Discount codes - Clixgalore

[El Craigo]

Trawling through the admin area of Clix last night I discovered they have a new function for identifying merchants with discount/voucher codes.

I think this is the best feature I've seen in a long time, the only problem is that so far only one merchant (Adultshop) has take up the offer.

Clixgalore need to get off their bums and start promoting this to merchants as much as possible. In my opinion customers are looking for value deals, and having a code acts as a great call to action.

El Craigo

[Tim]

Last time I looksed there was no merchants a couple of weeks ago after spotting it. Now there's at least one! 100% success - come on all yee merchants!

[El Craigo]

Actually, I'm curious, what do merchants think of sites such as Buckscoop that broadcast discount codes and (I'm guessing) insert affiliate links behind them?

The answer is probably that they see it as a double-dip???

[bcl]

Originally Posted by El Craigo

Actually, I'm curious, what do merchants think of sites such as Buckscoop that broadcast discount codes and (I'm guessing) insert affiliate links behind them?

The answer is probably that they see it as a double-dip???

There is a place for coupons in online marketing, including with affiliates, but it needs to be carefully managed.

Otherwise, when it's a valid coupon meant for use elsewhere, it can mean a double cost to the merchant - discount to the customer + commission to the affiliate - as well as skewing the stats for the promotion the coupon was intended to measure.

When there is no coupon but the merchant is listed anyway, then it often means either paying out unnecessary commission or diverting commission from the affiliate that actually created the sale.

Interesting that at least two of the AU networks are encouraging coupon sites now when in the UK, they are talking about codes of practice for coupon sites and some more experienced UK merchants are experimenting to see if knocking coupon sites off their affiliate programs has any effect on sales.

[El Craigo]

BCL, just interested, what are your opinions of sites such as Buckscoop that list merchants discount codes. Are they acting out of favour with merchants?

[bcl]

Originally Posted by El Craigo

BCL, just interested, what are your opinions of sites such as Buckscoop that list merchants discount codes. Are they acting out of favour with merchants?

I don't know buckscoop but I know some merchants are very unhappy with coupon sites who list coupons that were meant for other promotions (eg to the merchants own newsletter subscribers, in their print ads) and those ones who list even if the merchants doesn't have coupons.

I would think that affiliates should only publish coupons that the merchant has explicitly said are for them to promote. And that means that if a merchant provides coupon codes to a subset of affiliates, only those affiliates should use it. Reason being, there is often negotiation behind the scenes so that commission is adjusted or extra benefits gained for the merchant in return for providing a special off to those affiliates' readers.

[bcl]

from an email received this morning from a UK merchant...

Two months ago XXXXX (who manage several large UK programs) took the decision to remove its links and stop paying commission on its top voucher code sites in order to understand if voucher code sites generated any incremental revenue for their programmes. Following on from this, XXXXX would like to pause activity on all affiliates within the voucher code directory.

Please note, we ask that all Voucher code directories remove their links to the XXXXX programmes by tomorrow, 30th January. As of this date, commission will be zeroed on these affiliates.

We would like to thank all voucher code directories for their hard work in the past."

(Italics indicate names removed.) Reading between the lines does that suggest that they found the voucher code sites didn't generate any incremental revenue?

One problem with merchants simply zeroing commissions or cancelling transactions for affiliates that break their t&c is that it doesn't help the affiliates whose cookie has been overwritten by the offending affiliates.

However, to be fair to merchants, if knocking off an offending affiliate means that when a customer clicks on a link they get redirected to a network error page, they won't want to do that either.

Comments? Solutions?

[El Craigo]

Hi BCL,

I can understand merchants don't want to pay both a commission and a discount, however this is a fact of life in the offline retail space (known as "channel conflict"), and I'm not sure why it should be any different online.

Let's say for example that I wanted to offer a special deal on one of my products (I only sell one product , I would immediately make that deal available to the affiliate network otherwise I would be seen as disadvantaging them.

If a merchant is running a promotion such as a competition, it would be expected that affiliates would deep link to drive sales, yet when the campaign is a discount it's expected that we won't.

Merchants, in my opinion can't have it both ways.

