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.
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Well I should have put money on which site comes up number one for “hoseasons voucher” because I would have guessed right.
The high level of google status that particular site has continues to damage the rest of the affiliate industry.
If it suddenly fell from favour with google would that solve the problem?
Diane, I presume you’re referring to MVC. I have to disagree with your point about them causing damage to the rest of the industry. To answer your question on what would happen if MVC fell from favour with Google: the answer is quite simple, they would be replaced by someone else immediately.
I think the Hoseasons actions set an interesting precedent. I’m certain that they’ve done their homework on this but from my point of view, the levels of traffic that go through cashback and voucher code sites continues to grow. Therefore is it not more prudent to investigate the best way with which to work with these sites instead of withdrawing from them?
At i-level, we’ve carried out a great deal of research and analysis on customer journey and we have found that journeys vary quite a lot by merchant and I expect that travel is more complex. However our research showed that a lot of journeys start at cashback and voucher sites as well as them coming in and “stealing” the last click.
I’ll be really interested to see how this develops and whether content affiliates do see any uplift in sales.
Interesting decision – I would certainly like to know more about the research conducted in relation to the travel industry.
The same argument exists though cashback and voucher code sites are becoming a destination site in their own right with great power to influence the consumer and ‘switch’ brands where the customer is most price concious.