AFFILIATE CITIZEN

Codes Codes Codes 

With the recent rush from retail sites to offer discount codes to every affiliate out there I thought I would outline how we have constructed a special CMS for our travel website, enabling us to aggregate both offers and codes from travel suppliers.

TravelPixel

Within the travel sphere, discount codes have been fairly slow to take hold. There are several reasons for this that I wont go into here but suffice to say we have seen an increase in our logs from people looking for special voucher codes for a % off at checkout. In addition to this we have also seen dubious ‘voucher sites’ claiming to offer codes for travel sites that do not exist, potentially ’stealing’ commission that could have come from us – a quality review driven website. In order to counteract this we have taken advantage of a database driven approach and a democratization of distribution where the upload and maintenance of product is concerned.

We maintain a backend of around 300 travel suppliers, each of which is automatically linked with various user reviews submitted onsite. This enables us to quickly provide relevant sites to visitors and increase our conversion rate. It also enabled us to build our new travel discount section.

Frameworks

Within the review framework within our CMS we have the reviews split into various categories of travel type. Examples of which may be ‘packages’, ‘hotels’ etc….When starting the discount section we used these categories in the same way to produce defined areas for each type of travel supplier – outlined below with examples:

Package Holiday Offers
- First Choice Discounts and Codes

- Lowcostholidays voucher codes

 Villa Holiday Deals
- Villa Parade Discount Code

Accommodation & Hotel Deals
- Alpharooms Voucher Code

Flights Offers and Codes
- Virgin Atlantic Deals

Car Hire Discounts
- Holiday Autos Voucher Codes

Cruise and Ferry Deals
- DFDS Seaways Deals

Ski Holiday Offers
- Crystal Holidays specials

UK Holiday Deals
- Hoseasons Special Deals

Rail Travel Discounts
- Eurostar voucher Codes

Travel Insurance Deals
- Flexicover Deals

Luggage special offers
- Essentials4travel

Cheap Airport Parking Deals
- Resorthoppa Deals and Voucher Codes

Cheap Airport Transfers
- Holiday Taxis Deals

Holiday Attraction Deals
- Red Letter Days Voucher Code

As you can see above each category and specific merchant in that category is indexed by a number which also helps us when we come to apply mod rewrite to our urls.

Distribution

The task of harvesting all the possible offers online from every travel supplier we have listed would be a monumental task so we needed a scalable solution that would incentivise suppliers to do that task for us. To that end we constructed an interface for uploading offers or codes for merchants. Now some merchants or affiliate managers are more proactive than others so to start with we offer a general upload area where all types of offer can be uploaded but not edited. This was useful in getting many of the initial offers onsite but did leave something to be desired in terms of interaction from the merchant.

We then devised an interface for SPECIFIC merchants where they can add, edit or maintain their offers or codes on our site really easily. The only involvment we have is to approve offers (test links etc) and we then switch them on. Another point to mention  is that we also try to insist on including deeplinks where possible to the appropriate offer landing page. This increases conversion.

The fact that we have all the merchants listed on a backend and connected to the public facing site allows us to instantly turn certain suppliers on or off – or delete them if they have been naughty. In addition we also rate the suppliers on the public side depending on how many LIVE offers they have onsite in a given period.

Additional aspects we are considering for the future include the ability to upload a CSV of offers (great for merchants if you have a load of deals to upload!), greater depth of description for offers and perhaps some sort of image upload to further enhance listings.

Time to Clean Up!

Ive been meaning to write about this for a couple weeks but have been a tad busy with various pressing matters so here goes. The announcement in question from Google can be read here.

Basically this means that the actual display url used in adwords PPC adverts will have to match EXACTLY the landing page domain. So what does this mean for paid search affiliates?

The Redirect

Most large sites have registered several domain names to cover themselves, usually the .com, .co.uk or .net. Now because it is not wise or sensible in Google’s eyes to have domains with mirrored content most merchants will redirect (301) to the main domain where the majority of the content lies. Usually the .com or .co.uk.

Clever affiliates can take advantage of this by using one of the limited slots available on the SERPS to get their ad shown even if another affiliate (or the merchant) is using the dominant domain url for their own campaign.

