View Full Version : Here's a rant for you...
I've been using AW for just about 2 years now and I still don't get how it works. I mean, we join merchants we're interested in using our account, right? This provides merchants and account managers with the most obvious, most effective, direct, fool-proof method of announcing all kinds of useful things about their programmes, right? Yet, I constantly find myself stumbling across and piecing together all sorts of (once) useful information on voucher codes, competitions, promotions, sales etc. from a variety of disparate sources.
I might get an email. On a good day it might actually contain all of the information it was supposed to. On a normal day, I'll get a follow-up email correcting all of the mistakes in the first email. Often the email will reference another email that I didn't get or, even better, fail to even mention the merchant's name until the footer.
I might find a hint of a voucher code or promotion in the AW Promotions section, which I rarely remember to check because I'm still unsure when exactly it gets updated. More often than not it seems not to change for weeks and then suddenly contains all kinds of interesting yet out of date and incomplete promotion details with "more info" links that go to a page with even less info that the original blurb.
And, my personal favourite - A4U Forums. I'm still not clear on the official connection to AW of the A4U site, but considering more up to date and complete information is provided there more than anywhere else I can only assume this is the prefered, but least effective, method of communication. But it really irks me when useful promotional materials get posted to the AW forum regarding merchants to which I'm joined but about which I will never receive an email. :mad:
So, can anyone tell me, since we're all in this to make money, and clear and quick communication is paramount to achieveing this, why merchants and programme managers cannot just send a single, timely, concise and accurate email directly to my inbox?
And while I'm at it, why are there seemingly more AW staff posts in the Lounge than nearly any other forum when there are dozens, if not hundreds, of support posts left unanswered? I'm all for socialising (well, actually I'm not, I'm trying to make money) but let's prioritise here. There's about a 1 in 50 chance of a genuine, simple support question getting an informative response yet every time I visit these forums I can almost guarantee there'll be a new poll about the latest film release or what everyone's favourite sandwich is.
Mine's cheese and tomato BTW.
I think the answer is that organising systems to communicate offers etc to affiliates is pretty hard, but the network that keeps improving in this area will benefit in terms of affiliate retention and referrals.
I am looking more closely at the voucher code and offers side of things as this is just getting bigger and bigger, so hopefully the network will make some efforts here too.
Rgds
Can only agree wholeheartedly Steve.
Also had a rant along similar lines recently:
http://www.affiliates4u.com/forums/affiliate-marketing-lounge/80330-discount-codes-accuracy.html
Raid: I agree that effective communication is difficult which only really reinforces my point: why complicate the process by using a range of channels? We all sign up with email addresses, we all join merchants in our accounts, therefore it follows that merchants need only send an email to their subscribed affiliates, not spread information all over the place.
Of course the next obvious solution is utilise all the hard work AW have invested in the ShopWindow API and communicate offers, vouchers, price reductions etc. via the ShopWindow feed.
Bud: perhaps it's no coincidence we both posted about this? There seems to have been a spate of second rate communications recently. Mistakes will always be made but if you're sending out frequent emails to a large subscriber base with critical information, at least give it a read through before you hit send. It saves everyone work in the long run!
IntroSites
09-06-08, 19:25
What gets my back up is these
"Dear Affiliates,
Affiliate Window regret to inform you that the above Affiliate Programme will be closed on the ??/??/????. Please remove all existing links by this date. All remaining commissions will be submitted to the merchant for validation on the date of closure. Thank you for your efforts in promoting this merchant.
I presume "the above affiliate programme" is the subject? "Affiliate Programme Closure: 1234"
These are Merchants NOT prisoners! names please not just numbers.
Thank You
IntroSites: spot on.
Here's another case in point:
Email received 9th June 18:43
Just a quick reminder that as the summer is in full swing, Boden have a great selection of summer offers for you to promote!
Text links are provided below but offers are supported by some lovely creative which is available from the interface:
Spend over £115 and receive a free printed sarong worth £25!
