Hotel Chocolat November News

[ChrisBishop]

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Dear A4U....

With only 52 days to Christmas now and the drop in temperature; the focus is now definitely on Christmas. The Hotel Chocolat affiliate program will provide great converting products for your homepage, Christmas pages, emails, gift finders both for personal self indulgence and irresistible delivered gifts. Please read below for details on creative, affiliate awards, top sellers and delivery information.

Commission - 10% Standard Commission - with potential of a higher commission based upon performance! Our current average order value is £46 (and rising!) with a 10% conversion rate.

Cash Bonuses
Total Sales Value: £1000 - £50 Bonus
Total Sales Value: £1500 - £75 Bonus
Total Sales Value: £2000 - £100 Bonus
Total Sales Value: £4000 - £200 Bonus
Total Sales Value: £8000 - £300 Bonus
Total Sales Value: £12000 - £500 Bonus
Total Sales Value: £24000 - £1000 Bonus

Christmas Creative
I have now uploaded three different sets of Christmas creative (468x60, 125x125,120x600 & 120x60) and I will be adding some further flash banners early next week. All the creative will deeplink straight to the Christmas page on the Hotel Chocolat website. please ensure you update your creative to optimise your click through rates and conversion rates.

Here's an sample of the 468x60 banner adverts:





Please log into the CJ interface to pick up the new Christmas creative and deeplinks.

Christmas Affiliate Prizes
As mentioned in the October newsletter, to mark the excitement of Christmas - please find details of the Hotel Chocolat affiliate awards!*The awards are in the following categories:

Top 3 affiliates (1st, 2nd, 3rd prizes) (0ct-Dec)

Best new affiliate (from 1st Oct)

Best reward site affiliate

Most Improved Affiliate (Oct-Dec)



For the following two awards – please email affiliatesupport@hotelchocolat.co.uk to enter:

Home page creative. (All affiliates promoting Hotel Chocolat on their homepage will be entered into a great prize draw!)

Best use of Hotel Chocolat Creative (Be imaginative!)



Plus every affiliate that generates a sale will be put into a prize draw to win a Christmas Hamper! - Prizes will be a mixture of Hotel Chocolat products and electronic gifts - these will be sent on the 21st December to ensure delivery in time for Christmas Day!

Hot Products
Please find our current top Christmas products (great to feature on Christmas pages, emails)

- Double Layer Christmas Chocolates
- Chocogram Deluxe
- Christmas Chocogram®
- Goody Bag Of The Season
- Table Crackers
- Chocolate Dipping Adventure
- Chocolatier’s Table
- Montgomery's Advent Calendar
- Goody Bag For Every Season
- Huge Cracker

Delivery Information
Last order dates to guarantee Christmas Delivery:
UK Standard Delivery - 19th December
UK Gold Delivery - 21st December
Europe - 11th December
Rest of World - 4th December

Please ensure, especially closer to the time you display these dates with any additional copy.

And as always, affiliates showing strong improvement, interesting/new ways of promoting Hotel Chocolat will receive some irresistible Hotel Chocolat treats! If you feel you qualify please email me chris.bishop@hotelchocolat.co.uk

Best of luck for a higher successful November! As usual, any questions please feel free to contact me.

Kind Regards

Chris



Chris Bishop
Online Marketing Manager
Hotel Chocolat
E : chris.bishop@hotelchocolat.co.uk
IM: cpbishop@hotmail.com
Skype: cpbishop
T : 01763 257784

Learn a little more about Hotel Chocolat:
- Our Story
- Our unique Ethical Policy
- Our Stores

[aotagain]

I'd be interested in why you moved to CJ from AW ? Whatever the reasons, though you might like some feedback.

We used to do some business with you on AW and could set up deeplinks with our own text, using pictures of very specific chocolates etc. The whole process took a few minutes. Conversions were good. Then you disappeared off AW, so all our efforts which we thought would set us up for while, were shelved.

To be honest we can't even be bothered to delve into the linking process on CJ. Rather than go on at length, I suggest you sign up as an affiliate and then try and implement some deep links on a dummy website, using your own text and some static pics. of chocs.

To put it mildly there have also been several issues between affiliates and CJ, the unwieldy interface certainly being near the top of the list. All I can say really is read the forum.

I was personally very disappointed in the move as there is no doubt the products are first class, which is an important motivator when promoting as an affiliate.

[leaddo]

Hi aotagain

I have to agree with you, I too was dissapointed when the move happend. The whole process is far more restrictive.

I wanted to deep link to the Advent calendar the other day. Can't be done! I did ask Chris to set one op but haven't seen one yet. Please Chris?

Thanks

[aotagain]

Whether this is correct or not I don't know, but my feeling is that CJ and TD do the 'corporate presentation' thing - you know - control the affiliates, make sure they only use creatives that are approved - make affiliates sign up for individual sites - assure the merchant that their brand won't get fiddled about with.

imo that is probably required for some affiliates, but its tarring all of us with the same brush and it loses sight of the fact that if you put up poor quality links for a merchant you won't get conversions. The best affiliates for merchants are more than capable of generating their own text and picture links to fit with their own sites and promotions.

[ChrisBishop]

Hi there

Apologies for the delay in reply - I missed the post.

Regarding deeplinking we changed our consumer facing URL's to aid our SEO. So that might be the issue.

If you require to deeplink to Hotel Chocolat products you will need to use the following product urls in the excel spreadsheet below.

http://www.hotelchocolat.co.uk/image...ed_08Nov06.xls.

I will be adding this to the Hotel Chocolat merchant information page on the CJ interface.

deep linking through CJ isn't particularly difficult. Actually, its quite simple. That said, this has to be treated on an advertiser by advertiser basis as some advertisers can make deep linking quite difficult with gateways and whatnot...

For Hotel Chocolat, due to changing our URL's to be SEO friendly please use the specific links provided. Once you have that, its very easy. For example, I took this deep link: http://www.hotelchocolat.co.uk/produ...id=1019&src=cj

And I used the CJ system to create this:

a href="http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-1382775-10431305?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hotelchocolat.co.uk% 2Fproduct.asp%3Fpf_id%3D1019%26src%3Dcj" target="_top">Hotel Chocolat</a> - see deeplink here http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-1382775-...019%26src%3Dcj

<img src="http://www.awltovhc.com/image-1382775-10431305" width="1" height="1" border="0"/>

Below is a visual representation of this process.





If you have any other problems regarding deeplinking please let me know.

Maybe easiest is on MSN (cpbishop@hotmail.com).

Thanks

Chris

[aotagain]

Chris, thanks for your direct efforts and the example - that has given me confidence in the linking process (the responses from CJ are often not very specific).

Having 'worked' examples is brilliant - I wish some other merchants would put in the sort of effort you have. Knowing that a merchant has someone who is really on the case makes a huge difference.

Thanks.