Affiliate Network – A Story for Easter
Once upon a time their lived lots of Easter Affiliate Manager bunnies, they loved their jobs, hopping about the internet and distributing their baskets of goodies to all the affiliates. The affiliates liked speaking with their Easter affiliate manager bunnies as they were a rare breed, and it meant for them, they could understand the Easter Bunnies client’s business model, which in turn enabled them to promote the product and or service. More importantly, the Easter Affiliate Manager bunny could warn affiliates about the perils they maybe getting into, the traps to avoid and so on. (Ok let me hear you say ahhhhhhhhhhhh!)One day a naughty rogue Easter Affiliate Manager bunny did something that the Affiliate Network did not like. The Easter Affiliate Manager bunny, set about pulling all the contact details about the affiliates from the affiliate network in order to bring the affiliates in to their own warren. Soon there were quite a few naughty rogue Easter Affiliate Manger bunnies doing this across a few affiliate networks. (let me hear you say ohhhhhhhhhh)
The affiliate networks were so cross that they decided to make it more difficult for Easter Affiliate Manager Bunnies and merchants to contact affiliates on an individual basis. Some removed the facility altogether. Communication was now nigh on impossible or a lengthy task, making scampering about distributing baskets of information goodies such a difficult process. The consequences were and are Easter Affiliate Manager Bunnies noses stopped twitching and bob tails stopped bobbing and all now have droopy ears. (Let me hear you say ahhhhhhhhhh!)
So on behalf of all the Easter Affiliate Manager bunnies and merchants here is a little Easter message to those networks that don’t facilitate one of the most fundamental aspects to running an affiliate program.
Not all of us want to siphon your affiliate data, you have to trust us.
The majority of us are trustworthy. We need to be able to contact individual affiliates quickly, especially if we spot that an affiliate’s link is wrong or worse. We hear you re protecting your network, but stop an think about this… if you do get some rogue merchants or affiliate managers, they are actually doing more damage to themselves by taking affiliate data, short term gain maybe/debatable… but word travels fast and they wont be trusted in the affiliate industry again.
Please Please please, allow us to do our jobs effectively, I cant believe that in seven / eight years of UK Affiliate Marketing, this feature is still woefully inadequate or even absent in some affiliate networks.
Happy Easter from an Easter Affiliate Manager Bunny
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Comments
Couldn’t agree more. It’s nothing but a hindrance for both affiliate & merchant, and network too (with the over-ride they’ll receive).
The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.
wrt any particular networks paranoia, if a merchant & affiliate wanted to deal directly leaving the network out of the loop, then this is easily enough achieved. However, I am in favour of going through a network.
One of the problems is “some” networks want to sugar-coat messages between the two parties or claim innovative ideas to be their own. More often than not the message gets lost in translation as there is a skills shortage of affiliate managers at some networks who just don’t “get it”. When the bell rings at 5pm they go home, they don’t go home thinking about our business.
The solution to an effective communication interface is simple. Where contact can be initiated from either side & permission based so that neither party is swamped. We had plans in place to launch something & probably will in due course together with a matchmaking system, though a couple of networks will probably object to it. With these objections in mind, it will probably initially focus on the networks who are not forthcoming just to wind them up that little bit more.
Everytime I receive an email from a merchant, I keep the contact details. With enough affiliates, this could probably cover a majority of merchants.
You summed it up nicely. 7/8 years later and we are still requesting the same thing. Anyway I am off to scoff some easter eggs I still have left over from the easter bunny delivery.
Thanks for the comments :0)
Surprised about SAS, they are so keen to please affiliates and so open… they have a things we need to fix thread on abw, I would add your suggestion there http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=60600
I did re a merchant quality control issue from an affs perspective (aff commission leakage)Brian Littleton listened, if we dont speak up and out they wont know.
Control:”When the bell rings at 5pm they go home” Some do, an awful lot don’t, POR, Buy.at,Awin,DGM, I have had many a nights yak on skype or email. I have alwas said aff marketing is not 9-5 Mon-Fri, it can be if you let it 24/7/365.
“The solution to an effective communication interface is simple. Where contact can be initiated from either side & permission based so that neither party is swamped. We had plans in place to launch something & probably will in due course together with a matchmaking system” I would be very interested to hear more about this ;0)
Ok, further to my Easter Bunny Affiliate Manager post…
I can now give the following a big thumbs up (networks I am working with in Alphabetical order)
AffiliateWindow.com (Yes, but you will have to be a trusted partner)
PaidOnResults.com (yes and I know you are working on other communication tools too)
Tradedoubler.com (yes although still a tweak here or there but u get what we need)
I don’t work with buy.at but I have seen the post about what a certain mobile company have done. If this is true, then if that mobile company can be so sneaky and abuse buy.at in this way, I don’t want to work with you, if true, it’s sneaky, underhand and you give our industry a bad name and the consequences of your actions has jeopardised a fundamental ingredient of affiliate marketing, it’s called trust. http://www.monetisethis.net/2007/04/things-that-make-me-go-hmmm.html
If you are a network and I don’t work with you and you want to get a thumbs up.
Just let me know, more then happy to add you.
Im not going to list the ones I work with who have poor aff communication tools.
They know who they are so no need to name, come on guys and gals, its really not that hard, one network turned this around in a week and they are a pretty big network too.
Amen, Amen, AMEN.
I’d even go farther and say affiliate networks should make it EASY for me to contact affiliates. I have to do a half dozen clicks to initiate any contact with my own affiliates on ShareASale, for instance.
Furthermore, I’d like to see the networks make it easy for me to do outreach. An email newsletter should be as simple as starting a blog, not a trapeze act.
Happy belated Easter.