Merchant May Madness

It’s May Madness for Merchant’s as some are moving networks whilst others are shipping out entirely. The biggest news is the transfer of the DSGi group of sites (PC World, Currys, Dixons and The Link) from Tradedoubler to Affiliate Window. This is a major coup for Affiliate Window who have been quietly racking up the big high street names (e.g. Next, Marks and Spencer, Dorothy Perkins, Evans etc) without really making much ado about it compared to other arm waving networks. Also heading to Awin are Majestic Wines.

The downside of these transfers are not only the link changes, but the fact that there seems to be a new element to program closures. Rather than offer a 30 day closure period, affiliates now have to suffer the 30 day closure period PLUS a commission level of 1% - this trend needs to be eradicated and networks should not allow it. By all means go through a closure period, but close it at the original commision levels.

Heading out the door of, at least network, affiliate marketing are Prezziesplus. They’ve announced they’re leaving Webgains as “In spite of our top affiliate earning £4600 in the Nov/Dec 06 period, the level of sales generated by the program has not been enough to justify its continuance and the network management and overide charges”.

The email goes on: “We are expanding our sales at an annual level of approx 250% and we can no longer spend the time necessary to make the affiliate program work. It may be possible for us to operate an in house program with a limited number of our active affiliates offering better rates of commission for better results”.

I’m slightly confused by this as surely if you can’t afford the time to make the program work now, then you can’t conjure up that time whether the program runs via a network or independently? I’m sure some people may also question if the sales increase has been due to affiliates and that closing the program may backfire?

However, it may not! According to recent reports (The Daily Mail) ASOS.com aren’t exactly suffering without an affiliate program. Apparently they have “revealed an 111% increase in sales”. Would that figure be higher with or without an affiliate program? Who knows if it would, but CEO Nick Robertson has finally responded to his Grubbygate accusations at eConsultancy and claims not having a program “hasn’t dented top line sales at all”.

Will this put off merchants from running affiliate programs? Just ask the likes of Dixons, Currys, Marks and Spencer, John Lewis, BT, AOL, Virgin, Comet, Play.com, Amazon and Boots - all bigger brands than ASOS and all who have affiliate programs.