Good show. Useful information, especially from such a super star affiliate.

It was interesting to look at the sizes of creatives you pointed to. As we recommend our merchants on what sizes affiliates use we generally advise on the sizes most popular with our affiliates. But it seems to be prudent when refreshing new creatives to cover all the basis and come up with the full spectrum of sizes.

I, myself will be advising merchants to create at least one of the sizes you mentioned. It will be interesting to see the pick up rate.

We do try and obtain feedback about the network and also about the affiliate programs we are managing. So if you have any feedback for us or any of our merchants feel free to email me any time.

regards

Stephen

Having worked as merchant on a few different networks you never know :

1) How the email will be formatted - will it come out as one great blob of text, or beautifully crafted HTML
2) Who it is from - you or the network
3) How long it will take to get out
4) What personalisation can be added in - Anyone who hasn’t picked up Kieron’s hint about deeplinks yet must be a bit dense!

If you get the chance, test it before the programme goes live, or at worst, sign up to a few competitor programs and see what comes your way.

All affiliates need to at least know this before they can make a call on whether to promote the program by ppc, email lists or other methods.

That was the point of my post, how can we affiliates even begin to consider promoting an affiliate program if we don’t know what the earning capacity can be?

When affiliate managers are posting details about their programmes - how do you suggest they broadcast to affiliates how much money they can earn when there is a world of different techniques that drive traffic costing vasttly different amounts?

Also affiliates with an extrmeley well targeted campaign could earn vastly more than an affiliate with a poorly targeted campaign - how can they predict and account for this?

Let me know what your thoughts are…..

apologies, I knew it wasn’t Currys, I was just using Currys as an example in my main post. I’ll change it now.

Kieron

Firstly I want to say thanks for your article, I’m a big believer in positive criticism as every day offers us the chance to learn something new and improve on old methods.

However, can I politely point out that it was one of the other DSG brands that sent out an un-marked e-mail and NOT Currys as your post may lead people to believe. Currys work very hard to ensure their brand is represented correctly across the board and as such every e-mail we send out on their behalf has at least a name check, but more often that not also a logo and their tagline.

I’ll also be working with our Account Management teams to ensure your feedback is taken on board and implemented where possible.

Kind Regards,

Sam.

Samantha Leigh
Client Services Manager
Affiliate Window

e-mail: samantha.leigh@affiliatewindow.com
msn: sleighaw@hotmail.co.uk