Innovative Technology at Red Letter Days Levels the Playing Field

[Joshna]

Tweet

Innovative Technology at Red Letter Days Levels the Playing Field

We’re extremely proud today to launch innovative new technology at Red Letter Days that we believe represents a huge step forward in the way that advertisers deliver special offers to affiliates.

Over the past year there’s been a lot of discussion in the industry about the value added by each type of affiliate at each stage of the buying cycle, and whether some affiliates are advantaged over others due to their position in that cycle and the incentives they can offer to customers.

From listening to these discussions, we resolved to respond to these concerns by developing a fairer system that would enable every affiliate to provide compelling and exclusive deals, without disadvantaging any particular affiliate type.

So what’s the solution?

Red Letter Days has developed a system which either hides or displays the voucher code entry box based on the referring URL, which removes the potential issue of sales leakage for non-voucher code sites in the final stages of the purchasing process. This enables the box to be shown for traffic from sites which have a code, but hidden for those who don’t.

However, we knew that alone would not be enough to truly empower all affiliates to deliver compelling offers to customers. So we’ve added an extra parameter in the affiliate inbound URL that enables a 'deal ID' to be passed in. This deal ID is recognised by our website in combination with the affiliate ID, and agreed special offer/s are then displayed throughout the entire customer journey.

The system offers a range of powerful benefits to affiliates:

- Deal IDs are exclusive to individual affiliates and must be used in combination with the affiliate’s ID, so there is no risk that another affiliate can hijack an exclusive deal.

- Special offers can be set site-wide, at category or sub-category level, and even at individual product level. A minimum spend can also be applied before a discount can be used, providing a mechanism to encourage higher average order values.

- Affiliates can promote a range of deals at the same time. For example, a driving days affiliate could promote a link which offers a specific driving product at half price alongside a link which offers 15% off all other driving experiences.

- Multiple affiliates can offer different deals on the same product. For example, one could offer 10% off a Pamper Spa Day, while the other has £10 off the same Pamper Spa Day.

- The offers displayed are session-based, giving affiliates a strong call to action - 'You must click on this link to see these special deals'.

- Voucher code affiliates have a much more secure method of offering discounts as exclusive codes cannot be republished.

- The customer experience once a visitor clicks through to the Red Letter Days site is seamless and easy to understand. For the life of their session, any relevant deals will display (including the discounted price/s) throughout the entire customer journey from browsing to completing a purchase.

What does it look like?

The screenshots below show how deals appear for customers on the Red Letter Days site:



Want to try it for yourself?

Simply follow the links below to see the system in action.

Scenario 1: Show or hide the voucher code entry box

If the referring affiliate has a discount code running with Red Letter Days, we will show the voucher code entry box on the checkout page:
http://www.vouchercodes.co.uk/redletterdays.co.uk

However, if a consumer clicked through from an affiliate site without a code, the box will not appear:
http://www.properpresents.co.uk/expe...ill-e2679.html

Scenario 2: Bespoke onsite offers for specific products

In this scenario we’ve created a deal for a specific product (deals can also be applied site-wide or for particular categories or sub-categories). The deal in this instance is £20 off our Ferrari Driving Thrill, which can only be obtained by going through the relevant affiliate’s links:

Affilinet Example:
http://being.successfultogether.co.u...ence/Ref/XFERB

Affiliate Window Example:
http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinm...%2FRef%2FXFERB

If you clear your cookies or close your session and start again you will see that the Ferrari Driving Thrill returns to full price on the website:
http://www.redletterdays.co.uk/Experience/Ref/XFERB

If another affiliate tries to use the deal ID, it doesn’t work, as our website recognises that an incorrect affiliate ID is being used in conjunction with the deal ID.

