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Who is Lammo?
Posted by Lammo in 
DGM (Deal Group Media) has a wide range of products and merchants associated with them. DGM was de-listed from AIM via a significant management buy-out in 2007. That buy-out has now made them a private company again. OK, so, they’ve changed behind the scenes but of course what most people will want to know is the nitty gritty! Let’s get down to it and see what DGM are really like these days.
DGM now employs more than 80 staff all over the world and they’ve more than 250 well-known clients. They started out specialising in affiliate marketing but now also provide SEO services, PPC campaigns and other forms of online advertising.
Merchants
There are a good number of high profile clients with DGM with brands such as Orange and Pontins being just some of their better-known partners along with LearnDirect, Sea France and JD Williams. So, there’s a good range of product types and some big brand names to promote with recognisable appeal. Then there are some exclusive clients such as a number of UK charities and smaller companies.
Problems and Concerns
There’s no shying away from it – a while back, DGM suffered a number of bad reviews (including from yours truly) due to problems with their in-house software and lack of interaction with affiliates but those have now been addressed and it appears (fingers crossed, touching wood, etc) that there are no longer any major issues there although some minor irritants remain as described below. The management buyout sparked some concerns (in some quarters.. I thought it was a master stroke!) as to any potential change in direction as these things always do but this seems to have been unfounded. DGM also pay Affiliates monthly which in these troubled times is definitely helpful from a cash flow perspective! There are currently no 2 tier commissions with DGM and no search term tracking or referring URL tracking either, which is a little disappointing.
Some other networks provide extras such as custom content units but DGM doesn’t as yet – of course, that’s not a problem, as you can always use Easy Content Units which includes DGM merchants amongst their 5 million+ products! There are currently no 2 tier commissions with DGM and no search term tracking or referring URL tracking either, which is a little disappointing. It depends on what sort of service you want as to whether or not this will bother you. If you’re a purist or a traditionalist it probably won’t. All many of you will want is decent quality programmes from well behaved merchants with a decent EPM. Here DGM can certainly oblige.
DGM affiliate support has come under repeated fire over the years, mainly for their lack of support, failure to follow through on promises made, and their tendency to side with the merchant at every opportunity. I’m pleased to report that my experiences of DGM support over the last 12 months or so has been almost entirely pleasurable – I’ve got a key number of staff members available on MSN messenger, all emails have been answered and any problems have dealt with swiftly and professionally.
Benefits in Joining DGM
Don’t be too put off by the issues raised above – DGM really have turned the corner since their Management Buyout, and show no signs of returning to their bad old ways. The main benefit is DGM’s access to high calibre products and services. Backed by some decent brands there is a good opportunity to monetise your traffic in these areas.
There are also some healthy commission rates and bonuses for people who really go all out and drive high volumes of sales or applications. Then, there’s the fact that some programs have dedicated personnel to contact regarding questions and problems. There are occasionally also workshops, affiliate promotions and special events. You’ll also get a regular newsletter telling you about the hottest new clients and any website enhancements or special deals in your chosen field – which can be very useful.
You can also use the DGM affiliate interface, created to assist in managing campaigns and communicating with advertisers. It shows you how much you’ve earned and where you’re performing best so that you can make informed decisions. It also lets you choose creative and organise banners. DGM pro used to be pretty heavily criticised for being flaky but again it seems to have stabilised. DGM have, after all, been in business for around 10 years so many of the creases have now been ironed out.
Final Thoughts
DGM still have a little way to go to re-establish themselves as one of the leading UK networks, but if they continue on their current path, they won’t go far wrong. They could perhaps benefit from making the management area a little more user friendly, and less clunky, but on the whole I much prefer this DGM to the DGM I knew 5 years ago..
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John,
Good review – I agree with most of the thoughts you present here.
Apart from – no search term tracking or referring URL tracking either, which is a little disappointing.
There is a way to implement URL or keyword tracking – this is through the parameter k – which is then reported in reports via NetworkID
Not sure why they call it networkID but does the job well.
I think the level of support I get from DGM is exceptional in latest months. Especially from ladies managing broadband programmes like Be, Tiscali and Orange.