Valid until 25th June 2008
http://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=1669&id=*****&p=http://www.boden.co.uk/aw.asp?strShortKey=LN2D&cm_mmc=AWUK-_-Sum08-_-adult-_-text
Spend over £90 and get a free Girl’s T-shirt!
Valid until 10th June 2008
http://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=1669&id=*****&p=http://www.boden.co.uk/aw.asp?strShortKey=LN1C&cm_mmc=AWUK-_-Sum08-_-Girls%20Tshirt-_-text
10% discount, plus free delivery and returns (default text link)
http://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=1669&id=!!!id!!!
Valid indefinitely
Buy Two City Shirts for £66 (usually £45 each!)
Valid until 2nd June 2008
www.awin1.com/awclick.php?id=*****&mid=1669&p=http://www.boden.co.uk/aw.asp?strShortKey=LN2A&cm_mmc=AWUK-_-sp08_shirt-_-text-_-2shirtsfor66
As ever, please do not hesitate to get in touch with any feedback you might have!
Out of the 4 listed offers:
The second one expires tomorrow - how long has it been running?
The third one has a broken/incomplete link which makes the offer inaccessible.
The fourth one expired a week ago.
So 3/4 of that email content is obviously completely useless and yet the sender has the nerve to ask for feedback. What kind of feedback are they looking for? Because they wouldn't like what I'd send them.
It seems to me that in the beginning there was Affwin. Out of success came digiWin, the ltd umbrella who spawned shopwin and continued to spawn further features of shopwin and contentwin until lo', they forgot that affWin is the first and main point of contact between them and those who make them money
The Aff Win site isn't that crash hot though is it?
It would be easily possible to create an RSS feed of all those 1000+ emails in the account that go unread so i can deal with them in a more dynamic, filtered and time saving way.
Please rewrite those damn content widgets, so that normal affiliates, who actually TRY, can have abit more flexability. Who wants to spend a morning creating an AffWin content widget for Play.com, when they can write it dynamically using Buyat's system in 5 minutes, without even having to log into our account.
I'm a big fan of Affiliate Window. Out of every network, this is the one with the best merchants, the best support and the best potential. I don't make as much from here as from elsewhere, but I wish I did. SW has given us all a change from just smacking links on a page and a good reason to learn abit more about what we like to do.
but the AffWin back end sux. Not as much as some do, but it sux more than some others. Go and join them all AffWin and see what else can be done. It's the little things that make our lives easier that matter most.
Give us a way we can filter through the crap and we'll make a fortune.
I pretty much gave up fighting over the whole communication, being emailed, spammed by merchants under the pretence they are sending useful affiliate information which is in fact nothing better than spamming mailshots, discount code emails, type entire contents of this discussion so far, a long long while ago, before this forum even appeared here, after being categorically told more than once by someone within Affiliate Windows that I was completely wrong in my opinion and that the systems were all working as intended. I think I even tried to partially raise the topic on this forum a while back and again hit a basic brick wall again.
Now I basically press the delete button in my email program unless it is by one of the few affiliate companies that I know send me out genuinely useful and useable information. It's sad really, I shouldn't have to do that, all the information sent through Affilaite Windows should be good useable information. But hey, when at least half of the spam mails sent by merchants isn't even via the official Affiliate Windows email address they are given as merchants and seeing as merchants want to spam their blogs and special offers and all the rest of it, what can be done.....
I am pleased someone else has finally spotted how stupid the entire system for communication is and that i'm now not alone in my thinking.
WTF is it with A4U anyway? I signed up as an affiliate publisher to Affiliate Windows, I don't then expect to be forced to visit some 3rd party none official affiliate/merchant information leeching site if I need official information. If I want information, I should be able to get it direct from the official Affiliate Windows forum (a.k.a. RIGHT HERE), yet a lot of the time and judging as has already been said, from the lack of response a heck of a lot of support requests have had on this "official" forum, no wonder people are going to A4U for answers, as official questions about Affiliate Windows are, quite often it appears, actually answered by Affiliate Windows people over there. It's completely stupid.
