30th January 2009

Tell Us What We CAN Do. Not What We CANNOT Do

posted in Affiliate Marketing |
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Are you exasperated or unimpressed up with the bulk of any merchant information / details  page being filled with telling what you what you CANNOT do? This goes for a good portion of the number of emails sent out too.

Rather than “hey” you CANNOT do this or CANNOT do that, otherwise we’ll castrate you and give you a life long sentence banished to the Badlands from a program for ever, where pillaging & murder often get less stiffer penalties/sentences.

How about, hey did you know you CAN do this & you CAN do that … like a summary of merchants who you can link direct on generic / product terms on paid search, we publish voucher codes or that your sales won’t be deduped against xyz … and these are really our top sellers rather than this is stock we are trying to shift so lets get the affiliates try & shift it. Tell us that you pay on gross value of sale (including delivery) or that your action referral occurence is not set to one (ie the cookie doesn’t burn after the first sale) even a decent merchant write up. Even boast about your EPC or conversion rate being higher than certain merchants (even name the other merchants), tell us your high ticket value items that sell. If tracking goes down, give affiliates a guarantee that they will be remunerated rather than hide under a stone until the affiliate forgets. Isn’t it strange that merchants can reject sales at the tick of a box or the snap of a finger, but affiliates claim remuneration on lost tracking by the same seedy process, where is the parity.

… and so forth.

Personally, on the PPC side I would like a single page on each network telling me who I can direct link to & use the display URL for generic & product related terms. Perusing through just one page is better than trawling through hundreds examining the small print telling me what I CANNOT do or worse still written in lemon juice (used to make invisible ink).

Don’t you see, these will make such better selling points & any program a more appealing & attractive proposition to affiliates rather than intimidating affiliates, if more thought & effort went into mentioning what affiliate CAN do.

You see when you are in the decision making process of selecting which merchants to promote, all this don’t do that & don’t do this or draconian measures simply makes you want to move onto the next program.

Most networks are guilty of this to varying degrees. For example have you ever been bemused when you read all the T&Cs on OMG (Online Media Group) on many of their programs, It is OMG (Oh My God). Rather than scrolling down monotonously, If there ever is a need for pressing the browser back button or that little red sqaure with the white cross on the top right hand side of the browser (the exit). To reiterate same can be said with many other programs & a few other networks.

So remember, tell affiliates what we CAN DO & don’t harp on & scold affiliates on what they CANNOT DO. Imagine new affiliates / fresh blood coming industry reading all this. They are going to think “sod this for a game of soldiers” I am going to find a new vocation earning my 5 stars at MacDonalds, when they don’t realise what they are missing out on, simply because they are scared off or felt intimidated.

Thought For The Day

There are quite a few respected industry peers who regularly attend the IAB AMC, in my own opinion if it is to gain a wider respect in the affiliate community, rather than focus on what affiliates shouldn’t be doing. It should focus more on protecting affiliates in relation to the usual problems we see occuring day in & day out. At the moment I don’t see the IAB AMC as representing any of my personal interests as an affiliate, therefore I don’t recognise it as so, but more in the interests of merchants & agencies, so lets see how it pans out during 2009. I still see the joining fee as an obstacle as there are other network & merchants opinions who I do sit up and listen to.

Remember … Affiliates are the lifeblood of the industry … Simple ! Sometimes that gets lost in translation.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 4:56 AM and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 2 responses to “Tell Us What We CAN Do. Not What We CANNOT Do”

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  1. 1 On January 31st, 2009, Matt Bailey said:

    Hi Paul,

    In relation to your comments about the IAB’s Affiliate Council, I agree that we need to take into account all parties. In order to aid this it would be brilliant if more affiliates came along to attend meetings. Affiliates do not have to join the IAB to attend so no excuses on that front.

    It is simple to sit on the sidelines and complain about what is or isn’t happening. It takes more effort to actually change things, and it would be incredibly welcome if more affiliates took that view.

    Matt

  2. 2 On February 1st, 2009, Paul said:

    Of all the issues in affiliate marketings there are common denominators which are continually addressed on forums & blogs. Take for example the latest voucher code policy which was introduced to get certain affiliates to conform to best pratices, the intention is genuinely good by getting affiliates to comply. It’s easier to enforce rules & regulations on affiliates though.

    Networks, Merchants & Agencies can reverse commissions on affiliates at the drop of hat, yet more often than not, trying to get remuneration from a merchant for lost tracking or interest on late invoice payments is like getting blood out of a stone. This is just one example illustrating it is a different kettle of fish.

    But the question remains would networks be so willing to expedite blanket policies on their clients without the fear of losing those precious clients? At this moment in time I am not convinced they would.

    Some networks generally have the wrong mindset, they should remember that affiliates are basically clients too.

    Until widely agreed policies are introduced to protect affiliates & reduce restrictions imposed & enforced on an affiliate’s operational envelope, the engagemnet from affiliates i think will be farely limited until networks have the backbone to introduce more affiliate requirements. Personally I think affiliates should be permitted to add their own additional t&cs that merchants are required to adhere to.

    If there was such a thing as an affiliate association or union, consisting of affiliate policies & requirements that both merchants, agencies & networks should abide by, somehow I don’t think they would be implemented so readily by networks, if at all. So there is still some way to go before we really have multi-partisan on symbian relationships.

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