“Super Affiliate” study from R.O. Eye disappoints
Affiliate management agency R.O. Eye released the findings of their “super-affiliate” study the other day. Now before I go on I’d like to say that I like R.O. Eye, they are nice people and they are good at what they do. However, this “study” left a lot to be desired.
For instance it comes up with such staggering insights like:
“Poor communication and a widespread lack of market understanding result in considerable sales and profit margin losses across the affiliate industry, new research reveals today.”
Put your hand up if you didn’t already know this? Hardly earth shattering and definitely not “new”.
What about these pearls of wisdom?
“The survey finds that super-affiliates believe the root of these problems to be ineffective affiliate programme management. Common issues such as dead or old data feeds and expired offers frequently result in reduced commission for affiliates and loss of sales for brands.”
Again, is this anything new?
I was invited to take part in this study but I declined as I didn’t think the questions were anything new or challenging, so didn’t see the point. The questions sent to me were “Do you prefer to work directly with a merchant rather than an affiliate network?” and “What do you require from a merchant to maximise return from an affiliate programme?” As you can see nothing testing and nothing I haven’t answered a million times in other interviews, forums etc.
So it was no surprise really that the press release that came from the questions was a bit weak. I’m not naive though, I fully understand that R.O. Eye conducted the research as a vehicle to gain more PR for their company and they knew full well what the answers would be, all of which are beneficial for an affiliate marketing agency. I still feel disappointed though, I think there could have been a bit more done on this which could have provoked more discussion.
If anyone wants to read the full press release then Keith has it here, and Kirsty has some chat about it here.
What I’m listening to right now: Ludacris - “Stand Up”
Sunday, August 5th, 2007 at 4:56 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. 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 am the founder of ShareMyPlaylists.com, ContentNow.co.uk and some other businesses. I thought it would be fun to blog, writing about my experiences in Internet 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.
Hi Kieron, I was also asked to complete the survey and didn’t. I did feel as if it was just re-asking questions I’d already answered and heard echoed in one form or another in various forums and discussions.
I think a proper study of super affiliates and their behaviours and requirements could be very valuable… but as you say, this wasn’t the idea with this particular bit of information distribution.
Hi Kieron,
Thanks mate for your comments on our super affiliates study. Very useful to hear your views – we’re keen to generate as much debate as possible!
I fully appreciate your point of view and understand that many of the findings from our study have been around in the industry for a while, we’ve been hearing them from day 1!. The purpose of our study was to provide a measure of this and shine light on how little understanding there indeed is out there. Our key aim was to educate marketers in general, many whom are new to the affiliate industry.
With this in mind, we did not want to commission a study that would potentially confuse readers with issues which are too specific, as whilst the affiliate industry has a thorough understanding of current issues and concerns, there is a lack of understanding of the sector from the outside.
The aim was therefore to educate on a more general level, and hopefully having done that, we will look to carry out a more in-depth survey at a later date.
The study has certainly raised a lot of interesting opinions and debates from a range of skillsets, all of which are very relevant. Just wish I had the time to comment on them all!
Cheers,
Colin Telford.
R.O.EYE Affiliate Director.
colint @ ro-eye.co.uk