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Who is Lammo?
Posted by Lammo in For as long as I’ve been in Affiliate Marketing, there’s been conspiracy theories about untracked or missing sales:
- The merchant “loses” tracking for a couple of hours a week
- The merchant deletes 1 in 10/1 in 3/every bloomin sale/lead
- Tracking genuinely goes down every now and then, but network/merchant deny all knowledge
- Tracking hasn’t been set up properly in the first place, and so only works when it feels like it.
And so on – We’ve all had our suspicions, but I couldn’t say with 100% conviction that any of the above has happened. What I can say with 100% conviction is that we’ve had our fair share of untracked sales. For new programs, or those that seem to have a lower than usual conversion rate, we will sometimes perform a test purchase to check tracking is working.
Over the last few months, we’ve had untracked test purchases for Paddy Power, Bingos.co.uk, ChitChat Bingo, M&M Direct, and Sky amongst others – all on different networks, and all genuine test sales. Products were received, funds deposited, sky dish put on side of house even!
You come to accept it as “one of those things” with AM, and as long as the EPC is satisfactory, you accept that there will be the odd untracked sale, and you just hope it’s not a biggie.
That was, until I was sat at home the other day watching TV when this ad for Nationwide came on, and it struck me – That’s how the networks pay for all that champagne at the Christmas party.. They “lose” a small percentage of sales throughout the year, as “their sort of tip” and then come December it’s “glug glug glug” all the way!
Beware networks – I’m onto your little game!
Disclaimer: I’m not actually accusing any network of deliberately losing sales so they can get caned on champers before anyone sues me! But of course if you are doing this, my silence can be bought for a very reasonable price 
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Very good blog post John (hope you’re fine
).
Like you, we’ve come across umpteen cases of merchants not tracking and, even when it’s reported to them with evidence, not doing anything about it. Worse thing is when the eventually tell us to stop using those links… but can’t be bothered to tell their hundreds if not thousands of other affiliates.
Affiliate marketing, don’t you just love it?!
Is there no mileage is a ‘group’ secure order page on the affs own page and the orders being forwarded for worthwhile leads/sales?
As a merchant, I think you give us more credit than maybe we warrant when it comes to technical jiggery pokery to ‘lose’ sales. It may be true that larger merchants with more staff on hand are able to manipulate their tracknig, but personally, I am at the mercy of my affiliate network when it comes to ascertaining what has caused tracking problems, and on occasion where the answers have been less than satisfactory, I have asked affiliates to contact the network themselves as well to make sure that they know there is a problem which has not been of either of our making!
However, I also like to remedy these situations quickly, and I am lucky that I can easily check our system to see if a sale has been made and then ask the network to credit that affiliate with whatever they are owed. I certainly wouldn’t expect them to take the loss unless there was no way of verifying their claim to have made a sale, and if the network fails to act within a reasonable time then they feel the sharp edge of my tongue!!
I am aware that plenty of affiliates see merchants as money-grabbing monkeys out to make money in any way they can, but some of us are genuinely mystified at tracking problems (which can originate from the network, or sometimes the affiliate’s own site!) and do all we can to resolve them.
Hi Jo,
Of course most merchants are above board, and I’ve no doubt many lack the “jiggery pokery” to do anything with the tracking (I know this from the number of merchants who have no clue how to put it up in the first place – any network will tell you that!)
I think the frustration is born from the fact that tracking does go awry from time time, and when that happens, it is very, very rare that anyone (except affiliates) actually notices, and even rarer that affiliates are compensated for the loss of commission.
This should get rarer now – Networks used to have a warning mechanism to alert them when tracking went down (They were called screaming affiliates). Now these affiliates are getting their own warning devices – Screaming cashback site customers! So lost tracking should be spotted a lot sooner, and dealt with accordingly.
I can understand your concerns, but please rest assured that not all merchants are tarred with the same brush!