Are Your Affiliates Sales Being Tracked Correctly?
A serious concern
that affects most sites that promote affiliate program is how sales are tracked by the
affiliate merchant. As important as high commissions, a professional appearance, and easy
ordering options for customers may be, the most important aspect of any program may be how
sales are tracked, and whether affiliates will receive the commissions they are due. There
are two aspects to this:
a) The merchant's
technical ability to track affiliate sales. In other words, are the merchant's tracking
methods (or that of their third-party administrator) adequate to correctly record which
affiliate referred a sale, what items were puurchased, and what the commission should be?
b) The merchant's policies. In
other words, how does the merchant decide which sales are applicable for affiliates to be
given credit?
This article mainly focuses on
the non-technical issues relating to how a merchant sets up their program, and what
policies they have in place to determine when an affiliate receives credit for sales they
refer. To help explain the ways in which merchants administer their programs, I have
classified them into four categories which probably cover about 90% of the programs I have
reviewed to date.
Full-Credit Affiliate Programs
In an ideal world, affiliates
would receive full credit for all purchases made by visitors referred. Once the affiliate
has referred the visitor as a customer, they would receive full commissions on any
purchases this customer makes, no matter when they make future purchases, or how they
return to the merchant's site. This type of system would greatly enhance the profitability
of the program for all affiliates. I will coin these as 'Full-Credit Affiliate Programs'.
Unfortunately, there are VERY few
programs that offer full-credit tracking, allowing affiliates to earn commissions on
follow-up sales. Generally an affiliate's only hope is that the visitor continues to use
the link from their site. However, this happens only infrequently since most customers
will bookmark the merchant's site after the first purchase. Additionally, the merchant
invariably promotes their direct web address to these customers through invoices, email,
and follow-up marketing.
The main reason few merchants
offer this type of benefit to their affiliates is that full-credit tracking adds a
residual cost to each sale. Although merchants may claim that their profit margins would
not be able to absorb these residual costs, the main reason for not offering full-credit
tracking is that it would decrease the cost-effectiveness of acquiring new customers
through affiliate programs for these merchants.
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