Opodo Affiliate Programme

Just a quick one to say that the Opodo affiliate programme is closing on Tradedoubler and will be popping up on Affiliate Window instead. Nice WIN for AWIN who are building up a nice collection of travel merchants including BA, LowCostHolidays, Blue Chip Vacations and Hoseasons.

Last date for changing the links is 1st March. Nice to have a bit of notice for a change !

Removing affiliates from affiliate programmes

Removing Inactive & Low Volume affiliates

Not really sure the wisdom of this ?… (see below email I have copied), maybe someone that manages affiliate programmes can enlighten me. I can see that it might make some statistics look good but otherwise can’t see the worth in the time it must take to sort this out… Especially when you consider this is the only email I have ever had from the merchant since joining. What I’m thinking is, there are many reasons why an affiliate hasn’t promoted a merchant significantly – most commonly that they simply haven’t got round to it I guess. This doesn’t mean, however that they never will do, so why waste the time having people re-applying etc. Wouldn’t it be a better use of time and resource to ask affiliates why they are not currently promoting and if there is anything they need to help them promote the merchant better ?

PS – 2 days notice to remove links is also a bit annoying.

Dear Affiliate,

The XXXX Affiliate team have analysed the performance of publishers during XXXX’s 2009 Financial Year (Oct 08- Sep 09) with an eye to clear the database of affiliates who were not generating many impressions or unique visitors.

We have noticed that your site is one of those that has not met these criteria. We will therefore be de-activating your account by 27th January 2010.

If you are still interested in being part of the XXXX Affiliate program, please re-apply to join the programme at any time.

Also, if your performance has boosted since October 2009 please let us know as soon as possible so we can ensure that you are able to continue on the programme.

The Perfect Affiliate Scheme ?

One of the biggest (lucrative) things I have learned so far in affiliate marketing is to be very selective about which merchants to promote. It can make a massive difference to the end results. The main thing is to match the site content and domain / search ranking, apart from that the biggest single factor is of course conversion. In addition I like to go for brands that I can be enthusiastic about as “the sell” is so much easier that way.

In no particular order then, below are my most wanted features. If you are an affiliate, a merchant or work at a network / agency what would you add to the list ?

• No Cashback Sites Policy - Not that they don’t have a policy but they have a policy and it doesn’t allow incentivised traffic. What’s the point of me going to great lengths to promote a merchant if I lose the cookie at the last minute to a cashback site?
• No Discount Codes in Checkout Page - Why a merchant would like to distract a booker at this critical point is beyond me. Having the discount code box is almost encouraging them to go back to a search engine to look for a discount code which will either reduce your margin or lead your customer to be cross – sold to a competitor. There are other ways to implement voucher codes.
• High Conversion Rate – Honestly I don’t really care too much about the commission level, what I want is something that converts. Great prices, trustworthy website, call to action (”sale ends soon” / “only 2 seats left”) all helps.
• Leakage Points Blocked – Connected to High Conversion Rate but kind of different. No phone numbers, brochure requests or similar that will encourage an offline sale which leads me to…
• Online Booking Discount - If you have to have a phone number, please don’t make it a free phone number and please offer an online only booking discount to reward your customers for keeping your sales costs down.
• Merchant Doesn’t go bankrupt! – This can be a real pain as it can mean losing out on commissions for sales that were made before the insolvency.
• Available through an affiliate network – I’m in two minds about including this… The reason I like this is it makes reporting easier (all in one place) and don’t have to worry about reaching a payment threshold, but then again there are some excellent non-network schemes around with I guess higher margins because there is no middle man.

Merchant Merry Go Round

It’s like musical chairs at the moment…. Quite annoying to have to wast time changing links when I could be writing compelling content.

• The BA.com affiliate scheme is now off linkshare and available at TD or AWIN.
• Co-operative Travel is off Buy.at and instead on Affiliate Future (including a Christmas incentive to win an iPod). Search box creative coming soon and, separately Co-operative Travel Cruises launch is coming soon.
• Lastminute.com have popped up on Tradedoubler – same commission levels.
• First Choice are now on Commission Junction and will close on TD 7th December.

