BoysStuff Suspend Affiliates But Does Anyone Know Why?
Posted under: Last week gadget site BoysStuff sent out an email to all affiliates announcing that they’d been suspended from their affiliate program. As is fairly typical with suspension emails no reason is offered to the affiliate. Instead they’re usually left scratching their heads or chasing up an account manager for an explanation. What I’d like to see is the reason included in the suspension/termination email (it kind of makes logical sense).
Anyway here’s the email sent out by BoysStuff this week
You have have been suspended from the BoysStuff.co.uk (Merchant ID: 323) affiliate programme. If you would like to discuss the reason for suspension please contact the affiliate manager directly from your account. In the meantime we strongly advise that you temporarily remove any BoysStuff.co.uk links.
As you can see no explanation! There’s currently a thread over on Affiliates4U where the network and other affiliates are as bemused and confused by the situation. The merchant had recently switched to Existem AM for their affiliate management meaning every week until the end of December there were lovely emails from them with the latest offers and product suggestions.
There was nothing from EAM after December 29th though, and almost a month later there’s the Dear John to all affiliates email. I’m not a betting person but that does look like that BoysStuff aren’t too keen on affiliate marketing at the moment. A mass cull of affiliates (essentially closing the program down) suggests that changes are afoot (ref Sherlock Holmes, Bears in Wood etc).
We can only wait and see as to what happens next. For me the gadget market has blurred a lot since the early days of affiliate marketing. Once upon a time you had Firebox, I Want of Those and BoysStuff all selling fairly exclusive items. Nowadays the same things can be bought on pretty much any gift site, Amazon or Play.com. Perhaps it’s no surprise then that IWOOT were bought last year by The Hut group and The Gadget Shop is now I believe with WHSmith.
Whatever happens, it doesn’t take away from the fact that suspension/termination emails from networks tend to be pretty poor. “Your application to join XYZ was unsuccessful” or “The ABC programme is closing immediately” doesn’t really help guide affiliates. Compare that to “ELO are being suspended. This suspension is due to the budget being reached but it will be restarting in early January 2010″ and it’s quite obvious why the latter is more helpful.
As an affiliate I don’t need a novel explaining why a decision has been made, but a short line of information can make the world of difference. It also saves time logging in and then contacting the merchant to ask for an explanation.
Of course, the BoysStuff suspension may not have been any different if an explanation was required before a mass email to all affiliates was sent – but on the other hand it might have helped shed light on a very odd situation.
A Quick Addition
Fair play to Affiliate Window as Pets at Home have just sent this out…
You have have been suspended from the Pets at Home affiliate programme for the following reason “No longer operating an open programme – Please see previous emails”
There’s an explanation of the suspension – good stuff and meaning that all there is moan about now is “closed shop” programmes 
Unfortunately the explanation of suspension is purely option on the Awin system. This, in my opinion, should be made a requirement… I’ve just received another one today;
The strange thing is I don’t see anything like this with any other network!
Hi Jason,
Really intriguing situation and quite a precedent. I’ve never heard of a brand removing the vast majority of their affiliates with no warning or reason. One reason, as has been suggested, is that they are in financial difficulties and are close to ceasing trading.
If not then they are certainly treading a brave path as they must be sure that they never want to work with any of the axed affiliates again. I recently wrote a piece on eConsultancy highlighting some of my thoughts on why I think that more merchants will cut back the number of affiliates that they work with in order to increase the control that they have. The actions of Boysstuff and Pets At Home could, unfortunately, be proving me correct.
Matt
Hi All,
You are right in saying that we are more than a little bemused by the actions of Boysstuff. We have closed down the programme and are awaiting their response as to the reasons for this highly unusual course of action.
In the old AW interface merchants could enter a reason for suspending an affiliate, but it was optional. In the new Darwin interface merchants must put a reason for rejection. This reason is sent via email, and also updated to the affiliate’s activity stream. At the moment, the two systems are running side by side to allow all merchants time to familiarise themselves with the new interface.
However, I think this situation highlights the need to remove the old functionality so that merchants are forced to enter a reason if they want to suspend an affiliate. I’ve raised it with our Developers. It should be done in the next week or so.
