How NOT To Treat Affiliates (You Won’t Believe This…)
By Anna Johnson on January 14th, 2009You may know that some merchants have, in their affiliate terms and conditions, requirements that affiliates do not bid on certain keywords or trade marks for pay-per-click advertising purposes.
Fine… but if you were a merchant concerned that some affiliates may not be aware or abiding by this requirement, would you send out the following email to ALL your affiliates?
Click on the image to see the message in its entirety:
This email was sent out to Dish Networks’s affiliates earlier today. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that in an environment like this – where most merchants would be wise to help and encourage their affiliates to promote their products – this email sends the right message.
Sure, Dish Networks may have a strict policy about affiliates bidding on certain terms… sure *some* affiliates may be unaware or ignoring this policy… but do you then send out an abusive message to ALL your affiliates in order to rebuke the wrong doers?
And let’s not even mention the lack of personalization and APPALLING format of this email.
I shake my head.
January 19th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Hey!
I think shaking your head is a perfectly appropriate thing to do.
Are these guys building a business? Do they understand that their business is built by partnerships with people who know how to get the word out effectively about what they do?
I’m seeing a lot of this lately from affiliate managers.
On a related topic, I still haven’t been able to get a single affiliate manager (I’ve asked many) to respond to why you would ever completely dump a non-producing affiliate, rather than segmenting them into a “non-productive affiliates” category.
http://www.affiliateadvice.us/affiliate_philosophies/dumping-affiliates-doesnt-produce-affiliate-sales.html
Any thoughts on why an affiliate manager would dump an affiliate who’s not shown sales in the last 3 months?
Thanks for sharing another example of poor judgement on the part of an affiliate manager. Any suggestions on what we can do to help them see our side? I’m willing to work to see their side of the coin… it just seems that they’re not really willing to explain anything about their side of the coin, and just expect affiliates to “get” why they do what they do.
Warmest,
Jonathan