Club Mom Closes its affiliate program
Seem like only a few weeks ago I was in Las Vegas listening to the empowering key note speech from Michael Sanchez, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of ClubMom. Oh …..wait, it was only a few weeks ago at the affiliatesummit in Las Vegas that we all listened intently to what Michael had to say.We learnt how he motivates his kids, no really we did 🙂
In a strange twist last week, ClubMom sent out an email to announce the closure of their affiliate program. The question is, he must have known about the impending decision to terminate their affiliate program and if not, wow that was fast. Or did he come to the summit knowing that the affiliate program was going to close? Did he give that great lecture about how to reward affiliates and the different kinds of rewards you should be giving, knowing that he would end up a few short weeks later leaving every one saying “what happened, did ya see that?” “nope I blinked and missed it”
I learnt about clubmom a few years ago and there was a character called Shawn Collins running the affiliate program. I liked Shawn’s style, like any enthusiastic affiliate manager keen to promote the company and build the program, I often wondered if Shawn ever actually slept or took holidays. The guy was a one man clubmom pr machine. I attribute a lot of the success of Clubmom’s growth down to Shawn and his affiliates. Yeah there were other people at the company that was party to making this a huge success, but a lot of it was down to Mr Collins, after all clubmom’s affy program is now known in the Uk, that’s 100% down to Shawn. Well done sunshine , you can now look back and say, “yeah I had a hand in that, move along now…”
As for Mr Sanchez’s empowering seach… well it’s a ll a bit of a damp squid now.
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Comments
Good question, which requires a very long answer, Ill try to be brief… I probably wont do this justice but I hope you get the drift.
I was talking about this topic with a guy from one of the aff networks and one of the companies as an example was ebay’s affiliate program. Surely they don’t need affiliates anymore? Or do they?…..
There are cycles that an online company has to go through and based on where they are in terms of their cycle and at what point they enter the “marketing phase” will be dependent on so many variables.
Cycle one involves getting it right from day one if possible and it all starts with the website (lets forget products for the moment, we will assume there is a demand) platform, backend office, scalability, customer care, current seo practices, images, web analytics, domain name, you get the picture. If you don’t have this right at the beginning it just makes it more difficult x years down the line. You need to predict where you will be in x years, u cant factor everything in but you can predict certain aspects.
Cycle x involves traffic aggregation SEO, PPC, Aff Marketing and so on…
Cycle x which fits nicely in with ebay, customer retention and this is where affiliates can be used in cases of market saturation. Affiliates are not just amazing at supplying new customers but they can be used for customer retention to, so for some one like ebay where every one knows about them, affiliates can be used as an advertising channel to promote a different messages, products and services. Its how you use your affiliates that’s the clever part.
Remember for a company like ebay what is remarkable about them is their ability to twist and turn just like the internet. And they still use affiliate marketing very effectively as to does Amazon
The point being, you don’t have to keep using affiliates for new customer acquisitions (short tail) I don’t know the background to clubmom’s aff program, Shawn is the man who is going to know far much more then I.
Simplistic answer, no long tail does not have to end
> The point being, you don’t have to keep using affiliates for new customer acquisitions (short tail) I don’t know the background to clubmom’s aff program, Shawn is the man who is going to know far much more then I.
It’s been a couple years since I worked on the affiliate program, so my perspective is purely speculative.
That said, I think it was a matter of changing business models, plus a non-competitve commission combined with unrealistic expectations.
The short tail needed a better EPC to retain the performers, and it wasn’t happening.
Hey shawn thanks for stopping by.
“That said, I think it was a matter of changing business models, plus a non-competitve commission combined with unrealistic expectations.”
Ok well a good majority of “new to aff marketing”clients that approach us all have unrealistic expectations, which is ok and its our job to educate, it does how ever show that the message about affiliate marketing is not getting through, that it’s a long term investment. But one would like to think that for a company that has been with affiliate marketing for a while would have the experience to be able to adapt their affiliate program to their new business model.
If you don’t mind me saying, do you think that light was switched off after you left? What would you have done if you were still there, you don’t have to answer… don’t want to put you on the spot :0)
You say “The short tail needed a better EPC to retain the performers, and it wasn’t happening.” Care to expand?
Why would anyone close an affiliate program? Does long tail marketing ever end?