Vodafone update - Great news!

[Michelle Gilmore]

Tweet

Dear Publishers,
dgm are pleased to announce that the Vodafone campaign renewed for the month of October with a higher cap.

Please continue to promote this campaign as normal.

Vodafone has a great range of mobile phones and price plans to accommodate every customer's lifestyle needs.

You can earn

£21 for each validated application for a contract phone package and
£3 for Pay as you talk (PAYT) packages.

Cookie length 30 days.

The campaign is running with an ongoing cap that is renewed every month. We will advise publishers when this cap is close to being reached.

Please be aware of the following Terms and Conditions for Vodafone:

Publishers can only use creative and copy supplied by dgm
Brand name bidding on the word Vodafone, or the use of the name Vodafone in any copy or url through PPC engines is strictly prohibited for this campaign
Sales for contract phones and Pay As You Talk only will be honoured. No sales will be honoured for accessories.

This is an ongoing capped campaign and we will inform publishers once the cap is close to being reached.
If you have any queries on this campaign please email publishersupport@dgm-uk.com.

Regards

The dgm Team

[Jon]

Please continue to promote this campaign as normal.

"Normal"?

OK, so I guess we should expect a forum post three quarters of the way through the month (instead of mid-month, given the higher cap) saying that the cap is near and to slow down leads immediately.

Then a reference on the forum to an email notification - that no-one received - of the same information.

Then a promise to look into why the emails were never sent / received and report back, followed by silence into the following month (Matt, 21/9: when I unearth what is going on I will be back on here to update").

Then Vodafone will do something else to the site to make it less affiliate-friendly (following the addition of a big, red freephone number on each phone page last month).

Plus the ongoing, unresolved vagueness regarding the issue of "duplicate" sales.

And no commission for accessory sales, because Vodafone obviously sell those only as an act of charity.

Hmm. Weighs it all up...

[EyeOfTheTiger]

You should get a bit more length out of the program as I have stopped promoting them now. Still waiting for last months sales to be validated, so if you do still promote them then theres all the sales I "MAY" have had to bag fgor yourself.

Higher cap or fewer affiliates ????

Mike

[cyberbird1]

Does anybody know when the 0800 phone number was added to vodafone's site?

I'm seeing a big drop in click to conversion. It would be interesting to compare conversion rates before and after the phone number was added.

[J.J.Johnson]

Vodafone are taking the pi$$ out of DGM and their affiliates by adding a freephone order number to its site.

If they insist on doing this they should double their commission.

[cyberbird1]

I have today suspended my activity on the Vodafone campaign. My conversion rate of clicks to pending sales this month has been just 1%.

In July it was 6.67%, August 5.9% and September 4.68%.

[Matt The Hat]

John,

I put a request in to unearth why some publishers were not receiving emails. I will ask the publisher team to follow up - apologies that they have not already.

I also promised I would update you events regarding Vodafone.

It transpires that the drop in conversion is a result of something Vodafone have done to the sales tag on the site.

The sales tag has been dropping on the "Please wait" page, directly after the customer confirm order page. Vodafone were paying on all orders post credit check (even if those credit checks led to a fail).

The sales tag is now being dropped on the page after the "Please wait" page, so they are now only paying on "pass" or "refer" orders.

I discovered this yesterday, while trying to understand why the drop in conversion is evident. It can't be down to the 0800 number. It isn't that prevalent on the site.

I hope to receive dedupe data for today - I have been chasing this since 30th September.

best wishes,
Matt

[cyberbird1]

Hi Matt,

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that they were previously creating a pending sale and then deleting it if the credit check faied, wheras now they are just creating a pending sale when a credit check has been passed?

This would mean no deletions on the current pending sales?

If I've understood what you are saying then I need to adjust my figures to take account of the deletions I was getting (32%). The convesion figures would be:

July : 4.5%
August : 4.0%
Sept : 3.18% (this could be more because I'm assuming 32% deletion wheras the new tagging method could well have taken place in September).
Oct : 1% (assuming no deletions will occur)

It still looks like something else is playing a part. That freephone number looks pretty prevalent to me. It's on all the phone pages I've looked at.

[Matt The Hat]

Hi John,

All orders which reached the "Please wait" page were becoming pending sales. Vodafone were paying on these providing they were not duplicates, in which case they would be deleted.