List of British Affiliate Networks

Couple of new programmes launched recently that I thought are worth a mention :

• Megabus.com at Affiliate Window.
• VivaStay.com at Affiliate Window & Webgains. The telephone number and external links are removed for affiliate traffic which gets a big tick from me.

Sunshine.co.uk Affiliate Banners

As I have been giving some coverage to the new Thomson and Thomas Cook plug and play live content units I also wanted to showcase the sunshine.co.uk affiliate scheme banners which work off an RSS feed and can be up and running on your site with just a few minutes work. I’m pretty fond of the sunshine affiliate programme. There are no leakage points for the traffic I send them like phone numbers of third party ads, and also they are cheap which is always going to help conversion. To top it off they don’t work with cashback sites or have a discount code box in their checkout – again focusing on converting the sale instead of distracting the customer.

The Sunshine.co.uk affiliate programme is at Affiliate Future.

Here’s a Tenerife banner that shows their best deal to Tenerife and takes your customers to the landing page for the best Sunshine.co.uk holiday deals for Tenerife.

And you can even take it down to sub-resort level. For example here we have a holiday offer for Kolymbia in Rhodes.

There are also a range of customisable javascript search boxes which I find convert much better than standard banners. Again you can pre-define resort area.

You might also to have a look at The Sunpress plugin for Wordpress.

Thomas Cook Content Units Launched

Thomas Cook have followed Thomson Holidays fuse pump content units by also offering some easy to implement live holiday deals to bring relevant offers to affiliate marketing travel websites. In a few steps you can get offers on your website grouped by destination or price range.

Available in conjunction with the Thomas Cook affiliate programme at Tradedoubler they work in excatly the same way as the Thomson units and are available in a choice of IAB approved sizes. Here are a couple of examples. Colours and border are customisable.

• Taking Cuba holidays from the feed then specifying Cayo Coco and under £1000 :
• Madeira packages under £500 with no border and red text

A nice and painless way to get some live availability on your affiliate travel site.

New Content Units from Thomson

Having a play with a new feature to the Thomson affiliate programme tonight.

Using the AdCreator it’s possible to create late deal banners very relevant to your content sites. Especially useful if you have a travel website focusing on a specific resort area, you can serve up – in a choice of formats – late deal holidays  to your chosen area available at Thomson.co.uk. The feed is updated daily so hopefully these will be “implement and forget” leaving busy affiliates to concentrate on compelling content and traffic generation.

A couple of examples below. Once you get into it they only take a few minutes to create.

Affiliates – Please let me know what you think and if you will be using these on your sites.

180 x 150 Gran Canaria Deals with keyword “Maspalomas”

300 x 250 all destinations and keyword Gatwick + price cap £300

Hoseasons stops cashback and voucher code sites

Some news from hoseasons that content affiliate marketeers in the travel industry might be glad to read…… Copied below. I would be glad to hear from anyone that is promoting hoseasons if they experience better conversion rates after this. I will certainly be more keen to promote them knowing that my customers are less likely to go off to a cashback or voucher code site and over ride my cookie.

The Hoseasons affiliate programme is available at tradedoubler and affiliate window.

After careful consideration and looking at customer journeys, we have decided to cease working with affiliate Loyalty and Reward site (Cashback and incentive site) and voucher code directories.

Because Hoseasons has not provided any discount codes to our affiliate network and does not currently have any intention to do so we feel that our inclusion on these sites is misleading and does not genuinely provide us with the new customers and incremental sales that are needed to make any affiliate programme a success. In addition we feel that our other affiliate partners are losing out as their cookies are potentially getting overwritten at the point of purchase.

