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Who is Lammo?
Posted by Lammo in
Here’s a new one for me – a rant on someone else’s behalf (although I have had this happen to me in the past hence why it’s got my back up)
I spotted the following tweet from fellow affiliate Purple on Friday:
Now, it’s perfectly acceptable for a merchant to ask an affiliate where they are being promoted (although IMO there shouldn’t be any need for them to do so as their network should provide full transparency so they can SEE where traffic is coming from with the need to ask each affiliate), but is there really any need to accompany said request with a threat of reversed commissions?
Fair enough if you’ve asked politely and said affiliate has ignored your request to send a strongly-worded follow up mail, but to go straight in with “tell me where you’re promoting us or we’ll decline all your commissions” shows a distinct lack of respect for affiliates, and ruins all the good work the previous account manager did in building up a relationship with Purple. My advice to him was as follows:
It doesn’t cost anything to be polite and show some respect to an affiliate, and when it’s the first contact you have with them, it’s even more important that you remember your manners and realise that whilst there are a lot of bad apples out there, not EVERY affiliate is trying to rip you off, and if you speak like this to all the ones you don’t know, then they’ll soon decide they’d rather work with people who don’t treat them like shit.
It’s always nice to end a rant with a happy ending though, so here’s the end result from Purple himself:
So well done Mr or Mrs Account Manager – you’ve confirmed that those £3 of commission were indeed genuine (which of course you could have seen for yourself by following the link from your referral report!), and pissed off a true content affiliate. Job Well Done.
ps. I should point out that Purple hasn’t asked me to post this on his behalf.. I took it upon myself after feeling the need to vent (140 characters just won’t cut it), and you’ll also note that I haven’t named and shamed the merchant (or network) involved – I’ll leave that up to Purple to decide if he wants to.
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You think that us bad – I got the same email to verify a commission of 4p!!!
Times must be hard!!
to be fair, merchants will always be paranoid about their brand and the genuine source of sales, it stems for AM having a bad name and the limited insight at the merchants end to see where the sources of traffic were,if the networks were able to ‘tag’ sales with the source referring site, then this would address the problem, i’m prety sure one or two of them already do this.
basically merchants want confidence that the site an affiliate puts in the network is the site the ad is going to appear on. next they also want control over ‘how’ the ad appears in context to the content and in line with their branding.
it might seem like a rediculous thing for merchants to expect this, but its how they are used to working given the other marketing channels available to them.
Kcheung – In this instance, the merchant did have access to the sales source referral reports, yet sent an email rather than use the report.
Whether they had access to the reports or not, do you think the best way for them to solicit the information from an affiliate is to send a threatening email, or a polite request?
I’m not suggesting for a second that affiliates have any right to hide their sites from merchants – my point was that I don’t think any merchant needs to be rude and threatening in order to obtain that information.
**Whether they had access to the reports or not, do you think the best way for them to solicit the information from an affiliate is to send a threatening email, or a polite request?**
whilst i can understand the reasons, you’re right in that this merchant didn’t go about it in the right way. this being said, it maybe a case of miscommunication, the logic the merchant is coming from is -if they can’t tell the source of the traffic and therefore the sales, they can’t be sure of the quality and targeting, some merchants don’t just want sales, they want a particular kind of sale (branding etc)
This is obviously not the best way they can work and personally i don’t agree with it, but i’m also trying to point out that merchants do, do this kind of thing and its a case of understanding what has caused it in the first instance, then educating the client.
Well said, it is amazing how people are wired to assume that they are always getting screwed. Some companies certainly are trying to make that happen, but many are quality.