EVERY Affiliate who reaches one of the targets will win that prize.

That’s not all…

Every multiple of either Star Prize target value that you achieve can be traded for a holiday place.

For example, if you generate £50,000 of sales you can choose 2 places to Dubai or 3 places to Skiing and so on. If you generate £30,000 you can choose 1 place to Dubai or 2 places to the skiing holiday. And so on – there is literally no limit to how many places you can win and you get to choose where you go! … Bring the better half, a friend or a colleague.

They also have a wildcard prize too. Every Affiliate who generates £500 sales revenue will get 1 entry into the hat. The winner (who will be picked out of the hat at random) will win 1 place to in Dubai.

Whilst on the trips they’ll be giving you enough space to do your own thing, but will organise a number of group activities for the lucky winners. The only bad news is that you’ll have to put up with Zany Zak as a chaperone to make sure everything goes swimmingly.

Full Details Can Be Found by CLICKING HERE

In the immortal words of Hot Chocolate, I dedicate this You Tube Clip to what is an excellent & generous promotion.

There are probably 3, not 2, certain things in life. Apart from the obvious death & taxes , there is an possibly an overlooked third in “t”internet land, and that is possibly the guarantee of Google Adwords squeezing your profit margins and leaching from you even during a worldwide credit crunch.

“yeah.. that’s a more certain certainty than death itself.. least you can count of adwords to shaft you within a reasonable timescale,, death can be lingering and painful for years” – Shane ©

Being an avid tea drinker, morning (or when I awake to the world) is normally greeted by a pint of tea, with two tea bags left to stew, milk and a sprinkled teaspoon of canderel. Then stirring 23 times clockwise then 23 times anti-clockwise. During the course of the day I may have a few of these to maintain my lucidity. Gulping them down rather than sipping with my little pinky protruding out which I call my darts finger.

So this afternoon I decided to go for coffee for a change, albeit it’s diuretic effect it tends to have on my bowels.

So there I am in the kitchen, two heaped teaspoons of “coffee”, plenty of semi skimmed milk & a teaspoon of canderel. Back I traipse down to my study, recline back in the chair with laptop on my Simpsons cushion lap tray, and take a huge gulp of “coffee”.

Before I know it I am pebble dashing the laptop screen.

It was a Mmm … Bisto! moment.

I had only gone and used Bisto gravy granuals assuming it was the coffee sitting by the kettle jug.

So remember, always check the label first.

Voucher Codes & Discount Coupons, seem to be all the craze at the moment & ubiquitous. I have no real criticism of them “overall” and there are a number of quality sites by respected affiliates around. I feel voucher codes are probably more beneficial for the consumer than cashback sites, whereby the saving is instantaneous and at source. With cashback sites the consumer has to reach a minimum threshold before seeing their returns or even prepay for membership. For the cashback affiliate, I can only guess it can be an “mare” for them dealing with enquires for non tracked sales, both false & genuine, maybe even those customers using the voucher code from another site & “accidently” clicking on a link from there, when the consumer was also a member of the cashback site and they then proceed to attempt & claim back from there as well to recoup a double saving. As for handling all those cheques, urgh no thanks.

Perhaps there is room for a hybrid cashback / voucher code site, even an aggregator, which could be massive savings for the consumer (who will benefit from both cashback & savings from the voucher code). Those who currently have cashback sites maybe better positioned for this.The question is then posed, what incremental sales has this brought? Would they have purchased anyway? Or was this the trigger or catalyst to switch them from window shopper to actual customer.
The current advantage cashback sites may have at the moment is a wider selection of merchants to utilise / pull from, though I guess it’s only a matter of time before the number of voucher / discount codes can be comparative. Just check you affiliate inbox, a good proportion are titled with discount code related headings.

Being a couch potato, and slow off the blocks to incorporating voucher codes this time around, I am looking forward to seeing what all encompassing (all networks) white lable / updated api feeds will be available for voucher codes soon, I certainly hope so.

The Need For Unique Voucher Codes

However, I still feel that each code distributed should to unique any individual affiliate. ie appending a prefix or suffix to the discount code with the affiliates ID or a network / affiliate ID combo. So if the voucher code was XYZ, the network (abbreviated) ABC and the affiliate ID 123, then it would something like ABC123XYZ.

With the aforementioned, hopefully this may create a slightly more level playing field, plus open up more marketing opportunities, which I ‘ll come on to later.

This way we can trace who had the last cookie (and even the preceding cookie) and who’s voucher code was used, thus gaining a slightly better overview, with an insight into the understanding of customer / consumer habits.

Should voucher codes given precedence over cookies? That’s a difficult one, at the moment I guess I might lean towards saying no this shouldn’t be permitted until something towards a more ideal solution is found. Maybe rewarding along the lines of the incremental elements of the sales journey /path. i.e. last cookie & unique affiliate code share the commission. (though I cannot see this coming anytime soon) The disadvantage though with any scheme where the omnipresent voucher code gets part or whole of the commission, suggests that all affiliates should then adopt, embrace & incorporate them (voucher codes) into their own sites to minimise leakage or loss. This is not a complaint in doing so, but maybe just moving & adjusting with the times & current climate.

Perhaps we should distinguish between unique voucher codes set for an individual affiliate & generic codes, for which at the moment we have a mix in circulation. I would prefer everybody had a unique code along the lines of the suggested more transparent format above. How practical would this be to implement?

Another advantage of “unique” voucher codes, is that customers / consumers might post them on other sites and forums, send by email to friends or if printable, pass them around. Thus it will be like having free viral advertising / marketing “allowing affiliate marketing to move offline.” What better than swarms of consumers posting your unique code to other customers and the voucher affiliate wins wholly or part of the commission?

“There would be nothing stopping you producing a catalogue which contained voucher codes and distributing it for instance or billboards, posters, stickers etc”

I guess there are a few voucher codes floating about whereby the saving is offset against the the affiliates commission, perhaps there is something here too as a better alternative to cashback sites, that’s if the merchant site’s can cater for it. The trend suggests that most merchants may need to incorporate voucher code boxes, just to remain competitive.

Please note I have no idea on the scale of this at the moment, and how much of a problem it is & if it is, but I would be keen to discuss further the advantages of having a voucher code site versus a cashback site. When will it be move over cashback sites & bring on the voucher code sites.

A Message To Affiliate Window & Shop Window

Please, introduce a few extra columns in the shopwindow feed with details on any voucher codes like the start & expiry dates, brief description, voucher code number. It might increase conversions.