As a result the following amendment has been made to our terms and conditions:

The Affiliate/Publisher/Partner must not promote Hoseasons on a website operating a cash back model, voucher code directory model or incentive models. Such websites are may be defined by any or all of the following:

• The URL contains the following terms or variations or derivatives of them: ‘voucher code’  ‘voucher’  ‘code’  ‘coupon’  ‘cash back’.
• The website appears in search engine listings under any of the terms above.
• The website’s principal proposition is the promotion of incentivised discount, promotion or voucher codes or cash back offers to users purchasing the affiliate merchants products or services

The extent to which the above factors are deemed to apply to an affiliate applicant’s website or business shall be decided at the sole discretion of Hoseasons.

British Airways Affiliate Programme

A few changes to the BA affiliate programme have been announced. I have copied the letter below but overall I think it’s good news for my sites anyway as I am mostly pushing longhaul and I will be glad to be able to promote the BA holidays site. The de duplication is a slight concern, just something we have to wait and see how much it impacts (it seemed to take a big chunk out of the Thomas Cook programme). The BA programme is currently available through both Tradedoubler & Affiliate Window

Introduction and Vision
In 2008, the British Airways affiliate programme launched internationally with the introduction of four new markets in Asia Pacific and five in Europe to replicate the success in UK & Ireland. Our long term goal is to run a fully international programme, offering our global affiliate base the opportunity to earn significant commissions on flights and package deals booked through ba.com.

To do this requires some changes to the set up of the programme in each market such as the tracking technologies we use, the commissions we pay, the basket contents that we pay commission on and the incentives for affiliates to generate high yield bookings for British Airways.

These changes will have a positive impact for our affiliate partners but they do require explanation, which is what this announcement sets out to do.

DART Tracking
The back bone of the new programme is a move to a unified tracking solution as it will enable us to offer our partners greater flexibility on the commissionable routes, bigger incentives and a focus on the long term goals for British Airways. DoubleClick or DART tracking has been in place in Europe and Asia from their respective programme launches, and now with its implementation in the UK we can take a global approach to many aspects of the programme structure:

De-Duplication
De-duplication takes two forms; the current affiliate tracking solution de-duplicates sales across the affiliate channel only but as of the 17th August, affiliate activity will be de-duplicated across all digital channels including search and display. The implication for affiliates is that fewer sales will be recorded through the channel because currently any sale with an affiliate cookie present is rewarded, but de-duplication means only an affiliate sale where it is the last referring cookie will be rewarded. To mitigate the potential loss of earnings that this could mean, we have also implemented changes to other aspects of the programme (see below).

Cross-Border Sales
The UK&I programme currently pays commission on bookings with a departure point in the UK only. The new DART tracking means we can now pay commission on flights from any global departure point and booked from anywhere in the world. Although you may be joined to the UK&I affiliate programme, you can take full advantage of British Airways global flight network from 17th August.

Dynamic Packaging
With the closure of the British Airways Holidays affiliate programme and the introduction of dynamic packaging on ba.com, British Airways will be able to offer you the opportunity to earn commission on hotel, car and package sales in the very near future. We will provide you with more information, including the commission rates for each product, closer to the launch but we have ensured the commissions are highly competitive offering greater revenue earning potential from the programme.

New Commission
The final adjustment we are making to the programme is the commission on offer. In the UK, commission is currently set at 1.5% for Long Haul, and 1.25% for Domestic and Short Haul.

To reflect the global position of the programme, the commission levels for the UK&I will be split by haul from 17th August and are as follows:

Domestic – 1%
Short Haul – 1.25%
Long Haul – 2%

Whilst developing the new commission levels, we wanted to better reward affiliates for the value of each sale. Long Haul flights are more profitable for British Airways and so we wanted to pass that on in increased commission to make them even more profitable for you. We will be notifying you in the coming months about offers and incentives that will further enhance your earning potential on the BA programme.

Global Affiliate Programme
All the changes to the programme are designed to unite all of the existing affiliates on all the global programmes while providing British Airways with a solid platform to support a truly global affiliate programme. We will provide you with the tools to promote British Airways flights and to earn commission on any flight sale, regardless of where you are based, departure part, destination or currency.

Thank you for your contribution to the programme so far and we sincerely hope that the changes will mean you can continue to do so for many more years to come.