Coke Zone campaign on Tradedoubler update - and will Coke get a return from cashback sites?
A short while after I blogged about the Coke Zone campaign last Friday I had a phone call from the account manager responsible for the programme to address my concerns. Great, I like to get these things sorted and get on and make money. So we had a brief chat about how to communicate effectively with TradeDoubler as my 9 emails seem to have been lost in the system, and I was told why my commission had been set to 0.00p. Apparently it was a bit of a mix-up to cut a long story short, anyway its resolved now, which is the main thing.
However, the big issue I had was the fact that Coke don’t allow the word(s) “Coke Zone” in affiliate URL’s. I stated that I though this was a bit silly and doesn’t help us as affiliates earn money. He sympathised, but said at the end of the day it is Coke’s campaign and they must run the campaign by Coke’s rules. Fair enough I say but have you seen these fellas?…..
www.ipoints.co.uk/collect-ipoints/details/1yM3KZrqaUSe/Coke+Zone
www.quidco.com/coke-zone/
Both are popular cashback/reward sites that are clearly displaying the term “Coke Zone” in the URL. So is it one rule for one and one rule for another or are these guys just being naughty? Or maybe they just didn’t read the terms and conditions? Anyway he said he would investigate and call me Monday (today). Great I say as I will be updating my blog today. As of 7pm I haven’t received any calls.
Anyway, as I was searching Google for “Coke Zone” I came across this thread on a forum…
www.hotukdeals.com/item/160572/coke-zone/
The thing that really jumped out at me was the following:
Surprised anyone wants them really, the ‘prizes’ are rubbish! Just wallpapers and stuff, I only joined because I got 45p from quidco
So here we have a member of Quidco publicly saying that he only signed up to Coke Zone to receive his 45p. It led me to wonder how much traffic from cashback/reward sites can be classed as “genuine”? I.e. a user who has a real interest in the product and who’s not signing up just to receive some free cash. I know this is a big issue for the industry as a whole and these type of sites probably merit a blog post of their own, but it did get me to thinking what could Coke (and other lead generated campaigns? do to get past this?
Offer a 2 tier commission structure: Let’s say the cost per lead is £1, then why not say half it for cashback/reward sites? I think we have to be real and honest here and admit that it’s the nature of the beast that a good percentage of these users will only sign up for the cashback/reward. So if this is recognised then lets offer a different commission rate for this type of traffic. Some merchants (gaming merchants spring to mind) already do this.
Don’t work with cashback/reward sites at all: Maybe a bit controversial but if the quality of the traffic isn’t there then what’s the point. On the other hand can you afford to ignore over 100,000 Quidco users?
What are people’s thoughts on this? I don’t honestly know what the answer is.
What I’m listening to right now: Joe – “We’re Family”
Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 8:16 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.
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[...] appears that this seemingly simple to spot problem isn’t the only one people have with Coke [...]
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.
I think a small handful of the bigger merchants, such as your previous posts about Next and Toys R Us, are detached from the real-world, or think they are above everyone.
RE: Cashback sites, they have their place and I’m sure do generate genuine traffic but perhaps the Coke Zone wasn’t the most appropriate “product” for an affiliate programme?
Cashback sites as a quick way to earn a few pence for nothing is an issue I’ve raised before (I think when Martin Lewis was promoting them on the radio) - to me it’s a bad road to go down and merchants, especially those on lead based programs, need to be aware of quality and fraud (Clarke has a lot of useful stuff on his blog about this).
Another issue is that often lead programs have limited budget, and by the time Joe Bloggs affiliate has sorted out their promos, sent out a mailshot, large chunks of the budget is swallowed up - in some cases gone.
A tiering system would be good, and/or perhaps in the case of limited budget restricted allocation to cashback.
However, my fear is that these cashback guys are so big now that no network will ever say no to them - even if it is at the expense of new affiliates getting into the industry or restricting growth of others. But then we get back down to the legend that “it’s business and you go with the cash”.
We run two programs for Bingo Bongo on Affiliate Future, including a reduced CPA tier for incentivised traffic - From analysing the stats, I can see that there is clearly a strong element of users who have signed up just to get their cashback, but there is also a large number of high quality leads introduced via this channel, and as a small merchant, we’d really feel the pinch without those leads.
I think the people running this campaign (or the network) have made a major blunder! I would have expected ‘no incentivised traffic’ to be one of the first things they put in the T&C’s.
However if they have no way of measuring the true success of this campaign, it will make no odds to the marketing team that are behind it.
Cashback sites may have value for some companies in some industries, but they have to be used shrewdly. 45p for every sign up will get people signing up just for the cash but if you cashback 2% of purchases over £200, then that may just convince a browser to pick you over a competitor.
I would have thought that the kind of users who use cashback sites are exactly the same users that Coke are after. Users who have an interest in anything for free. At the end of the day the Coke Zone is an incentive based reward scheme just the same as a cashback site.