HELLO!!!!! THIS IS THE OFFICIAL AFFILIATE WINDOWS FORUM!!!!! NOT A4U
It drives me mad. You'd have thought that everything would be done to help make the systems better in order for proper non system abusing, spam advertising, keyword stealing, shop window running, helpful, eager (add own superlatives here) affiliates to be better placed to make money for the merchants, thus helping keep the merchants in business and much more likely to be wanting to continue to use Affiliate Windows as their affiliate solution. Yet it's starting to be of little surprise to me that so many merchants keep on jumping ship to alternate networks.
A team is only as strong as it's weakest link and in the case of the affiliate, merchant, affiliate network team going on here, it appears that the lack of organisation on the part of Affiliate Windows regarding these issues is by far the weakest link.
It's all fine and dandy getting awards for innovation and technology... How about trying to win some awards for happiest affiliates and merchants, like, yeah, the actual people that count. Awards mean jack to those of us already using Affiliate Windows, especially when it is for a large part the constant nagging of affiliates that makes the system what it is, awards and praise are very quickly forgotten. Disgruntled advertisers and publishers can have very long memories.
Hmmm, that's turned into a bit of a rant. But hey I believe we recently recieved a massive thanks for our rants and raves. ;)
This forum was intended Solely for ShopWindow, but I believe there is a plan to extend it into having seperate forums for Affiliate Window, and Shop Window.
It's important I think. Every site Ive ever run which includes membership has had a forum. It's an integral part of any member based website and the first thing members look for when they need alittle help.
You've raised my hackles with the mention of A4u, so I'm going off on one for a while. i'll let you know when I'm back...........
this will be popular: a4u sux
Firstly, 2 years ago, I received a phone call from one of my major competitors regarding a very helpful post I'd made, including code, which prevented Javascript fraud on sensitive campaigns (such as search based retailers). I was ex-directory at the time, working from home.
"How did you get this number?"
"a4u gave me it!"
"Oh did they now? what do you want?"
"I am great and you are not..............radayada ...........1/2 mil a year....."
They clearly have no respect for members privacy, so I have no respect for them
Heres a generalisation of a typical A4um thread:
look how much Ive earned more than you I am therefore pretty great.Yes you are great, I wish for similar greatness one dayhey merchants, Im great, everyone says so. Give me some unique voucher codes, but dont expect me to put any effort into them.yes he is great, I am also great, but not as great as he, although I hope to be almost as great one day. Give him unique codes so we can all behold his greatness. i too would like some unique codesThank you for the confirmation of my greatness. You too are rather great, not as great as I, but by continuing to mention my greatness, the greatnessshall improve within your lack of said greatnessthank you oh great one for bestowing greatness, or at least potential greatness upon my undeserving, semi-great self. I am awash with your greatness, and the greatness of those around you.it's ok not-quite-as-great-as-I, for your faith in my semi-God-Like-greatness shall reap rewards of more great than you can imagine.A thousand thank yous and here's my wife Oh Great one. Greatness does not come easily, I am 3 years, seven and twenty days upon my journey to greatness. I have battled much yet received so very little. Yesterday, I had to drive my Porsche myself! The Chauffeur has been deemed unworthy since thy great bestowal of Greatness. he was not as Great as I, but I am not as great as thee.Greatness did not come easy for me either, I had to work very hard at impressing the greater than I with my need for validation and more greatness. Eventually, those greater than I bestowed semi-greatness upon me by virtue of a badge, and all those who required the self same personal validation increased my greatness by way of r*m-j*b and re*ch aro*ndIn all honesty, I set more store in a Cycling Proficiency badge than an award from A4u. At least I know it'd have been earnt, that it hadn't cost any corporate backslapping dinners, trips to Barbados or anyones integrity.
I refuse to follow anything on a4u.
Back to the affiliate communication rant.
RSS the bloody emails.
10 minutes work to create an RSS feed with our aff IDs and passwords in the url so we only get those merchants we're with.
Another 10 minutes to make the URL dynamic so we can get todays news, or yesterdays news, or last thursdays, or anything containing the word "Flummux", or anything last thursday containing the word "Flummux" from Dixons. Honestly, I can see the code drifting past my eyes right now.