Affilinet Example:
http://being.successfultogether.co.u...ence/Ref/XFERB


Affiliate Window Example:
http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinm...%2FRef%2FXFERB

Scenario 3: Applying a discount site-wide, without the need for a code to be entered

This piece of functionality allows the discount code to be applied automatically throughout the customer journey and omits the use of a ‘physical’ code which the user must enter at the checkout. The examples below show a 10% discount being applied across the site:

Affilinet Example
http://being.successfultogether.co.u...ays.co.uk/Home

Affiliate Window Example:
http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinm...s.co.uk%2FHome

Scenario 4: Applying different offers to the same product for multiple affiliates

This scenario allows us to create different offers for multiple affiliates for the same product. The below example shows 2 separate offers for a Pamper Spa Day:

10% off a Pamper Spa Day:

Affilinet Example:
http://being.successfultogether.co.u...ence/Ref/XHSPA

Affiliate Window Example:
http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinm...%2FRef%2FXHSPA

£10 off a Pamper Spa Day:

Affilinet Example:
http://being.successfultogether.co.u...ence/Ref/XHSPA

Affiliate Window Example:
http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinm...%2FRef%2FXHSPA

*Please note: the above links are from affiliate test accounts and will drop cookies as per usual. All deal demos will expire on 26.03.10.

How will we implement this?

On Affiliate Window we can add individual click-appends to affiliate IDs. These click-appends trigger the logic and change the site depending on what Red Letter Days have set up for that specific affiliate. On Affilinet we simply add a click append with the deal ID to the existing tracking code. Together the affiliate ID and the Deal ID will trigger the deal to show on the Red Letter Days website. This means that once the offers are set up, there’s no extra work required for affiliates!

Testimonials

We’ve been testing the new functionality with a number of affiliates and the feedback has been incredibly positive:

"These innovations from Red Letter Days open up a new world of possibilities as well as redefining current standards in the affiliate industry. They can be the foundations of future internal developments and should be considered as a new standard within affiliate marketing which all merchants should aim to reach."
- David Fiske, Director, DBFCS

"It's not often that Affiliate Managers listen to affiliates and THEN go and implement those requests. But that is exactly what the Red Letter Days team has gone and done."
- Peter Anderson, Director, Spendlessonline.co.uk

"Red Letter Days is one of the most innovative merchants in the affiliate space at the moment. We love working with them because it's clear that they really value affiliates as partners to the success of their brand and understand the importance of applying technological advances to grow their affiliate programme."
- Evelyn Mackinnon, Senior Partnerships Executive, Vouchercodes.co.uk

Available to use now!

This is live on our systems and available for affiliates to start getting exclusive deals for their sites. If you would like to set up a deal, require further information or have any feedback, please get in touch with me at affiliates@redletterdays.co.uk

I also plan to run a couple of demonstration sessions at both the Affiliate Window and Affilinet offices. Let me know if you are interested in coming along and seeing a more in-depth demonstration of how this all works.

Thanks,
Joshna

How to contact us:
Email: affiliates@redletterdays.co.uk
Phone Joshna on 07918 632814 or Angela on 07918 747455
MSN: joshna_cloud9@hotmail.com or angegreenwood@hotmail.com

[KevMsutton]

Congrats on this innovation guys. It's great to see it launched!

We think this is at the forefront of voucher and offer strategy and sets a benchmark for many other merchants out there!

I would encourage all affiliates to check it out and feel free to come to us with suggestions as to how they might be able to best utilise this functionality

Kev


Kevin Sutton
Key Account Manager
Affilinet
ksutton@affili.net

[Lawcom]

Brilliant Joshna, that sounds really interesting .. need to check it out some more but well done

[ian]

Brilliant. Exactly what I was asking for as a discussion point at the IAB as a blueprint for all merchants and networks to adopt as best practice. IAB AMC MEETING - 25th FEB 2010

Can Red Letter Days be added as a late entrant into the Innovation in AM awards for this ?

[loquax]

Very impressive... what kind of response in terms of conversion have the trial affiliates seen? or do you have stats for customer journey? (i.e. do less go off in search for something new)?

Massive step forward - well done.

Jason

[hpops]

Can't argue with that Joshna, absolutely ground breaking work - warm congratulations

[Joshna]

Thanks everyone for your positive feedback!

