Affiliate Commission for 800# Phone Sales?

[Linda Buquet]

I have been working behind the scenes on solving the 800 phone # tracking issue for you all. I know this is a big area of affiliate commission leakage and am excited to announce that some of my merchants are implementing solutions as we speak.

One of my clients, zZounds just made the bold move and phone orders are now being tracked. I couldn’t talk about it because they would not even give me the details until their patent was filed.

Having an 800# is very important to online sales and legit businesses MUST have an 800# for questions or for people who are afraid to order online. However, some products tend to get more phone calls. With this client, I assume zZounds customers sometimes have tech questions like "which is the best turntable that has xyz features?" or "my speakers just blew - what brand do you think is the most reliable and the best price?" So for this company to now track and credit affiliates for phone sales I think is HUGE and shows how high integrity they are.

800# phone sales tracking is not the industry norm and affiliates lose out on a lot of phone orders. I am working on a very exciting new solution with another one of my clients which will be announced soon. I am trying to discover the most compelling wording that will get customers to mention the aff ID when they call the 800#.

This is what one (typically critical) super affiliate had to say about this:

"Linda, first, I have to say thank you. I hope this will serve as an example for others to follow. However, I also realize that this 1-800 tracking is on of the fringe benefits to affiliate marketing when it comes to giving advertisers an edge. We (affiliates) lose on this issue, until someone, like you, and your company, comes along and says, "we care". For merchants who read this: this is how you get noticed, and get preferential treament when it comes to making a decision on what we promote, and what we don't promote."

The 1st client I mentioned above is using "priority code" some others I have seen list the affiliate id as a phone extension. Do any of you work with other companies that credit affiliate phone sales? If so, what is the best method you have seen for insuring that customers will use the affiliate id when they phone in orders?

Once I get merchant #2 set up with affiliate phone sales tracking, I intend to do a large promotional campaign and get a lot of press which will force more other high integrity merchants to follow suit and start paying for phone sales.

Any and all feedback and ideas will be sincerely appreciated and will help lots of affiliates earn more money!

Your Partner in Success,

[TranscendMedia]

Linda,

We are in the process in rolling out a new affiliate program for one of our own properties along with a new customer service center.

With the roll out of the new program we are going to add the priority code method to our site which will have the affiliate ID located at the bottom of every page. We will also be offering some other tracking, however at this time I cannot go into details.

I am interested in what other merchants/affiliate managers are doing to track their offline sales.

Thanks all in advance for posting,
Gregory Van Horn
Founder & Senior Developer
Transcend Media Interactive Marketing & Development Group

[Chris - WSO]

Hi all

I don't know why Merchants make a big fuss about this to be honest, there is zero reason for any Merchant not to track 800 number orders other than they don't want to, we've done it on Mondera since day one and it's very simple

When any user arrives at our site they are assigned a tracking code that is based on their source ID, the source id is either

* A Marketing defined Code
* An Affiliate Code
* The Source URL Truncated if the above don't exist

This is converted into a six or seven digit code that is added to the end of the product SKU.

Our telephone CR team can only take an order with the full SKU, the full SKU includes the tracking code.

It's in OUR interest to know exactly where our orders come from, regardless of whether that is Affiliates, MSN, Yahoo. or where ever

Cheers

Chris

[Linda Buquet]

Irvs Luggage Now Pays 800 Phone Commission

I am very proud and excited to announce that Irvs Luggage is now tracking and paying commission for 800# phone sales. It’s like getting an instant raise! This will also help you increase sales so you can all get more Irvs bonus commissions. I can only find a couple of CJ merchants that offer this additional income to their partners and no other merchant in the Luggage/Travel accessories space offers this opportunity to capitalize on commissions that should rightfully be yours anyway.

I think it’s a shame that more merchant don’t credit you for phone sales and am happy that we can now pay Irvs affiliates commissions on every sale they generate. The most exciting thing for affiliates this that, while Irvs does not get a ton of phone orders, many times when they do – it’s because it’s a BIG order and they have questions or want to talk to a live person. Irv’s also sometimes gets very large corporate orders. Lucking out and getting those big phone orders is a numbers game. The more you promote Irvs, the better your chances are.

To see it in action:
Click here to see the normal header http://www.irvs.com

Then click here:
http://www.irvs.com/?AID=9707661&PID=1186891
You'll see a priority code – which is your CJ affiliate PID

To help insure that customers give the priority code when calling in – Click on “What’s a Priority Code?”
You will see a message that says:
-----------------------------
Q - What is a Priority Code?

A - Many of our on-line prices are lower than you'll find in our stores or in our catalog. If you phone-in your order, please be sure to provide your Priority Code to our Order Specialist. This is the only way to insure your eligibility for our special online pricing.
------------------------

CJ phone orders are manually entered, after they ship and will start with a P so you can tell how many phone orders you get.

What do you guys think? Do you like it?

[Linda Buquet]

Ok Just got my 4th merchant set up with 800# tracking - WHEW, this has been a lot of work but worth it, so we can pay partners for ALL the sales they generate, not just online sales.

#1 zZounds
#2 Irvs Luggage
#3 ChatDollars
#4 Executive Essentials

http://www.executiveessentials.com/ is in CJ under the Irvs Luggage account, but it's a seperate site. So 1st I had to sell management on doing Irvs. Then after they got over the programming cost and phone training issues, I hit them up to track phone sales for EE.

The issue was never paying the extra commish, but it is programming costs - including design, testing and tracking issues, added cost and policing in terms of re-training phone reps, plus the additional labor cost of someone having to manually enter the phone sales, which are otherwise automatically added by click-through sales.

If you have an EE affiliate account - click one of your own links to go to EE. You will see SOURCE ID XXXXXXXX under the phone number. That number is your CJ PID. We just finished the programming yesterday and the training for the phone reps will be next week. They will be asking for SOURCE ID on every call!

Happy Selling!

[spamfork]

For the record....

Since 1999 MindLeaders has included the affiliate ID right next to the 800 number and stated:

"....contact Customer Service via e-mail at XXXXXXXX@mindleaders.com or by calling 800-223-3732 and asking to speak to a Customer Service Representative. Your Associate ID is XXXXXXXXX. Please include this code in your e-mail or phone call."

All affiliate sites should wake up to the fact that - so long as you make sure the affiliates are getting their rightful commission - they'll be more motivated to create more sales.

Example Page with 800 Number

[kamalpanhwar]

Hi all,
For the affiliation tracking, I think this is realy big issue to be solved. Phone call should be tracked and the commission should go to affiliates who generate this sale.

But problem is that the number like Source ID XXXXXXXXX should be very small and easy to say. If it is a big number like Irvs have, than the customer will feel bad about this. Of course ZZound.com is still good.

It should be something very easy, like Johny, Jean, or something like that. We already give a lot troubles to customer by using PABX systems and asking them a lot question before connecting them to right person. And now this big number will create some hestitation for customers.
I have seen that sometime customers are in hurry, and will suddenly say you what are you asking source id or priority code, it is on your site go and read it.
Other issue is numbers are very difficult to understand on phone conversation, try to ask someone their number and you will repeat and repeat to hear the number again, but in last if it is bigger than 5 digits than you may write it wrong.
I think it is still not an appropriate solution.

I don't have idea how much it will add benefit to affiliate's sales. Do you have any idea about what percent more will affiliate earn if phone call are tracked properly.

I was thinking if Tracking could be done by EXTENSION NUMBERS. like the after dialing number PABX will ask EXTENSION NUMBERS which should be affiliates tracking codes, and user will press those numbers easily, and PABX will put that data in computer or will produce data for call attender and they will feed it in query.