Hmmm – Merchant Mailer Musings
Posted under: As it’s nearly Christmas it’s right that the old chestnuts of voucher code and content sites should make a reappearance on One Little Duck! Over the weekend Peter Dickenson wrote about A4UExpo and some of his comments were quite interesting, especially about customer hijacking.
In short there’s no value for “brand + voucher code”, there are only three decent code sites and they’re brands in their own right, merchants are worried about only having code/incentive traffic and network/agencies want merchants to supply codes.
A fairly good summary – albeit it’s a world self created by those now concerned by it – perhaps!
The in/outs and rights/wrongs of the various code sites is something we could debate for eons and we won’t get anywhere. What can be done about it and how things change however, not only needs to be debated but also acted upon.
The fact is this – if merchants are worried about codes then surely the key is to stop using them? That won’t happen, but what can be done do to make content sites and those people who would be happy to try and add value or advertise them, actually do something?
Are they doing enough and are they doing it already?
To try and answer this I decided to look through some recent merchant/network emails to see what they say. Are they dominated by codes or is there something in them that jumps out to help me help them?
Sadly the answer was no… for the most part there wasn’t.
In some I get just a list of products. One for example is simply “Check out the iPads that are available at…” – but no reason why? A list of links to iPads – whoopee do! In my opinion there’s no point to this email. No start, no middle and no end. Pointless, useless and deleted.
Another is “Merchant brings you 3 more excellent offers” – and I get a voucher code too. Perhaps they are excellent offers, I don’t know. The good news is that the commission percentage is shown. I can make 23p per item if I promote the first of these offers. I’m not sure, from a content affiliate point of view, that this is worth a go!
Sales they’re usually pretty good and may be worth a punt… except the email I get at 7.30pm on the 15th October, tells me that the sale ends on the 18th October. As it’s a fairly niche merchant a few people might look at it, but content for SEO wise it’s a tad short notice.
Thankfully we’re not getting short notice on Christmas! Some merchants have got organised and are sorting out creative. But what do I find in this merchant’s email? Yes “Don’t forget to promote our Christmas Early Bird discount code” and a “product of the week”. How about some video content? A search box? Something tangible?
The fact is, just looking briefly through a handful of merchant mailing communications is that they’re geared towards the voucher sites – or at least offer sites that can quickly post up a link or two and perhaps add “don’t forget your cashback”.
By the way, I fully understand why the above is as it is. At the end of the day it’s business and the easiest track to the pound coins is the sensible one to take.
However, If merchants want to get away from being reliant on the same old channels, then they need to start looking at themselves for the solutions. Innovation does need to come from affiliates, yes, but innovation needs to come from merchants too.
It can be basic from a simple explanation of “why the hell are you sending me a list of products” through to the more complex content units, videos, search boxes etc. Make it easier for affiliates to promote you! Fill in the gaps, explain and inspire.
And when you’ve created lovely tools for affiliates to use – keep them up to date and make them resizeable! There’s nothing worse than some clever creative or lovely content unit that’s been neglected because a manager has left their post or forgotten about things.
The problem is if the message in affiliate land is that it’s the code sites that earn the big money and are favoured by merchants, networks and agencies, then that’s the bandwagon people will get on board. Doing something different to “add value” is a pointless exercise if it only going to make you 23p.
There are some cracking points made in that – one of which is “keep it up to date when you start to use something” … some merchants seem to update even their datafeeds only once a year and only then if a druid has made the right sacrifice.
Great points and certainly plenty to mull over. As a merchant it is sometimes very difficult to know what information affiliates want without spamming them with offers/codes etc.