Hi John
Thanks for the review, a very honest appraisal. As janusz says above you can track search term and referral URLs are captured and reported in the sales report. Search term can be tracked using the k parameter which is reported in the front-end as “networkID”, but this could definitely be clearer so will take this onboard.
I think we have come a long way since the ‘dark days’, we can still improve on a lot of what we are doing like every network but we are constantly making improvements to our technology, service and processes. I have a great team here in account mgt, affiliate mgt and the tech team so I know that dgm will continue to improve in 2009, taking on board all comments and feedback that we receive.
Helen
If a company does ppc on behalf of a merchant, and this aplies to any network, then this doesn’t sit well. There have been discussions in the past on the forum where networks have done this & how keywords are possibly harvested.
They are a likeable network but the interface is way too “clunky” for me, especially reporting, so I rarely login to even see what programs are on offer & thus doesn’t get my juices flowing to see what programs they have.
However several times over the past 18 months (maybe two years) I have requested something quite simple, and that is give me ten programs (that is all) that I can direct link through ( ie use the display url) to on paid search for product & generic terms (brand not essential) however they musn’t have any bbg (brand bidding groups) either. After sometime, the answer each occasion was they don’t have that many.
I don’t think DGM will ever be one of those networks we can expect bells & whistles from, innovation has been left to a couple of other networks or to give you a plug John, “Easy Content Units”. I am beggining to see them more as an agency than a network.
Janusz/Helen – I knew about the &k= way of inserting a custom tracking ID (although it really annoys me all this c=, k=, x= and z= rubbish – whatever happened to affiliateID=, merchantID=, trackingID= where you knew which bit was which. anyway I digress…)
My point was for those affiliates driving sales from PPC, other networks offer reports whereby you can see a report of sales, clicks etc from each individual keyword, and/or see the referring URL of a sale (particularly useful for a content site if you’ve forgotten to append custom IDs cos you couldn’t figure out where to put them…)
I *think* I’ve found a workaround for the keyword report though – using “&k=%keyword%” in adwords should pass through the referring search term as the custom tracking ID. Would still be nice to see some of the reports developed further though.
Helen – Oh, you’ve come on miles and miles since “the dark days”, and that’s testament to the hard work and downright brilliantness of people such as yourself, Matt Bailey, Jess, Cat, Kevin & co, who persuaded me to give DGM another go after the first expo in 2007, and gave me every reason to continue pushing DGM merchants in 2009 and beyond – just keep doing what you’re doing, and badger the bosses for a less clunky interface
Moose – I don’t think it’s fair to single out DGM as having BBGs – pretty much every network has them for the major brands. That being said, I do agree that the network that has access to affiliates most profitable keywords should not be performing PPC on behalf of merchants – I’m sure that no-one would be as underhand as to use that data, but it’s far too easy for that suspicion to be there, and that will prevent PPC affiliates from really pushing DGM merchant heavily.
I think that DGM have (quite rightly) re-built their reputation around the people rather than the technology – that doesn’t mean they’re not looking to innovate, but I think they’re going to tread very carefully with what they roll out after making such a hash of DGM Pro the first time around.
Finally, thanks for the plug for Easy Content Units, which of course is an easy way to add more than 150,000 products from DGM merchants to your site (all instantly deeplinked, with custom tracking IDs added and prices automatically updated etc)
Hi John,
It wasn’t singling out DGM on BBG’s. my thoughts on which networks have been well documented on blog & forum. To elaborate on the above criteria I laid down to DGM. I requested a list of programs which permitted the use of the merchants display url in paid search, then from that list eliminate any merchants with BBGs. From those simple two criteria a final list would have been created for me to look at the programs a little deeper to ascertain which would have been suitable for me to promote. Unfortunately I was informed there wasn’t 10 programs to be found I could even look at. Which brings me onto a point I blogged about where networks / merchants / agencies are generally too pre occupied with telling affiliates what they cannot do, rather than “hey affiliates did you know you can do xyz!”. Which raises a question that if the affiliates cannot do ppc on brand / generic, is the network doing it instead? I could say the same for several networks on all the above.