And Im a retard.
RSS, not SOAP.
That would be overkill, cost thousands to set up and months to decide the "Brand name" to give it. (SoapaDiddlyEmailWidget or AffiliWinDigConflab Window).
RSS will do. Do that, call it that. Simple. We'll make millions.
Digiwin have won an award for genius by releasing SWV2 to selected judges at the right time just before the award nominations. Surely they can spend 20 minutes giving affiliates something that could massively increase sales.
Im sure the award is well deserved, don't get me wrong, but it means so much to the wrong people and so very little to those that really matter.
And it's an a4u award..................................
At least it's not just me thinking A4U is nothing more than a back-slapping, social club. Why it's becoming the official communications channel is beyond me. I'll chalk up the fact that promotional/competition news gets posted there long before I get to hear about it (if indeed I do get to hear about it) to unfounded paranoia and not the nagging suspicion that the A4U chosen few are getting a heads up from their mates.
Andy: given the extreme lack of competence already shown with simple email, RSS seems nothing more than a pipe dream, but I completely agree that it's a no-brainer.
For the sake of my blood pressure I'm not even going to entertain the idea that SW V2 was intentionally delayed in order to bag an award, although the timing is uncanny.
digitalwindow
10-06-08, 18:24
Hi All,
This is an interesting thread, its nice to see you all active and quite vocal on general affiliate issues within a predominantly technical forum.
To help provide an understanding from a ShopWindow perspective, I have provided my personal thoughts below.
"...AW Promotions section...when exactly it gets updated. More often than not it seems not to change for weeks and then suddenly contains...out of date and incomplete promotion details with "more info" links that go to a page with even less info..." - Authcode
Valid questions on this one Steve. I have checked with Kirsty (Content Manager) and this page is updated every Wednesday. As it works on a week cycle, there are going to be codes that expire in that period. I can appreciate that on the face of it this does not seem the best solution, and granted there must be a more optimum solution, however we do have to appreciate that everything is a working progress. Kirsty has had discussions with our development team on this but beyond that I cant confirm how we intend to move forward with this at the moment.
Andy, I like your idea of an RSS feed type communication tool. However, from what I understand, part of the problem is that affiliates recieve communications from a number of channels, not just the network. Therefore, we could potentially look at a system like RSS Feeds, however how communcations are handled from other parties would still require consideration.
"HELLO!!!!! THIS IS THE OFFICIAL AFFILIATE WINDOWS FORUM!!!!! NOT A4U" - Amoochi
As Andy has already pointed out, this forum was created for the sole purpose of ShopWindow. In its earlier days there was no intended direction for the network to be represented here or the forum to be a company wide offering. This is the reason why the account managers for the affiliate network post on A4U and not here. We did try this last year, but this was met with some resistance.
Its base is technical support for ShopWindow and all technologies within, and this is how it will continue for the foreseeable future.
"...AffWin back end sux...Go and join them all AffWin and see what else can be done. It's the little things that make our lives easier...." - Andy
Andy, this is something that we are reviewing at the moment. I cant go into specifics as im not actually involved in the project, but I can appreciate that our interface is a little dated now and requires a revamp. We will be looking at a closed user group for feedback purposes so it would be good to get you in on that. Let me know if you are interested and Ill put you in touch with the relevant people.
I presume "the above affiliate programme" is the subject? "Affiliate Programme Closure: 1234" - Introsites
Intro, an extremely valid point. I have had an internal catch up with the heads of departments on this and they are reviewing this as priority. This will include both account closure and account closed emails, as well as other regular communications sent out.
"For the sake of my blood pressure I'm not even going to entertain the idea that SW V2 was intentionally delayed in order to bag an award, although the timing is uncanny." - Steve
To confirm, I was actually the most surprised member of the team when the announcement was made at the awards of us winning the innovation award.
This was largely based on the fact that our submission was in fact for ShopWindow v1 and not v2 (which has been put back for release due to internal and external testing).
