I thought I would put some of my resources into building a mini site to promote an audio visual merchant, for the likes of Plasma TV's etc. After a bit of searching and some recommendations I decided to give Digital Direct a go.
So I emailed their affiliate manager and told him that I would like to work with them and that I would build a site based on their products and nobody else's. I would also promote the site via ppc using my budget, and therefore my risk. All I would need from Digital Direct is their product feed, for keyword building purposes. He replied and thought it was a great idea, would love to work with me etc. etc. but they would only give me their top 350 products, not the whole feed! They would then review my activity after 3 months...
"as we want to see what you can achieve with our main product feed before we provide you with our full product feed".
Eh? I explained to them that in order to really make a go of the ppc campaign and to make it a success I would need their full product feed. After all, thousands of other merchants allow affiliates access to their full product feed without issue. I mean there is nothing confidential in there, its just a list of the products they sell for goodness' sake!!
Anyway, needless to say I've binned Digital Direct. What a ridiculous, stupid policy. I offer to spend tens of thousands of pounds to promote them on an entirely risk free basis and they won't give me their product feed. Bizarre.
What I'm listening to right now: Ciara – "Like A Boy"
Digital Direct won’t give affiliates access to their full product feed. Why?
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8 Responses to Digital Direct won’t give affiliates access to their full product feed. Why?
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Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I am the founder of ShareMyPlaylists.com, ContentNow.co.uk and some other stuff. I have no idea why I'm blue on this photo though but I like it!
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Hi Kieron
Don’t Digital Direct have a bit of history when it comes to not working with their affiliates very well?
http://www.a4uforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=44716
Don’t think I’d ever want to promote them after that.
Yes indeed. However I had been told they had cleaned up their act and were now a very good performing program.
Plenty more fish in the sea however.
If you’d like to spend 10s of thousands promoting http://www.lovehoney.co.uk we’d be happy to have you
Join direct or (next week) through Affiliate Future, which Jess is managing for you.
Be happy to have you!
this is a total guess, but:
they’ve probably got a ‘top 350′ feed already set up, but would have to spend some time coding an ‘all products’ feed.
that probably needs someone’s boss to sign it of & (knowing most companies) the affiliate program manager won’t be able to do that, so someone from IT would have to be roped in. Without any solid proof that it’s going to achieve results, nobody wants to stick their neck out.
Silly but it happens every day!
they should hire their affiliate team/manager after it.
seems really silly.
With your impressive record Kieron, I think this probably sounds like a merchant who is fairly blinkered to the win win proposition you presented to them. I don’t think they realised their horse had actually come in, in the end it will be their loss. I trust you may have targeted a viable alternative who is more appreciative.
This company was caught out trying to screw affiliates by Nadeem and I don’t think anybody should work with them… or Affiliate Window for that matter who allow such an unscrupulous retailer to continue having an affiliate program with them.
It makes you wonder sometimes…whether it’s the company or the affiliate manager making this decision they clearly don’t have a clue!
Graham
Buyagift.com