If a merchant wishes to remove affiliates that are not actively promoting in order to gain more control over their programme then it is something the network will ensure is handled in the right way. We ask merchants to contact each affiliate that faces removal, explain the situation and provide enough time for the affiliate to ask to be kept on the programme.
The Boysstuff situation appears to be totally different and certainly the merchant did not seek our advice or input before doing this.
If anyone would like further details please get in touch – aclements@affiliatewindow.com
Kind Regards
Anthony
I’m sure there’s a reason, whether they want affiliates to know is a different issue, @ Matt i read your article, and that basically sums things up really nicely. I think its going to get ever harder for smaller affiliates to prove their worth, its a big question about opportunity cost, and the cards are stacked against those without the right kind of traffic or the volume of traffic. here’s an example, i was asked by someone why culling affiliates was a bad idea, i obviously responded with all the usual arguments for keeping affiliates on a campaign…this persons response was simply – if you look at the revenue small affiliate X makes, just answering one email from them a year makes their performance and what revenue they generate unprofitable. and thats really how businesses think…i could argue all day about brand and quality but the numbers don’t stack up and thats what they care most about.
I personally think its more a branding issue. Some merchants/agencies feel that they dont have the resource to audit affiliate sites after every message/creative change and so feel that by having a smaller pool of affiliates this makes the auditing process much quicker and easier.
For accounts that receive full account management at Affiliate Window we dedicate admin staff to managing these necessary audting processes and I really feel that merchants and (some) agencies need to start rethinking what it takes to manage an affiliate campaign and how much resource is really needed to manage a successful programme.
Next…. NotOnTheHighStreet have removed me from the Linkshare network without no reason whatsoever. Again a standard email from the network making it far to easy for merchants if you ask me.
I have to apply, show where I intend to promote, wait for a lifetime for a decision to be made and get accepted. Then I spend time on their pages/products/links and then you get kicked. No communication from the network, no communication from the merchant, no communication from the account manager/agency. When is this going to stop?
The Linkshare “get out of jail email” reads;
We regret to inform you that Notonthehighstreet.com has removed you from their affiliate program. Advertisers may remove publishers from their programs for many different reasons, including violation of legal terms, inactivity, and changes in site content. If you feel that you have been removed in error or would like information on why you were removed, please contact ls-notonthehighstreet@linkshare.com.
LinkShare manages hundreds of other affiliate programs. We encourage you to log in and find other advertisers to partner with.
Hi
Just to clarify we were managing this programme until the end of December when we ceased our 3 month contract with boystuff. I must add that we were as surprised as everyone else when we saw this to most of the affiliates.
We have spoken to boystuff to try and get an answer but thus far we haven’t had any response.
We have also highlighted the tweets forum posts and blogs that talking about this, so I would hope that they would respond to the affiliates soon.
I am sorry if there has been any confusion if people thought that boystuff were still our client, I can assure you that if we had been managing this campaign or any we would have communicated more with the affiliates and more importantly tried to make sure a mass cull never happened.
let’s not try to mask what boysstuff and petsathome did as an effort to control who promotes them and where – this is just 2 programs that are failing left, right and centre, and it’s not the ASA that’s driving their decisions.
What it does highlight is that unfortnately all networks potentially need to revisit certain functionalities that are available to merchants. You only need a couple of people misusing the transparency provided before you start thinking restricting it for all.
I’m personally saddened by this as I spent 3.5 years building the Boysstuff program in its infancy and I hold it dear in my career achievements. Guess I now have to keep that off my CV…
@Mark – I should have made my comments clear. Under Existem management I know that there is no way that you would have allowed boystuff to cull all affiliates like this.
My point was merely about how some merchants and agencies handle a large number of active affiliates as there are unfortunately some that just dont allocate enough resource and who see mass affiliate culling as an easy solution.
@Chris
I believe Anthony’s email covers your point about making it harder for merchants to just suspend affiliates. In the new Darwin platform it is a much better system where merchants wishing to suspend an affiliate must write a personalised email and provide a reason to the affiliate.