To be frank, awards are nice, but there not the most interesting part of what we do. They are at best a by product of a great product.
A4U Forum
Regarding the A4U forum, I have my own thoughts for which any of you guys can pm me and Ill be glad to communiate :)
I hope this has helped to alleviate some of your concerns. Regarding keeping affiliates and merchants happy, my opinion is that by keeping you guys involved during key development stages and up to speed on product launches we can continue to offer you a sustainable revenue channel for your online marketing activity.
Being involved since the absolute beginning of ShopWindow, I know that id be pretty stuck without you guys here, so if we arent doing something to your best interests please do get in touch.
Regarding v2, id like for you all to be involved in a feedback stage for the next release.
Roll on Confuscius.....
Amo
"HELLO!!!!! THIS IS THE OFFICIAL AFFILIATE WINDOWS FORUM!!!!! NOT A4U" - Amoochi
As Andy has already pointed out, this forum was created for the sole purpose of ShopWindow.
You do know that that kind of makes a farce of the discussion.
So ShopWindow has a large "official" forum which is setup and designed specifically for the ShopWindow program, which is essentially a small part of Affiliate Windows, which in honesty this forum is used nothing at all like it should be, because everyone has to keep on going over to a 3rd party forum in A4U to find anything of any use out. So, at the same time, not only do I have to go to a generic 3rd party for discount codes, to find out latest info, to hear from merchants, etc, etc, of stuff which should categorically be classed as official Affiliate Windows stuff and appearing on an official Affiliate Windows site, I mean WTF??? If I want to read information from Affiliate Windows merchants, yet again I have to go to A4U or seperate blogs, or have my email box set up to accept no end of generic email addresses, which is how Affiliate Windows merchants post, because they do not have a proper official single channel to output to.
Oh wait that's right, A4U happens to be the company that gave Affiliate Windows it's award recently, endorsement of them is obviously very important right and more important than good official communication between merchants, affiliates and the network. I'm not saying you personally feel this way about this particular thing digitalwindow, but c'mon, it's been pimped on the Affiliate Windows site for weeks and in the newsletters and the likes, don't tell me that it's not considered important, it gives bragging rights over affiliate networks that don't get awards. So obviously an endorsement here and a link there..... hmmm, seen that done a whole host of times over the years.
I'm getting seriously sick and fed up of having to trawl through blogs and 3rd party forums and dozens of generic emails to try and find anything useful for me to use on my site. I have busy enough days as it is and have many other affiliate companies, pr companies, etc, etc, etc, etc, to deal with which take far less time to deal with than Affiliate Windows is doing at the moment. I wouldn't mind if the effort I put into paid huge dividends, but the simple fact is, is that because Affiliate Windows can't be ar*ed (despite several requests) to implement proper 728x90 banner categories (considering the industry standard page resolution these days), banner pools and proper tools that pretty much every other affiliate network out there has had in place for a number of years, I'm now finding that besides the ShopWindows bit, I am now bothering less and less with Affiliate Windows, which is pretty sad considering the amount of time i've been a member and how loyal i've been over the years, despite earning less with Affiliate Windows than i've ever made with TradeDoubler, due to their very simple and easy to use banner pool system.
Regarding version 2 of ShopWindows... Well considering I was sent an email asking for information, as the test version didn't work on my server and I sent all the relevent information back straight away, yet I haven't heard a single thing since and still have what is essentially nothing more than a page of version 2 errors... I don't really think i'll be spending much time entertaining version 2.
It seems that there are quite a few of us who dislike A4u.
The professional, money making, business part of my brain is telling me to keep my mouth as shut as possible. It gets overruled alot by my Cynical, sarcastic and somewhat more honest part of my brain though.
I fear the A4U have way too much influence on the industry as a whole. imagine pisin off the owner and he spreads the wrong word. It'd filter through until no-one will work with us at all.
Im glad Amo has got involved. Since I posted my last, Ive been grinding my teeth in worry that I might have pist off the wrong people. That's never my intention, but there is always a concern that if I go to far, my account could be terminated. This is, I think, at the back of everyones mind.