Even though they seem a nice enough bunch there, I still reserve judgement on whether things have really changed for affiliates to sink their teeth into, or is the affiliate side less profitable than other things whether paid search or seo etc.
I think there is a bit of a confused perception in the market about what dgm do. We are predominantly an affiliate marketing network and most of our resource is focused on affiliate. We do offer PPC and SEO services but this is rarely for the clients that we work with in the affiliate channel and if this is the case then the two teams are completely separate. The PPC team would never have access to affiliate data and vice versa. Mine and my team’s focus is purely on the affiliate channel and we do not get involved in PPC. The PPC team and SEO teams however offer a great opportunity for our team to understand these channels in terms of affiliate and I think we have an exceptional account management team because of this. We have also opened up our SEO services to affiliates.
With regard to BBG’s, like all networks we do have some of these in place but to be honest the market has changed a lot over the years and there are less and less opportunities as clients are able to manage their own PPC better and more conflict arises with duplication of channels. Our stance has always been that we will only promote a BBG if it is in the interests of the client and in the interests of affiliates we try and offer any rights to a range of affiliates who have proven their worth on the campaigns historically and can add value above and beyond bidding on brand.
Hi Lammo,
Cheers for the post! An interesting and pretty fair account I would say!
One thing to pick up on… Refferer url’s…
dgmPro does give access to this info. As follows:
Login > reports > sales list… down the left hand side you will notice reporting filters. Here you will see a host of options. Towards the bottom of the page is the section “select your reporting parametres” one of these options is refferer. Tick the box and run the report, this will give you your reffering url’s on sales.
I think that’s what you’re after?
Cheers,
Kev
Hi Kev,
That’s the fella – he’s well hidden, but now I know where to find him, I’ll be making full use of it!
Thank you for the reasoned assessment and the feedback on the site. Just to add to the dgm-ness of the replies…
The Affiliate Summary Report allows you to see clicks, impressions, sales and other data broken down by the Network IDs that you use (’View by’ option). We’ve been toying with the idea of doing a breakdown by referrer page but you run into issues of how to index strings as long as some of the URLs we see can be. We could probably do a breakdown by referrer domain?
If you direct link to the client then a useful feature of the Sales List is that you can see the search term(s) and search engine, based on analysis of the referrer page we captured – again it’s another couple of options in the Sales List near to the referrer page one mentioned by Kev.
As for development, we’ve introduced dgmCompare Broadband (v2 released last week) that allows you to offer a Broadband search facility based on postcode on your own site, introduced Easy Links (which allowed us to integrate with EasyContentUnits.com), made various improvements to the affiliate interface and launched ww.dgmKnowledge.com to help inform you about our campaigns (linked from dgmPro). We’ve a new datafeed system going live soon that should increase the number and types of feeds we can offer, some more dgmCompare-based technology on the way and in 2009 we’re concentrating on the way affiliates interact with the interface. You were obviously unaware of the features you mentioned above, so we need to look how we educate affiliates on the features we already have.
Moose: We don’t currently store data on PPC guidelines in the manner you suggest to make an answer that easy to compile. We have a 3 figure number of clients and each account manager knows their own accounts so it’s hard to coordinate an answer. If there is a campaign you like the sound of, let us know and we’ll give you feedback on it, but giving an exact list of campaigns that fit your requirements is difficult. There are Ts&Cs for each campaign that include the restrictions for you to check manually. However, we’ll look at codifying the storage of that information to make answering that sort of request easier.
Well I hear they have recently wiped out the sales team at DGM UK… and taken a loan from John Porter for a whacking £600k @ 15%. Is the begining of the end? To be honest they options for reaching customers are almost endless and the days of the affiliate has a place but nothing that warrants as many players are there are currently.
Hi Wackers,
I am not sure where you have got your information from but I think you are confusing dgm UK with dgm PLC. The UK is a separate entity from the PLC and we have not take any loans. We have not wiped out the sales team either, we have restructured the sales team but that is a positive move. Sales is clearly the core of any affiliate marketing business so this would never be a step we would take.
Helen