We hope to get as many affiliates as possible to implement this with us and we will certainly be sharing the results from this with everyone.

Thanks,
Joshna

[SkimlinksMark]

Great move guys! Innovations like this can only benefit all affiliates, voucher or non-voucher alike. Multi-attribution next? ;-)

[JasperB]

Well done on this, you raised te bar.

[csn]

Can Red Letter Days be added as a late entrant into the Innovation in AM awards for this ?

I've just revealed that it has already been entered!

[anjulie]

Hi,

I just wanted to say well done to everyone at Red Letter days invloved in getting this live. I know a lot of planning, consideration and work has gone into these developments and its great to see such positive responses so far.

Joshna will be posting out details of demo days both at AW's and Affilinet's offices, if anyone is really keen to come along you can also drop me a line or email anjulie.truong@affiliatewindow.com and I'll make sure you're informed of the details.

Thanks,
Anjulie

[Shouldknowbetter]

This certainly is ground breaking coming from a merchant but I'm pretty sure that Webgains has had a voucher management tool for quite a while that does very much the same for all their clients and affiliates. Although it does not show or hide a voucher box on the merchant side, it eliminates the stealing of codes/offers and allows you to make vouchers/offers product, affiliate or commission specific.

[befuddle]

I've just posted this on OLD but worth sharing with Joshna and team.

Well done but this takes us back to the early days of code sites and it causes confusion. If you say “Save 10% Off – No Code required - Discount automatically applied” and there’s one price listed or two prices listed, one struck out. Does the customer expect to get a further 10% discount on top of the price that is displayed. I say yes.
You need a further prompt at checkout that says “Final price VoucherSite.co.uk 10% discount applied”

Also a month has passed by where one of my similar merchant relationships has expired. My traffic hasn't reduced to my merchants page but conversions have. So in essence my site visitors are still expecting a particular discount to be valid, they're still clicking through to merchant but then the customer may or not be wondering if they've actually got the discount.

The latter is harder to manage as the deal has expired but I recommend more sign posting and hand holding if possible when there's an exclusive.

Regards,
Ray

[MattSweet]

Nice idea guys, and definitely one that will get affiliates on side!

Just to play devils advocate what are the potential implications from a customer service point of view? If a customer chooses not to use a voucher when they see the box (or doesn't know one exists) then that is fair enough, but if they weren't even given the chance to enter a voucher in the first place, then does this become a grey area?

[Joshna]

Hi Ray,

Thanks for your feedback - much appreciated as always!

In response to the points that you have raised - the functionality where we take the discount off onsite instead of issuing a physical code is just one part of the new technology that we have released. This is not something that all affiliates who have a voucher code have to adopt, it's just an option.

We still have the ability to work under our usual guidelines where we issue bespoke discount codes (discount code + commission = 13%). So this part of the functionality is available for those that want to have the discount applied throughout the customer journey. At the checkout page you will see that a discount has been applied - there is a separate line in the order total which shows the discount amount which has been removed (see screenshot below) which in turn should give the customer satisfaction in knowing that a discount has been applied. We do take on board your point about making it clearer to the customer at the start of their journey that the discounted price is being shown and this has been added to our list of future developments.



In order to implement some of the new functionality, I totally agree there needs to be an open dialogue with the affiliate. What helps is that these deals are set up individually between Red Letter Days and the affiliate. Therefore I have comprehensive details of who should be displaying what offers and in turn have a good sense of control. This means I can help to ensure that the correct message is being displayed for the customers and that deal expiration is being managed efficiently.

As you already know, we monitor the discount codes that we issue and so this would be something else that I would monitor closely. When a deal is coming to the end, we will review how the deal has performed and discuss the future promotions that we can run. Two way communication always has been, and will continue to be vital for the success of running deals.

We are committed to continually moving this functionality forward as we gather more input from affiliates and data about how customers respond, and we will certainly be sharing the results with all of the affiliate community.

Thanks,
Joshna