APS CashPlus affiliate program - be careful
Now I have a prepaid credit card site so I was interested to see the APD CashPlus affiliate program launch on Affiliate Window. However I wasn’t so happy to see some of their terms and conditions, namely:
“You must make every endeavour to generate at least 50 activated card sales per month”
This was very worrying, so I voiced my concerns on the appropriate thread on the A4U forum, no response. So I emailed the agency who are looking after this account “Brilliant” and they emailed me back to say this had been removed from the T’s and C’s. Good. However its a shame that they didn’t answer my questions publically on the A4U forum so everyone could benefit, never mind though sometimes things get missed.
So why am I saying be careful? Well when i signed up to the program I received this email:
Hello and welcome to the APS cashplus affiliate program. Please send an email entitled ‘Promo code request’ to affiliates@brilliantmedia.co.uk and detail in the body of your email the information about your website if the site URL differs from your email address. I will reply to your email with a promo code which needs to be attached at the end of the creative URL for tracking purposes.
No commissions will be paid to affiliates who have not included their promo code so it is essential that it is included.
Kind regards,
Tom Rigden
Brilliant Media
Hmm, so if I don’t manually insert a promo code then I don’t get paid? Surely that can’t be right. Then 6 days later, yes a full 6 days I get another email:
Hello,
This is your promo code which needs to be attached at the end of the creative URL for tracking purposes.
&p=http://www.mycashplus.co.uk?PC=ola223
Once this has been implemented the URL will track your traffic enabling you to start driving clicks!
Do let me know if you have any questions.
Kind regards,
Tom
I really don’t like the look of this, I mean why can’t they just make the links work in Affiliate Window? Every other one of their merchants manages to make it work so why can’t they? I email Tom at “Brilliant” and ask him point blank if I cut and paste the banner code straight from Affiliate Window, will it track? The answer was “no”. In order for the text links or banners to track then you have to manually add the promo code to the Affiliate Window link.
With the hundreds of emails we receive daily I thought it would be very easy for affiliates to miss this email telling us how to track sales with this program. I’m not saying don’t promote APS I’m just saying if you do then make sure you get a unique promo code from them and I would endeavour to trial a test sale first too. I would also suggest that APS display the fact that additonal tracking into the merchants details page on AW as there is no mention of it.
What I’m listening to right now: Jagged Edge feat Ashanti - “Put A little Ump In It”
Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Programs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
August 31st, 2007 at 3:50 pm
That sucks… I wonder how many other merchants have such quirks to enable commissions. I know when I bulk apply to companies at say shareasale I dont bother to read the welcome email… perhaps I should from now on!.
Thanks Kieron!
August 31st, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Kieron,
We’d like to speak to you personally about this and why we need to track in this fashion, we feel we’ve developed a robust method that can reward affiliates accurately under the constraints.
Please call on 01133940000 and I’ll be happy to talk this through with you.
Martin
August 31st, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Martin,
I won’t be calling, but will leave your phone number up here incase any other affiliates wish to do so. Here are my main concerns, maybe you could address them here so that all affiliates can benefit?
1. I promote another prepaid credit card merchant and they don’t need any additional tracking, neither does any of the dozens of other credit card merchants I promote, so why does APS?
2. Why haven’t you mentioned this additional tracking in the Merchant section of Affiliate Window? As I said in my original post a lot of affiliates don’t read “welcome” emails from merchants so you need to really shout about this and make sure we know.
3. Likewise, your colleague created a thread over on the A4U forum http://www.affiliates4u.com/forums/affiliate-marketing-lounge/64108-aps-cashplus-prepaid-mastercard-programme-goes-live-affiliate-window.html introducing the program. I posted a couple of questions on that thread 10 days ago and nobody has replied to it.
My issue is that if you absolutely “must” have this additional tracking added manually by affiliates then you need to ensure that you tell us. That means mentioning it in the merchant descriptions on AW as well as forums etc. Otherwise it all looks a bit shady, which I’m sure isn’t the case at all.
August 31st, 2007 at 5:55 pm
if I cut and paste the banner code straight from Affiliate Window, will it track? The answer was “no”.
That is shocking! Have you spoke to AWin about this too, as I’d be interested to know what their response is.
August 31st, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Hi Chris, yes I’ve spoke to AW and they didn’t know anything about it. APS is managed by an outside agency “Brilliant” which is why this has happened. They are on the case though and talking to the agency as we speak.
September 3rd, 2007 at 10:45 am
Guys,
Thanks for your comments - here’s some answers you your questions:
1. Due to security restrictions we cannot track all the way through to the final completion point using third party tracking, we therefore rely on a pass back of data from APS to validate the leads that affiliates see in the aff win interface.
2. We’ve updated the merchant section to inform affiliates of this for those that don’t read the email correspondence.
3. We’ve been informing affiliates through emails and phone calls individually and through the use of affiliate window’s communication system. Hopefully this, with the updated merchant description should cover all areas.
I can assure affiliates that the current system is robust and accurate and we’re working on improving it’s simplicity ASAP
Any affiliate with any questions please contact me on 01133940000
Thanks
Martin
September 6th, 2007 at 10:45 am
I was going to apply for this programme on my site. but was put off by all the negative feedback and tracking problems and hate it when you get ripped off by companies who clearly dont know what they are doing.
I have just signed up to pixpay affiliate programme it was simple, quick and easy, how good is that.
September 14th, 2007 at 10:59 am
This is very off putting, I for one will avoid this.
November 21st, 2007 at 12:29 am
It seems perfectly reasonable that APS wouldn’t want a third part tag on their checkout page - I know how I feel about implementing some tags on pages containing private data, and not every web merchant is as loose with their visitors privacy. Tracking in this manner is going to be more reliable, too - if APS mess up their page, the click (and lead) is still recorded with the affiliate scheme. Seems fairly straightforward, really, just slightly unusual.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:01 am
I ran into the same problem with them a while back, after a few days of no responses and emails that didn’t make sense I immediately dropped them. If an affiliate company is making you do all that work just to get commissions them something is wrong, its not worth all the bull, move on.