Merchants - Please Include A Link!
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As an affiliate we’re often bogged down with the endless stream of emails with merchant’s latest offers, promotions and news (and the same can be applied to network newsletters too). Now, this is all and good, but a few small tweaks and all well and good could become very useful.
The problem doesn’t lie in the content, the problem lies in what’s missing! Let’s say for example the world famous Merchant X sends out an email with a discount code for affiliates to use. It’s perhaps only valid for a few days and the sooner an affiliate can get the link on their site or in their newsletter the better.
The keywords in the above are “get the link” - quite simply why are basic text links not sent in the newsletters? I’ve looked at a number of mail shots from networks and merchants, and not one (yes not one) actually bothers to include the affiliate’s code! It’s such a simple thing, it can’t be difficult to implement, and just imagine how much time it could save.
A similar thing can be done with information on the network sites. Affiliate Window already do this (and well done AW on your monthly offers, top 10s, incentives etc), but if you look at say Affiliate Future’s ‘Latest News’ there’s never any links to the merchant’s information on AF. There’s news, there’s the offer code… but heck no easy way to get the links/banners from the merchant’s section on the site.
Ok, perhaps it’s me being lazy, but simple things help save time. It also means that If I’ve got a link handy I’m more likely to add an offer or promotion straight away, rather than leave it in the to do list, which more often than not ends up in the trash folder or forgotten.
affiliate marketing 
1 Comments on this post
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Paul Wright said:
You’d think it’d be pretty straight forward huh Jason? I have to say I do what you suggest were ever possible but the truth of the matter is that not all affiliate networks offer this functionality when sending out newsletters and I’m often palmed of by the tech teams with “that’ll be in out next releaseâ€.
Newsletters as a whole are a pretty messy affair as there’s no real standard procedure across the networks. Just looking at the networks I’m working with:
CJ: Self automated which can be customised and targeted to individual affiliate groups. All at a cost I might add but well done CJ (did i just say that?)
TD: Must send HTML to td for approval then they manually send them out for free.
Buy.at: Same as above but a tad better as more often than not the account managers will code emails for your merchants and sometimes even write the content. I’ve been looking at their new platform which will have a more sophisticated messaging system.
AF: Email submitted through their interface and must be approved before going live.It’s frustrating to me as much as it is to you having certain restrictions in place. To more work I do upfront in making the process of grabbing links and getting up and running faster means more sales for my merchants and less support emails following a mail out.
Come on networks!
affiliate marketing
November 13th, 2006 at 9:51 pm