I'd like a quick confirmation from above that anything said in "Rants and Raves" will be taken as intended: Hot blooded, uncensored ranting to get any small concern off our chests in the hope that one day, that concern will be alleviated to the benefit of all affiliates on AffWin.
Tosser way of putting it, I know! :rolleyes:
This thread is an exciting debate and it seems that all those tiny, hidden annoyances are coming to light. This can only ever be a good thing for Digi, aff and shop window. No other network has it's own forum, so AffWin could get ahead of the game with this one.
By airing our greivances, we are giving digi an insight into exactly what we need and what we don't need. No one knows what affiliates want and need better than affiliates. Networks do try, but they rarely get it right (I think "P" are getting the closest as far as interface and resources go, crap merchants though).
If Digi win allow us to continue airing any grievances (so long as we moderate our language, if you don't, I will ;)), I can definitely see the AffWin interface, shop Window and all backend resources eventually making a formidable force on the internet.
George Harrison:
"It's gonna to take time, a whole lot of precious time, it's gonna take plenty of money, to do it right..................."
Back onto the RSS idea. What's in the Affiliate Window mail system would be a bloody good start Amo!
I second what Andy says about "Rants and Raves" being for spur of the moment rants! My original post was meant to be rhetorical, just to vent, but it seems that many of us share the same views and it can only be a good thing to air them.
Although it seems to be a negative thread at first glance (mainly regarding A4U) there are a lot of good ideas floating around regarding the network and I hope many of them will taken into consideration, even if this isn't exactly the purpose of this forum.
Amo - I appreciate your opinions on many of the points raised. Although improving communication as a whole will always be a work in progress there are many small things that could be changed that would make a big difference. Maybe it would be worth taking stock of the current communcation channels you have available and asking us for a list of improvements that could be made? For example, you say the Promotions page is updated every Wednesday on a weekly cycle? Why? When you admit yourself that many of the offers expire before anyone even sees them? Why not move this over to a simple blog format where offers get posted as and when they arrive? This way we all get instant notice and the RSS takes care of itself. Likewise with the voucher code spreadsheet that I only found out about two weeks ago. Surely it's more work to compile a spreadsheet every week than it is to publish and forget?
digitalwindow
12-06-08, 10:49
Hi Steve,
Appreciate your input on this, some very valid points raised.
Ive picked the brains of Ant Clements (Manager of Key Accounts) on this thread and your points regarding communications, from which Ant will put in a response.
From my perspective though, a great thread.
Thanks
Amo
digitalwindow
12-06-08, 13:57
Hi All,
Firstly, many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread. A lot of fantastic ideas have been raised here, some of which I want to try and put in place sooner rather than later to make our communication of offers, incentives and discount codes more efficient.
Before I start, a little clarification on the A4U Forum and our relationship with it. Affiliate Window has had its own forum on the A4U for almost five years now. Everyone is entitled to their opinion on the A4U, but like them or loathe them it is the most widely used industry forum in the UK and every major network in this country maintains a presence there.
Our Account Managers monitor the A4U, as well as many other industry forums, closely. One reason being many affiliates use our forum section in the A4U to communicate problems and issues that we need to resolve quickly. I believe our major presence on this forum helps us to ensure we answer queries and fix problems in the shortest possible timeframe. Authcode, I can assure you we do not encourage Account Managers to spend their time socialising in the Affiliate Lounge, and to a large degree this is proven by the service and responsiveness we deliver to our affiliates. Oh, and in case you are interested, I am partial to Chicken and Bacon with a touch of mayonnaise! :)
So, why do we continue to use the A4U to disseminate offers and incentives? The main reason for this is many affiliates want us to. They like the immediacy that this channel offers and because of their active participation on the forum it helps them to pick up incentives quickly and efficiently. Sectors such as electronics put out offers that have a limited shelf-life, and because of its reach the A4U has always been a good platform to communicate these.
