Affiliates Reap the Rewards as Voucher Code Usage Surges

An interesting week for the world of voucher codes it seems. Fresh from reading a piece in the Sunday Times about Mark Pearson over the weekend, a 28 year old who has built a £30m Fortune from Affiliate Marketing.  I read with interest some fascinating facts and figures about voucher code usage from Hitwise.

This surge in voucher code usage is something that Internet Retailing is calling the emergence of the ‘maximising consumer’, I quite like this term as it demonstrates that consumers are not just looking for the cheapest price from often biased shopping comparison search engines but taking longer to look for value added offers and deals.

This trend will certainly have implications on Affiliate Marketing and Search channels as more cookies are dropped along a shoppers journey to the basket and adds to the debate on both de-duplication and allocation of commission to affiliates over other channels in the mix.

It also rightly does point out that the voucher code market is still a little murky, due to some historical and present spammy and volatile methods used by some sites to acquire traffic over user experience - something I think Google will take action on at some stage.

Despite the mass of voucher codes sites in existence and I’m talking over 200 - I can see a core handful of companies taking this channel by the horns followed by a number syndicated and white label offerings and thankfully a total clean up of this internal channel.

Also good news for our wee project Restaurant Vouchers though, as the report states that searches for the term have increased by 226.3% over the last 12 months!

More stories on this over at Google News.

Transparency of Affiliate Marketing

Your Affiliate Marketing programme may be up and running, with a whole army of eager media owners applying to join in. So that’s good news, right?  Well yes. But, what you must consider is that Affiliate Marketing never has, or will be, an out-of-the-box solution to driving sales or leads for your business.  In fact, what it can be, by following some simple best practice guidelines, is an enormously cost effective sales channel that will bring in customers well below the CPA costs of other digital channels.
 
But to get there, your affiliate publishers will expect that you play by some key unwritten rules and will demand levels of transparency within your programme to allow them to maximise the visibility of your brand on their websites with the focus on achieving a complimentary, win-win relationship. And a relationship that could last for many lucrative years.
 
So what do you need to be transparent? Well affiliates are not all created equal.  They will use increasingly diverse methods to drive traffic to your brand, ranging from more traditional methods such as content, paid search, review and email marketing to utilising social media, cashback, voucher codes, video and mobile.  These internal channels, which I will look at in upcoming blog entries, are unique and will often demand distinct requirements to maximise their ROI.
 
No matter what channel they use, being transparent will help all these affiliates understand the true conversion rate of your programme and website, and will help deliver trust in working with you.  You must therefore be both open and honest with your programme.  If you have a closed brand bidding group, state this and tell people how they too may get involved.  If you have guidelines on cashback and voucher codes, then clearly state your rules of engagement.  Likewise, don’t ever try to trick affiliates whether intentionally or not.  Don’t reduce cookie periods, or commission levels without explanation, and certainly don’t sneak in changes without communicating them first.
 
Equally, if you de-dupe your sales against other channels, state this clearly.  Similarly if you or your network offers PI cookies or re-targeting that enables affiliates to earn additional revenue, make this clear from the start. These small incentives could be the difference between a positive or negative ROI for the affiliate.
 
After all they could be investing £100,000 a month to generate £101,000 in affiliate commissions. Not an astounding profit margin! If the ROI dropped to below £100,000 per month and the affiliate switches off the campaign, that's a huge amount of turnover for a merchant that vanishes overnight. Unfortunately, this happens all too regularly, especially in niche markets.
 
You may also discover that your programme attracts just a few hundred key performing affiliates. It’s imperative that you work with them with the right attitude from the outset, and treat everyone equal. You just don’t know if they could turn out to be a top 10 affiliate in months to come!

Woody's Wise Words

I'm flattered that Gareth & the team believe I can knowledgeably blog about the affiliate scene. With the ongoing success of the affiliates4u community, a4uexpo London and now our first-ever pan-european event a4uexpo Europe, I certainly feel as though I'm in the thick of most of the happenings in the channel.

But as much as I'm asked to commentate on the latest developments and even preside over deciding who's the best in the business with the annual a4uAwards, I'm also, more importantly, a humble affiliate myself and therefore faced with the same situations, most probably share the same views as many and will rant like a good 'un when needs must!

I would assume that's what Gareth saw in me and over the coming months I hope to do the channel justice, covering what I see as important developments, interesting manoeuvres and maybe a hint of gossip too. If you've seen anything or heard anything you think is worth a mention, do let me know too. I might have just missed that one as I left the bar for the last train!