Application Denied and Partner Requests
4 Comments July 17, 2007 / Posted in Affiliate Marketing“Your application to such and such program..” and “I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce you to..” seem to be reproducing in my mailbox and both are failing to make me “a happy affiliate”. The program rejection emails are because I decided to apply to a whole bunch of programs on one network yesterday, so slowly bit by bit the more financial related programs are coming through with the standard “bye bye” stuff that says “you have been declined for a number of reasons that include factors such as”.
It’s a standard rejection, and fair enough if the merchant wants to reject us from their program – no problem! What is a problem though is that I’d like to know exactly why we’re rejected! If a merchant sends you a polite message saying “thanks, but your site doesn’t seem appropriate for our products” then it’s possible to reply:
Yes our frilly lingerie site may not be the best place for your cash ISA and insurance programs, but our site aimed at financial products which we can’t list on the network interface could be deemed highly appropriate please would you reconsider
A little bit of personalisation and attention to detail does help, and it could make the difference between gaining an affiliate or losing them to your competitor.
However, sometimes there’s a little bit too much attention – and that goes in the form of the pitching email! A new program has recently launched on Tradedoubler and Webgains. Despite having signed up, encountered a tracking error on TD (no registrations), 404 errors on the website and emailed the guys running the site, I’ve received 6 “I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce you to..” emails from them since then!
This is not a good way to make me want to promote a program – if you’re happy to spam me then it says quite clearly that you will also be happy to spam my referred users and that means you won’t be on the top of the tree when it comes to doing site updates and email promotions.
So in short… we want more information on program rejections and only one “introduction to…” pitching type emails – that’s not too much to ask is it?
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Good to see its not just me that gets annoyed by automated responses.
I received a rejection from one network recently, wasn’t particularly bothered apart from the fact it was anonymous, so I sent a reply back indicating that I was more annoyed by the unsigned email than the rejection, couple of days later I received an acceptance email for the same program also unsigned, followed by an apology from the affiliate manager for rejecting me by mistake, they just don’t get it do they.
Via Cj you can set to veto any one based on territory, so If I don’t want Chinese affiliates I can use auto decline, but I chose my territories wisely. But Jason, you make a valid point, not all Chinese affiliates are going to screw my client. So yes it should be on a case by case basis and perhaps we all need adopt this approach how ever time consuming it is.
A very good point indeed!
I had a response from one network’s affiliate support saying that ‘Unfortunately this is a generic email that is set up by merchants which we cannot alter” – which is utter tosh! They can change it if they wanted too (and if networks like Paid on Results can provide this kind of thing…). Surely a system that gets affiliates working with merchants is something worth altering too?
The network goes on to say “all websites should be assessed when reviewing your application so the process is done as fairly as possible” – which is fine, but imo most reviews involve looking at the front page, and a lot of networks don’t have provision for listing the various sites an affiliate may work with.
It seems bizarre that, several years after this type of complaint was first made, that the major networks don’t offer affiliates the opportunity to specify which of their domains they are using to apply to each program.
Surely, it isn’t too hard to add a text box next to the ‘Apply to this Merchant’ button where affiliates could add the domain they are using to apply.
The problem isn’t really with affiliate managers – it’s more the networks themselves that should facilitate this process.