Comments on: Voucher Codes – a possible solution?

By: Tomica

Tomica — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:37:03 +0000

Maybe all affiliates should offer discount codes with product they are trying to sell in their websites.

By: Mole

Mole — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:48:18 +0000

alot of merchants are now not offering voucher codes!! if not at all

By: anna

anna — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:15:06 +0000

Hey, this is a really interesting read. We’re a new-ish merchant and I’m trying to learn all I can about the workings of affiliate marketing. the topic of voucher codes is one we’ve been mulling over and the solution 1 (promo box removal for non-voucher affiliates) seems like a great solution. We’ll certainly be looking into it…

By: DougS

DougS — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:40:21 +0000

Unfortunately I think many people are forgetting that many customers now expect to find a discount code to help them convert. They will compare 3 merchants and include the discount code price in their decision making.

It’s a model that many merchants have accepted and in the current climate it is here to stay.

Several of the merchants we send the most sales to from http://www.discountvouchers.co.uk actually has no codes…..go figure:)

Doug

By: Rob | Travel Affiliate

Rob | Travel Affiliate — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:25:00 +0000

Merchants should have a serious think about taking the promo code out of the check out page anyway. Firstly it’s just a distraction that they could do without. Once the customer starts looking for a promo code who knows what they will get cross sold onto – maybe a competitor site. Even if the customer comes back and completes the sale using a promo code the merchant has perhaps needlessly reduced his margin.

As a pure content affiliate with a choice of what, 200+ travel merchants to promote I look for merchants which don’t have discount codes in their checkout as one of the criteria on deciding whether to push them.

There are other ways to give certain user groups (new customers, loyal customers whatever) a discount – special URLs, dedicated landing pages, cloned versions of their site etc.

By: Adeel Farooq

Adeel Farooq — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:11:35 +0000

It is fairly easy but the question is how many merchants (mainly large brands) are willing to remove the telephone numbers for affiliates? We for Christy Home have the phone number embeded based on the referral URL. The phone number is dynamically hidden on affiliate referrals as long as the affiliate cookie is active.

Regarding the gift certificates, we do have a dynamic numeric code but it can be redeemed as a payment option rather than using the voucher code input facility. It makes is easy for us to manage and does not confuse the customers. However some do believe that the gift codes and voucher codes are same and free.

By: BLOGERCISE

BLOGERCISE — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:12:56 +0000

Seems like a valid idea to me. I think the losing sales to VC sites and losing sales to a phone line is a reasonable comparison. If merchants can accept that one isn’t favourable it doesnt seem a far stretch to deem the other as a no-no too.

However I have stopped putting much effort into merchants that are voucher code heavy. I just don’t have the time or energy to keep chasing solutions to this problem.

Now if everyone else followed suit, maybe the merchants will start to notice!

By: Clarke

Clarke — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:28:26 +0000

Hey mate, interesting take on it, I would like you pointed out getting merchants to remove a phone number from a site is a big enough job, most won’t do it for Affiliate traffic full stop. However if any merchant wanted to do what your saying, Paid on Results could offer a URL that could trigger the local cookie to make this happen. But we actually have a far smarter, more advanced technical solution to this whole voucher code stuff (2 years on the 9th October it’s been in place and no one managed to copy what we can do yet), Merchants could use that and not change their websites, it’s just a tiny bit of code to add and problem solved. We even solve the whole codes being nicked and offline codes problem with our Voucher Manager, it’s super advanced beyond what anyone else has.

However Merchants are not interested in it from lack of take up and Affiliates don’t seem to care about it much either (maybe they don’t know about it), but we have it here if any smart Merchants or Agency’s actually want to solve the majority of the issues surrounding vouchers, otherwise everyone can keep going on how nothing can be done until the cows come home.

Always think of technical solutions like this, “if it can be done, Paid on Results will be the guys who can do it”.

By: Diane

Diane — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:24:42 +0000

The problem is cookie-napping.
If it wasn’t possible to pinch my hard earned sale by adding a voucher code through a Click To Reveal which over-writes my cookie then it wouldn’t be a problem.
We need lockable cookies.
Cookies that count from who got them to add it to the basket.
That’d help merchants too who are often fleeced by promotional codes too when they get distributed too widely and outside of their intended marketing area.
If any site then encourages you to add something else to the basket they’d get a cookie set for the bit they’ve added.

Cookie-napping is done mainly through use of Click to reveal which in some cases forces a cookie on the customer. The customer wants the code, because they’ve seen the box to put it in, so find one and because they have to click to reveal the sale gets cookie-napped.

Removing the box would only cause sites with forums to explain how to remove a cookie in order to get the voucher discount applied!