Lets say a merchant is using cheapholidays.com for their own PPC campaign, both brand and generics. They also own the domain cheapholidays.co.uk. The .co.uk domain redirects to the main domain cheapholidays.com. Therefore the affiliate can use the .co.uk domain in their own PPC campaign and the merchants has twice the coverage in any given SERPS for a targeted keyword. Add in other domain extensions and you can see where this goes…

The same happens with display urls missing the protocol prefix. For example http://www.adomain.com and http://adomain.com are presently considered unique domain urls in the adwords system.

Of course this makes a mockery of the ‘one domain per result’ rule that is put forward by Google and hence this crackdown has come into play – long overdue in my opinion.

Grubby

Im sure a fair few affiliates use this method and just quickly I have found this example for Pitchwell TV on AW. At the time of writing this I can see both a protocol ad and a domain redirect ad in place there. So the merchant (or affiliate on the dominant url) is competing with 3 other bidders who should not be there according to the adwords clampdown.

It would be good to get some merchants opinions on this as some will stand to lose out with less coverage in the SERPS from affiliates bidding via their redirecting URLs.

Tmesis

‘Tmesis’ – a feeling that you may have missed something. A vague feeling of guilt that intelligent marketeers can use to their advantage to keep shoppers or indeed online browsers around for longer. Comparison sites thrive on this by convincing consumers that the need not look elsewhere and their time has been well spent. Of course, in the current climate of instant gratification time is vital to a lot of people.  This also applies to choosing a suitable merchant, when faced with so many, on the various affiliate networks you may frequent during your time as an online marketeer.

Metrics

How do most people in the offline world overcome the feeling of tmesis? They justify their shopping experience by going for special offers, discounts or top of the range items to ensure they can stave off the guilt of ‘having missed something’. They look to metrics and figures – ‘buy 1 get 1 free’, ‘ 20% off’ and so forth.

In the affiliate-merchant relationship where remote communication and interaction is commonplace affiliates must rely on metrics and figures to gauge a good program and whether to promote it with their precious time. When a market is competitive and many similar merchants are available to the affiliate how can the successful marketeer be sure they have chosen the correct partner and avoid massive tmesis?

We are bombarded with a huge amount of statistics: EPC, CPC, CPA, 90th EPC, CAVE DATA, NETWORK RATINGS, AOV, CONVERSION RATE to name a few. These metrics and figures are extremely useful in measuring the relative performance of merchants against each other but of course the only real test is a live PPC campaign or inserting the merchant onto your content site. Both of which take time and in the former’s case, money.

Gut Instinct

What it comes down to, in my opinion anyway, is a general positive gut instinct feeling about a program. When considering several programs with similar metrics and commission deals consider the ‘added value’. This may well result in you choosing a merchant that could possibly offer a lower %, but the additional aspects will help you run a more profitable campaign.

So what would I consider to be ‘added value’? Read on:

• Tiered program with REALISTIC goals for the affiliate based on sale volume through the month
• Communication and support is viewed as essential by the merchant. This point is crucial in my opinion, especially if you are planning to promote in a market you dont know a lot about. Support via MSN and phone is invaluable in these situations. However, dont stand for agencies who contact you on MSN or offer support and then take days to resolve any problem with ‘their’ merchant.
• The program offers an in house solution. Usually an in house program offers a higher % than the network program as merchants dont have to take into account network costs.
• A reasonable approach to PPC. If you see a merchant’s program that says ‘the affiliate must not bid in a higher position than us’ that is a sure sign of ignorance on the part of the merchant towards how PPC works (notably google) and the long term aspects of an affiliate-merchant relationship.
• With regard to the above point, if the merchant bids on their own brand and restricts affiliates from doing so (commonplace), check whether affiliate cookies are overwritten by the brand bid. This effectively means if anyone comes back to the merchant site by searching on their brand having discovered them at your site – you get nothing. Some merchants do this, some dont.

There are many other added value factors that may come into play for different types of merchant depending on the vertical but those are some of the main ones. Hopefully that will help new affiliates choose the right merchant for a long and fruitful relationship – without too much tmesis!