JD Williams Campaign Suspension

[mattswan]

Dear Affiliates

I regret to inform you that the JDW affiliate program will be suspended over the summer months of 2008.

We realise this is not great news as you have been a valued affiliate generating incremental sales for some time now however we hope to try and explain why we have had to take this action and advise what our plans for the future are.

Why are we doing this?

Organic growth has developed at an astonishing rate over the last few years and as a business this has been fantastic however; in the current economic climate, our budgets have been constrained to the extent that, with a budget in place which cannot accommodate this organic growth.

Options Considered

Both DGM and JDW have been working together over the last few weeks looking for a suitable alternative to suspending the campaign such as reduced commissions etc however due to budget restrictions it would be a huge task to stretch the budget over all existing affiliates. Suspending the campaign indefinitely will give us time to build up an accurate picture of sales allocations, multi channel costs, reversals etc and return with a program which is better, more competitive.

Course of action

The JD Williams program will be suspended today Thursday 1st May 2008. We will be serving a one week notice period to all affiliates so links and creatives can be removed from your sites. Therefore, please can you ensure that these are all removed by Thursday 8th May 2008?

JD Williams will not be paying out for any commissions for click sales made after this date. A 30 Day cookie will be honoured until Saturday 7th June 2008.

To sum up JDW would like to thank you very much for all your support and sales since joining the JDW affiliate program and wish you all the best.

We hope to work with you again on a more improved affiliate campaign in the future. In addition we would like to thank DGM for helping us develop this program over the years and providing you with useful support

Once again, we realise you must be disappointed at this news however we do hope to re-open this campaign moving forward once we get through the budget constraints we are facing at the moment.

We would like to be as transparent as possible to this decision that has been made and hope that the above justifies this. However, if you do have any questions please feel free to contact our dgm account managers Matt Swan (0207 943 4259), Sheenu Aggarwal (0207 943 4268) or alternatively feel free to contact me directly .

Regards
Dominic Smith
JD Williams

[Barry]

Very disappointed indeed.

[3wdl]

It's a shame that a large retailer such as this doesn't understand the very simple concept that Affiliate Marketing is a sale cost, not a marketing budget.

Very short sighted indeed

[ash]

Would have been nice to have an email about this? Nothing in my inbox or in DGM's messaging centre.

3wdl from the wording of the initial post, are'nt they saying they don't have the 'budget' to cope with existing demand from organic growth, therefore don't need the extra affiliate generated sales.

But i totally agree with you.

[Barry]

I don't understand the wording at all.

I thought the principal of selling 'stuff' was simple - if you sold more 'stuff' you could afford more 'stuff' to sell.

Thank god I don't have to buy stuff as an affiliate in order to sell it for merchants or the same might happen to me. I would have to take my website offline for a few days a week cos I was selling too much.

Ta

[Keith]

This is a very short sighted approach to affiliate marketing, I'm only glad I never got around to putting links up for more than a couple of the JD Williams campaigns.

I feel sorry for any affiliates who have diligently put up links for each of the 30 JD Williams campaigns - especially those who loyally switched links from CJ when the program changed networks.

It will be interesting to see how many put links back up when the campaigns go live again, especially if in the mean time the position on the website has been filled by an equal or better performer.

[sticky]

Originally Posted by Keith I feel sorry for any affiliates who have diligently put up links for each of the 30 JD Williams campaigns - especially those who loyally switched links from CJ when the program changed networks.

Your right - it took bloody ages to move all the links over to DGM then this mess! Can never understand these companies with budgets issues as surely they only pay us when WE have made THEM even more money

[retrolink]

I am still waiting for the email about this and I really don't like networks that do not send emails and just rely on people reading forum posts. How can you possibly "serve a 1 week notice period", but not send an email out to your affiliates? DGM really needs to sort their attitude to affiliates out...

As for JDW, I am not so concerned about their attitude. Their actions will no doubt impact their affiliate relationships going forward, but it doesn't reflect well on their transfer over to DGM from CJ - they didn't last long! They have had the wrong advice, or bad management, somewhere along the line...

Because I don't have many programmes on DGM since they "upgraded" their software a few years ago, this is just one more programme that can be dropped. At the moment DGM are one of the last resort networks that I will use if there is no other choice, but it used to be very different 2+ years ago...

Nick

[retrolink]

Originally Posted by retrolink I am still waiting for the email about this

- and I got it as I wrote the post! At least that's something...

[Frostie]

I agree it is sad news. I also feel sorry for DGM too, after all they brought in, an consolidated all the programmes from CJ, spent a lot of time, money and resources in ensuring cross programme tracking was 100% working before releasing the programmes live in the AM community. All this effort and JDW turn around and after being a victim of their own success, pull the plug (albeit while they review the situation).

Barry - the problem with JDW is that it sells on CREDIT so therefore it's not really a normal affiliate programme. If they charged up front for all the items, then yes your theory would be correct but sadly the credit crunch is finally having an impact, and TBH, I thought it was only a matter of time until it started to affect AM.

Well done to DGM for getting all the programmes and for securing cross programme tracking. Sadly a victim of their own success and credit crunch

[kylah16]

I'm quite upset - didn't see this coming as it seemed like they'd spent a lot of time at DGM trying to make the campaign a success. I finally create a website that converts well and they go and pull the plug!