Just my thoughts,

ECO

[bcl]

Originally Posted by El Craigo

Hi BCL,

I can understand merchants don't want to pay both a commission and a discount, however this is a fact of life in the offline retail space (known as "channel conflict"), and I'm not sure why it should be any different online.

Let's say for example that I wanted to offer a special deal on one of my products (I only sell one product , I would immediately make that deal available to the affiliate network otherwise I would be seen as disadvantaging them.

If a merchant is running a promotion such as a competition, it would be expected that affiliates would deep link to drive sales, yet when the campaign is a discount it's expected that we won't.

Merchants, in my opinion can't have it both ways.

Just my thoughts,

ECO

I think it depends on what offer the merchant has created and why. In the offline world, you'll often see conditions like "this offer cannot be combined with any other offer"
Coupons have also long been used in the offline world to track where sales come from - and affiliate publishing a coupon meant for other channels can skew the data as well as double the merchants cost for the coupon campaign. Online is different in that online coupon copying has a much wider reach than offline.

What about the affiliates who promote out of date or non-existent coupons?

[El Craigo]

Originally Posted by bcl

What about the affiliates who promote out of date or non-existent coupons?

I see that a lot, particularly in the area of competitions campaigns. As long as the merchant has deactivated the campaign from their end their won't be a cost to them.

Craig

[bcl]

Originally Posted by El Craigo

I see that a lot, particularly in the area of competitions campaigns. As long as the merchant has deactivated the campaign from their end their won't be a cost to them.

Craig

Yes, except when merchants sign up for affiliate programs, nobody tells them about dodgy coupon sites, brandbidders, adware, cookie stuffing etc.

Then the new merchants wonder why the coupon affiliates do it if there is no valid coupon.
Then the merchants realise that they are paying out commission on sales they would have got anyway.
Then they get told by the networks that they can't cancel any transactions if they hadn't already forbidden any particular practice (so merchants are supposed to be experts in affiliate methods to game the system and preempt such tactics).
Then they get told that if they deactivate that affiliate, the affiliate will send traffic gained from seo targetting of their domain name to a competitor or a network error page.
Then they get thoroughly disillusioned with affiliate marketing and pull their programs - and the genuine affiliates lose a merchant and lose all the time and effort they've put into promoting it.

We've seen some really good merchants pull affiliate programs this past year. Ever wondered why?

[newbie]

Originally Posted by bcl

We've seen some really good merchants pull affiliate programs this past year. Ever wondered why?

You do make me laugh with your nonsense and misinformation. )

There were NO "really good merchants" that pulled an affiliate program last year.

(Do not bother trotting out one of those poor deluded sheep that you gulled - none of them were of any consequence and I hear some of them are returning anyway so be careful which one you pick).

The only one you could mention, dStore, was a consequence their own actions.

We dropped them because they changed their program settings from "allow repeat transactions" to "no repeat transactions" and refused initially to change it back. When they finally caved in and reversed the decision it was too late. By then, we already had plenty of merchants in all of their spaces and were no longer interested in them. Apparently every other affiliate thought the same way we did.

...and all this coupon huff and puff - much ado about nothing - the free market will find its own level. Waste of space talking about it.

[bcl]

Originally Posted by newbie

You do make me laugh with your nonsense and misinformation. )

There were NO "really good merchants" that pulled an affiliate program last year.

(Do not bother trotting out one of those poor deluded sheep that you gulled - none of them were of any consequence and I hear some of them are returning anyway so be careful which one you pick).

The only one you could mention, dStore, was a consequence their own actions.

We dropped them because they changed their program settings from "allow repeat transactions" to "no repeat transactions" and refused initially to change it back. When they finally caved in and reversed the decision it was too late. By then, we already had plenty of merchants in all of their spaces and were no longer interested in them. Apparently every other affiliate thought the same way we did.

...and all this coupon huff and puff - much ado about nothing - the free market will find its own level. Waste of space talking about it.

That was predictable. No merchant has left your favourite network because of me.

It could help if you showed some respect for the merchants and their businesses instead of denigrating them if they don't fit into the way you want to do things.