Is This The Future For Discount And Promotional Codes?
Discount and promotional codes are a double edged sword for affiliates – and I’m sure the same is true for merchants. There’s no doubt that they encourage sales and so in that sense they are great for affiliates who promote merchants and state that a discount or promotional code is available.
Where it all goes wrong is when you are promoting a merchant without giving a discount code. This happens all the time, not least when there is no discount code.
Problems start when the customer you referred gets to the checkout and sees a box saying “if you have a discount code enter it here”. Increasingly, people see this as a prompt that discount codes are available and they then go off in search of one. This in turn takes them to one of the many voucher code sites out there who then are able to overwrite your tracking cookie with their own by returning the customer to the merchant’s site with or without a discount code.
The result is that the affiliate who generated the sale in the first place gets nothing while a voucher code site pockets their commission.
I’ve nothing against voucher code sites per se. If a customer originates from one of their pages and they earn commission good luck to them. But when they are effectively stealing commission from other affiliates or eating into a merchant’s margins AND offering customers nothing more than their own cookie, that can’t be right.
I’ve heard it all from other affiliates who aren’t concerned by this. Make sure you give out voucher codes yourself. Start your own voucher code site. That sort of thing. But if there is no code to give out, how will either help retain your commission? And I’m well aware that the AMC released a set of guidelines late last year relating to the promotion of voucher codes, but I’m not seeing much evidence of an improving situation. Either that or it is very easy to get around these new guidelines.
How a cookie dropping button that states “Reveal All Active Discounts And Visit Site” passes muster when it simply takes a visitor to a merchant’s homepage – without a discount code is sight – I’ve no idea. And that’s not on some obscure site that they might not have got around to policing. That’s on one of the biggest voucher code sites out there. Today.
Merchants too must be losing out to this practice. Every time a canny visitor reaches the checkout and sees that discount code box off they go in search of that elusive discount code, meaning voucher code sites are once again earning commissions for doing nothing more than provide a code at best and nothing at worst.
The answer may well lie with the merchants. And that is to state on their own pages if a discount or promo code is available. It’s as simple as that. That way customers don’t go hunting around the internet for them and commissions are only paid to those who refer customers. Simples as a certain meerkat would say.
The good news is I’m seeing this happen more and more and I hope it spreads like wildfire across all merchant sites. Figleaves are very good at it. So are Marks & Spencer and Littlewoods Direct. There must be others too, but those three I’ve been working with today.
When a customer doesn’t have to go in search of a discount code, whoever referred the customer gets the commission – and I’m happy for that to be me, you or a voucher code site. And if the merchant acquired the customer through non-affiliate channels, they aren’t paying commission needlessly.
The next step would be for all merchants only to display a discount code box at the checkout WHEN a code was available. That too is surely simples enough.
So my hat comes off to those merchants who display voucher codes for all to see on their sites and I sincerely hope that this is the future for discount and promotional codes.