The number of actual pendings dropped significantly on 25/26 Sept because a pending sale was not being generated if the credit check failed.

I send through all pending sales to the agency who dedupe against orders made through other online activity.

There is therefore no correlation between "failed" orders which they are no longer paying on, and deleted orders which come out as a result of duplication.

I hope that makes sense.

I am pushing very hard at the moment to get an increase in the CPA as it is clear now that positive post credit check orders will result in a sale. I am meeting with the agency next week for this purpose.

From your perspective, I recommend waiting until I receive dedupe report for 15-30 Sept then we will know the true deletion rate for the month.

Matt

[cyberbird1]

Hi John,

All orders which reached the "Please wait" page were becoming pending sales. Vodafone were paying on these providing they were not duplicates, in which case they would be deleted.

Matt

But that means that 38% of pending sales for the whole network were duplicates (I think that was the network average deletion rate). That makes very little sense.

Am I missing something?

[cyberbird1]

Hi Matt,

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying or you see how bad things currently are.

If you're just thinking about changing the commission and leaving the current sysem the same then you're looking at increasing it 7 times what it surrently is. That's £147 per app!

Looking at my stats a different way and ignoring September because it was a mixed system and we don't have all the validations yet, my figures for account 19773 come out at 92p EPC over the 3 month period 1/06/2005 to 31/08/2005. For October (assuming zero deletions) I'm seeing 13p EPC.

[Matt The Hat]

John,

I understand how things are at the moment - I am trying to manage this campaign.

To follow, the current issues I face, together with how I am going about resolution:

1) Duplication

I am sent a dedupe file every two weeks by the agency. I upload these to validate sales, and delete those earmarked as duplications. This drives my deletion rate. Average for August was 38% (unacceptably high), and for first half Sept was 22% (encouragingly reduced). I still await second half dedupe data for Sept, which I hope to receive by COP Weds.

I have highlighted the trouble I (and therefore you) have with late validations, from a budget management perspective. I hope to increase the frequency of this to process sales quicker.

2) Volume and conversion

Since 26th September when Vodafone moved the sales tag, the number of order IDs generated by sales has dropped significantly. This results in your conversion plummeting, as you are seeing a huge reduction in the number of orders.

Both Vodafone and OMD are investigating, and I am convinced it is a tagging issue site side, which can be resolved swiftly.

3) EPC

The average EPC for August was 34.8p, for September it was 28.6p and for October this has dropped again to 14p. This is directly correlated to the point above, and with that resolution, we will see both conversion and therefore EPC increase, and stabilise.

4) Budget cap

For October we have the highest allocated budget from Vodafone of the campaign so far - there is no chance of us suspending this campaign at any stage before we go into November and beyond.

I hope this is clear, I am going in to see Vodafone's agency OMD to discuss these points and the need to move to a swift resolution, and I will let you know how that goes.

Best wishes,
Matt

[cyberbird1]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the update.

I'd love to know what is treated as a duplicate. I find it hard to believe 1 in every 5 approved applicants go on to apply again.

Also worrying is why my conversion rate was 3 times better than the average for 3 months on the bounce, then all of a sudden at the network average.

[Matt The Hat]

Vodafone (agency) has finally acknowledged that there is a problem with tracking. It appears - and I await confirmation - that by moving the tag one stage further (to avoid tracking "failed" orders) some of dgm sales are not being tracked through to order ID. This will explain the dramatic drop in volume.

I believe I know the reason why... at confirmation page stage, the customer has the option to:

1) click and wait for order confirmation ON THE PAGE, or

2) click away and await order confirmation via email.

When I test purchased, I went for option 1), there was a delay, and a message saying due to high traffic or demand or something, the order confirmation would take longer (than the 30 seconds it stated). When I went to Outlook there was an email with order confirmation.

With option 1) a dgm tag was present, however with the email option 2), there was no dgm tag.

In summary, by moving the tag, we are now not tracking all contract sales.

I have a call scheduled with the agency this afternoon, and will get back to you accordingly.

Matt

[cyberbird1]

Good work Matt! Thanks for the update.

Please let me know when you are sure all problems have been fixed. I'll give them another try.