We have a huge database of affiliates. Some like to pick up offers from the A4U, others like to receive offers via email, and many would like to see us employ other methods of communication to send out incentives. There are a lot of affiliates out there that we want to please, which is why we employ a wide range of methods to communicate effectively. I appreciate that at times this can appear scattergun, but our intention is to do as much as we can to help make the lives of our affiliates easier, which brings me on nicely to some of the ideas put forward here.
Discount Codes via the Admin Area
We are putting in place a system where affiliates will be able to receive discount codes for the program’s that they are signed up to via the interface, instead of the spreadsheet that we email out. This should provide everyone with quick and easy access to discount codes for their programs, meaning you don’t have to sort through loads of emails to get the promotions you want. They will also be automatically removed when they expire. This should be live in the next couple of weeks.
Affiliate Emails
Authcode, I totally agree with you that any communication sent out with incorrect information barely deserves consideration. I take responsibility for any affiliate communications that are sent out with poor, out of date or just plain wrong content. I do all I can to ensure such errors are limited, but if you receive any examples please forward them on to me.
We do not encourage merchants or Account Managers to send out emails continuously to affiliates. I do admit that the system we use to send emails to our affiliate base is slightly dated and is in fact due an upgrade very shortly.
Offers and Incentives on the Blog
As many of you probably know Affiliate Window has its own external blog – http://blog.affiliatewindow.com (http://blog.affiliatewindow.com/)
We are constantly looking at ways to improve the content of the blog, and one of the things on the agenda is to use the blog to communicate offers, incentives and promotions to our affiliate base. The aim here is to give us a centralised area for publishing offers, with instant and easy access for affiliates, that does not mean affiliates need to go to the A4U or other 3rd party sites.
If we do not use the blog in this way, then another alternative is to set up an Affiliate Window forum for our affiliates, in much the same way that we currently do for ShopWindow, (although I wholly expect we will be lambasted for duplicating content :))
RSS Feed
Another great idea, and one that given time I would love to introduce. At the moment we are starting work on V2 of our Admin Areas, which will see huge improvements to the back-end functionality for affiliates. This includes building the admin area around a totally new framework. With all this in mind it is difficult for us to implement an RSS Feed immediately. However, it is now something that is in the spec and I will do my utmost to get this implemented. Feel free to drop me a line for more details on these upgrades.
Affiliate Area
“AffWin back end sux” – A sweeping statement, but one that certainly has merit given the Admin Areas is due an update. As explained above we are now working on V2 of the affiliate Admin Area and I would welcome any suggestions for improvements to the layout and functionality. Drop me a line directly on these.
Improving Communication
This thread has provided a great starting block for improving our communication to affiliates. Authcode, I like your suggestion about compiling a list of improvements – some small scale, and some larger scale – that you would like to see. I have made a start above, however I would welcome your continued input on this, either directly or via this forum.
I hope this goes at least some way to answering your questions. Affiliate Window are committed to providing the best possible resources for our affiliates and everything said here will be taken on board. Our aim is to constantly improve and evolve our solution and with your help I am sure we can continue to make strides in the way we provide for our affiliates.
Finally, I would like to say that we welcome the threads in ‘Rants and Raves’ as they usually contain the kind of constructive criticism that helps us to improve. Andy, in my opinion Hot blooded, uncensored ranting is the very best kind so please keep all your opinions coming and if you want to contact me directly to discuss anything please don’t hesitate to do so.
Kind Regards
Anthony
Anthony Clements
Manager, Key Accounts
Tel: 020 7553 0353
Email: anthony.clements@affiliatewindow.com
MSN: aclements10@hotmail.com
Thanks for your response Anthony - I'm glad to see a thread that I originally started to vent frustration has developed into a constructive dialogue. Often these spur of the moment posts become more regrettable as time passes :o
I think my initial reaction to your comments Anthony is this: although you have explained that you have many reasons to use a variety of channels, and merchants and affiliates have their own preferences as to which they use, I think it's important you try to ensure any one piece of information is distributed across as many channels as is feasible, preferably as simultaneously as possible. The reason I say this is because now I've discovered the A4U forum it's annoyingly apparent that a lot more information is posted there than I receive emails about. Information that is also emailed to affiliates via AW arrives at least hours and sometimes days after the original A4U post, when a significant opportunity may have passed.
