Thomas Cook Cheek

[Flightmapping]

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I know this has been posted in the TD forum, but it needs a wider airing:

"Dear Affiliates

It is with regret, Thomas Cook is required to suspend its affiliate programme for 3 months. This is due to the temporary withdrawal and reallocation of our online marketing budget.

To provide you sufficient time to amend your sites, we will keep existing creative available until mid-day Friday 30th April and will pay affiliates for all sales generated up until this point.

Thomas Cook is grateful for all your efforts to date on this programme and will look to restart the activity as quickly as possible.

Regards

Oliver Batkin

Senior Marketing Exec - Online
Thomas Cook"

ie:

THANKS GUYS FOR SETTING UP ALL YOUR LINKS. SUMMER IS ROUND THE CORNER - OUR BUSIEST PERIOD, AND WE AREN'T GOING TO PAY YOU BECAUSE WE ARE GREEDY C***S

I would have expected more from TD - the reason given is downright insulting.

[Mogga]

Another company did this ages ago - suspect I just dropped them as it was too much effort removing and adding pages.

Very frustrating.

[Flightmapping]

Yes, Air 2000, now renamed FirstChoice did it "because they wanted to do their own seo in house"

When will these people realise that affiliate marketing compliments seo & that we can put bums on seats at a much lower cost than most other methods?

[renegade]

I have little patience with merchants that activate and suspend their affiliate marketing programs. It shows a lack of commitment and understanding and it makes me suspect their motives.
I usually dump them and don't add them back in.

[ianm]

Originally posted by Flightmapping
This is due to the temporary withdrawal and reallocation of our online marketing budget.

I think this shows that some merchants have a total misunderstanding of what Affiliate Marketing is.

The money doesn't need to come from a 'marketing budget'. Unless a merchant is offering CPM or CPC campaigns, they are paying for sales not for marketing. They shouldn't really need to budget for Affiliate Marketing (OK there may be fixed costs associated with the network - but that shouldn't be too high for a company like Thomas Cook).

[Flightmapping]

What next?

"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.

I'm afraid you are all going to have to parachute out of the back due to a temporary withdrawal of fuel from our engines. This is due to a re-assessment of our costing priorities"