This isn't my sector at all, but the thread title caught my eye and I have just spent the last 20 minutes reading everyone's posts from the beginning.
I just wanted to say well done to everyone who has refused to lie down and roll over on this issue - I strongly support the actions of all the affiliates who have had the courage to make a statement that they will not be bullied by a major high street brand.
Next and i-level, really, it would almost be humourous how appallingly ineptly you are handling this situation - humourous in the manner Fawlty Towers - were it not quite so tragic in the degree to which it reflects your woefully out-of-touch collective mindset.
This is the web! People talk to each other in public. A lot! Guess what's really popular right now? That's right - Facebook and Social Networks. People blog, people send emails, people instant message each other, people post on forums. Opinions and thoughts spread at the speed of light. Get it? If you treat a large number of affiliates like they don't matter - and, let's face it, there are few communities of professionals who are more active web-citizens or more prolific bloggers, so you've not chosen your target very cleverly here - then,
no, they will not politely send you an email so that you can fob them off with lame excuses or dismiss them from your programme at your convenience.
People have worked hard to promote your brand and give you real sales - and you pay them lip service. Here's what they're going to do: discuss what you have done in public. That conversation is going to happen whether you're participating in it or not.
Have you even read The Cluetrain Manifesto?
Have you even
heard of it?!
Heaven knows how much damage you have done to the reputation of your online marketing efforts already. Can you count the money you have lost stretching over the next few months? Are you going to let this drag on until the summer months so that your Christmas sales end up being impacted? You do know that High Street shopping has been down every Christmas for the last few years, because people are shopping online instead, don't you? Are you going to commit to some real damage limitation which might include a sincere apology, a reinstatement of affiliates you have dismissed (if they'll have you back) and raising the commission percentage back up to 4% ? Do you not wonder if it's too late even for that and that you've already blown your chances?
It's okay, you're not the worst. Two years ago a merchant I did promote - a German airline named germanwings - tried to pull a fast one on affiliates by swapping the destination of all their affiliate links to a special alternative site, to ensure that anything an affiliate-referred end-customer bought cost more than if that customer had arrived directly on the original site. ("A sales channel which pays for itself!" the merchant must have thought. "No matter if it makes the affiliate sites look like sites to be avoided. Affiliates are two a penny and pretty disposable, after all.")
Predictably, there was uproar.
The three networks featuring that merchant all dumped the merchant within about a month of this practice coming to light. Two years later the merchant is still cursed in affiliate circles. If that merchant were ever invited back on to a network, there are many competent, professional and hard-working affiliates, I
am certain, who have long since moved on and would not give it the time of day.
I'll invite you to consider what the moral of that short tale might be.