When you add in the other channels such as the promotions page, AW blog, AW newsletter, voucher code spreadsheet etc. and filter out the duplicate, erroneous, ammended and expired data, I spend a very significant part of my day cross referencing information sources to obtain the latest, accurate information. This can't be good for anyone.
As for A4U, well, I registered the other day and still have not been granted posting privileges and my support email has seemingly been ignored. If they updated their forums to offer RSS updates then most of my point is moot.
Given A4U is such an important resource for merchants and affiliates on this network perhaps a link to the A4U AW forum from our account areas would be appropriate?
A typical example:
Millets 20% Voucher Code - Expires 20 June 2008
A4U
Posted 6/7 June (http://www.affiliates4u.com/forums/affiliate-window/80596-20-off-code-millets.html) - probably the start date.
14 days use
AW Newsletter
Received 11 June (http://www.affiliatewindow.com/newsletter/affiliates/20080611.html)
9 days use
Promotions Page (http://www.affiliatewindow.com/affiliates/promotions.php) (as linked to from newsletter):
No mention (?)
Voucher Spreadsheet
Received 11 June (should've been 9th)
Sent twice because of errors.
Email
Received 12 June
8 days use
As you can see from this one example, a simple voucher code notification that can only benefit merchant, network, affiliates and customers alike has become an information nightmare. Given the amount of communication errors we see, each one of these sources has to be checked for mistakes and/or corrections. Multiply this by 400+ merchants and you can start to see why so many of us have strong opinions on the subject of effective communication.
And can anyone give a valid reason why offers posted on A4U in the morning are only emailed out to AW affiliates, by the same person, in the afternoon/evening, if at all? Why the delay? What can someone possibly be doing between posting something on a forum and sending the same thing out in an email that takes all day? Seems to me A4U users are gaining a big advantage getting offers and news hours ahead of everyone else, surely that's not intentional?
Confuscius
12-06-08, 19:23
Confuscius says ... the only times that I have had cause to email a Merchant Manager about an issues then to date I have never received a single reply. After so many times of no response then I stopped wasting my time - if your staff ain't bothered then I ain't bothered - so I don't bother anymore.
AW sends me emails galore full of either useless or innaccurate or invalid information followed by follow up emails apologising for the previous emails. AW staff post countless threads on a4u which never get any responses and buried in amongst the spammy pointlessness there are some useful bits, like the recent new click report.
How many hours are we supposed to spend reading the same stuff over and over again, before we just hang our boots up on the whole communications issue?
Sorry, but I switched off on this whole topic months ago. All I want is a properly maintained dataset with some quality improvements and some innovative uses of the existing set up and possibly a V2 to play with some day. I am sick of communicating data issues, product issues, feed issues - well just issues - just for them to be sent round the same loop of ' I will communicate' that on to someone else. It seems that as soon as something gets close to crossing the legal line then by some miraculous occurrence communication becomes remarkably effective. How about I start a thread about the countless breaches, in my view, of the data sent to us being in contravention of the 31 banned practices in the latest 'Rogue Trader' regs? Instead I chose to speak to someone at AW who would pass my concerns on and I am still waiting for the phone call back. Well if you ain't bothered , then I ain't bothered.
If only there was a simple way to stop all email communications easily - I let them come in, write a few email redirect rules and delete them all once a month and I have more time to do other things as a consequence. Perfect system and should I ever find that I cannot sleep at night I know where I can more stuff than I would ever need to send me off to the land of nod!
Ooh dear I seem to have had a rant! Anyone fancy starting the first rave post?
Paul
Confuscius says ... the only times that I have had cause to email a Merchant Manager about an issues then to date I have never received a single reply. After so many times of no response then I stopped wasting my time - if your staff ain't bothered then I ain't bothered - so I don't bother anymore.
Interesting point and one i've specifically experienced with AW several times in the past, but it appears to be cropping up again recently.