Affiliation Termination, U R A POOR AFFILIATE
I received this lovely email from a US affiliate program management agency who manage three top fashion brands in the US. Im not going to name and shame as could be, only god knows how, there are some affiliates who maybe doing well through this program, although I have my doubts.“Dear Affiliate, our client has asked us to tidy up their affiliate program and remove affiliates’ who are poor performers. We have terminated your affiliation, please remove all links. We wish you luck and thank you for partnering with us.
Translated…
“Dear Affiliate (we have no clue who you are), our client (pass the buck) has asked us to tidy up their affiliate program (Justification) and remove affiliates (Client is clueless)’ who are poor performers (Cover all bases by not giving a definition of what constitutes a poor performer). We have terminated your affiliation (Agency being assertive), please remove all links (Polite way of saying if you generate any more commissions, you won’t get paid). We wish you luck and thank you for partnering with us (We couldn’t give a monkeys if you spontaneously combusted).
My translation
Dear Affiliate, we have taken the decision to terminate your partnership with us due to poor performance. Even though you signed up only a week a go and our data feeds are out of date (product url goes to page that cant be found and broken images) and wont be fixed until May 2008 has been like this since October 2007. We don’t allow any affiliate to redirect links to specific products, so all you really have is a few banners (with domain name extension displayed) linking directly to a flash home page that takes 4.2 seconds to load and is skew in firefox.
Yes I hang my head in shame, I am a very poor affiliate indeed.
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Comments
Hi Jess,
Happy New Year
I can only simply agree with you.
I blogged a Parable about this not too long ago
Which echoes what you say.
Gadget… they are not the only ones, there seems to be a trend of merchants just kicking out affiliates who dont make sales, what some merchants seem to forget is that even if an impression is registered, its all part of brand building and consumer recognition.
Moose, happy new year to you and Julie and kids :0) Paul, yes… your article is spot on!!! I agree with pretty much everything you say, gotta keep the faith :0)
Js
An affiliate agency is supposed to grow the programme, not make life easy for themselves. Doing it right isn’t complicated, it just needs a bit of dedication, I blogged about a better alternative a while back…
http://www.stephenpratley.com/the-alternative-to-throwing-out-your-affiliates/
That really is bad. Its not the message, its the way its done.