Waitrose - how not to treat affiliate partners

Oct18

Waitrose - how not to treat affiliate partners

I meant to post about this a few days ago but never got round to it…better late than never.

I (and many other affiliates) received this email the other day from Waitrose.

“Dear Affiliate,

We are writing to announce the temporary suspension of the WaitroseEntertaining affiliate programme. The programme has been incredibly successful over the course of this year and we have been delighted with the results. However, we need to suspend the service in favour of our in store Marketing activity as we move into the Christmas period.

We ask that you remove all of your links and banners to WaitroseEntertaining by COB Tuesday 24th October at the very latest. Sales from cookies dropped before that date will be honoured during the cookie duration of 60-days, but no new cookies or sales will be paid out.

We hope to resume the programme early in the new year and we would like to thank you for your continued support.”

To be frank this has happened in the past with other merchants and its always in the run up to Christmas. It seems that whenever busy periods are expected, budgets get stretched and Affiliate Marketing is always the first to be dropped. Which, again I find really bizarre as Affiliate Marketing is a pay for performance model.

What also really annoys me is that the networks just stand by and watch this happen. When really they need to stand up and say “hey, thats not how you run a program and thats now how you treat affiliates”. If only eh?

What I’m listening to right now T-Pain - “I’m in love with a stripper”

Affiliate Marketing - Waitrose