3 Mobile Affiliates - Worst Performing Mobile Merchant?

[mallyord]

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Thanks Adam, and welcome to the forum.

I've only recently started promoting 3 and once I'd read your post I quickly logged into buy.at to check my pending/held stats. As a newbie myself, would it be much easier for a pending which has failed the deduping process to be changed to failed or something similar immediately at the 48 hours point.

[3_Mobile]

Thanks mallyord - exactly, it's the solution I would put forward myself. Good to hear it from you too. Our limits here are what the Buy.at system can handle, although it sounds fairly straight forward to me. I'll have to wait for Richard to comment, but you can be sure that this will be going forward as a potential improvement.

Thanks again.

Adam

[consumerdeals]

Hi consumerdeals,

Can you please confirm that we're specifically talking about sales that have been sat in Pending for an extensive period of time? I'm assuming that you make approved sales on a rolling basis ordinarily?

Hi Adam - thanks for the prompt reply.

Yes - Transactions I'm referring to were stuck in 'Pending' from October to date. I normally expect to see a consistant number of approved sales from 3 each month, but one £11 sale in two months is way below expectation.

I also fail to see why it's only 3 that this problem occurs with - o2, Orange and T-Mobile on Buy.at don't seem to suffer from the problems we're seeing with 3. Could it be that either 3's policy towards fraud/credit checks has some shortcomings, or perhaps 3's reporting is not as mature as the other netop's affiliate reporting?

[3_Mobile]

Thanks consumerdeals - I'm going to send you a PM as I want to discuss your actual figures.

[moshin]

Hi moshin,

Thanks for your comments.

For my sake, can you please be specific about your lack of a response from us. I need to find out why you haven't had a response. There's obviously a problem in communication here and we need to fix it.

I think I may have answered some of your queries in the post I've just submitted. Can you please confirm that this goes some way to explain? I'm willing to elaborate further if necessary.

Cheers

Adam

Thanks for your reply Adam.

My main problem has been not getting any validations at all for almost 4 months since August despite sending numerous reminders and emails. This is something you need to investigate either within 3 or Buy.at.

You have asked me to be more specific about the communication problems I had. Well I can't be more elaborate than posting the time and date and even the support ticket numbers submitted to Buy.at, if you look closely at my previous post in this thread.

I do acknowledge you have highlighted all the right reasons for rejecting a sale falling short of credit score, duping etc. however from my point of view I am getting a good ROI on all other similar merchants on other networks. Now I don't know if this has something to do with Buy.at or 3 Mobile but I definitely can't blame the quality of my traffic.

You have mentioned the "laptop + broadband" group for 3 Mobile is currently delivering 29% conversions. In my case £58 approved out of the £3000+ in commissions is less than 2% with 3 Mobile and with another provider ( I prefer not to mention) my conversions have been consistently around 45%, so you can see the difference in conversions is huge.

I still suspect a machine or human error casing this to happen so can I ask you to kindly check with your technical department? or Buy.at's

You are welcome to send me a PM should you require any further details on this.

[Richard Forster]

HI guys, the backlog of pending sales in the buy.at interface is something which has been actioned and therefore has created a big loss in sales - as the old term of 'n' or pending now means 'sales to be rejected' this has created confusion in terms of it being trade waiting to be approved. In terms of timescales i have to hold my hands up and say between myself and finance after the move to a de-duplicaiton model there has been an unacceptable delay in adjusting to the new system and clearing off backlog in old sales.

Moving forwards to add to what Adam has said we are working to simplify the process and improve statuses that appear- and processes that occur in terms of when you should expect sales to be approved to net connect after the 14 day cooloff period.

Outside of de-duping the reason for rejection does need transparency on why transactions are rejected- As Adam would re-iterate we would love to give reasons why each sale is rejected- so you can identify why rejections take place so you can take learning’s about your traffic and refine your activity moving forwards.

This is something which is the end goal, and something which 3 mobile agree is important but its down to resource unfortunatly- all I can say is that we are endeavoring to make the programme better and we know this would be a major component of that.

Many thanks,

[bewise]

Hi Adam,
thank you for the feedback on the 3 mobile affiliate program, I personally welcome any explanation into the current situation and think that the lack of communication is the very reason that affiliates have been getting annoyed and therefore drawing their own conclusions. The "cherry picking" comment is a case in point. I know that we have sent a number of emails and spoken to Richard on many occasions and got no real answers as to what was happening with our commissions, hence the reason that this thread started.

It is great to hear a thorough explanation as to how the whole process works at 3 and take on board the comments that you make about treating all 3 product offerings differently. I also welcome a push for you guys to get data over to the Buy.at platform quicker as it would make forecasting revenue much easier.

I hope I can speak for everyone that a greater transparency on the program is welcomed by all. I think that the problem you now have is... that you have gone from being a top paying merchant to a sustainable, but at the same time one of the worst paying merchants in the industry and unless other retailers follow suit by reducing commissions and increasing rejection rates, affiliates will not actively seek to promote the various product offerings that 3 has available. Affiliates promote what pays and from what you have said, 3 isn't paying well anymore.

Sorry to be blunt Adam, I can see that you care about the program, sitting writing an email at 11pm this close to christmas shows commitment, I just wish we'd had this communication earlier for our own peace of mind.

[dh5894]

Hi

I have just checked my pending sales and they have all been nearly declined!! I am not happy about this, My usual decline rate is a lot lower.

I am going to pull of my links and send my traffic elsewhere.

[3_Mobile]

Thanks to everyone that has commented so far - there's no need for anyone to apologise about being blunt. This is all good feedback and invaluable to me.

I now have some very specific cases to examine, specifically over the latest approval period. Thanks to those involved.

I’m going to sit down with Buy.at just as soon as I can and we will improve the key processes there. I will make sure 3 does everything it can to facilitate these improvements.

Bewise – you’ve hit the nail on the head there I think. The transition from over-payer to accurate payer hasn’t been pretty. I went through probably 75% of the transition as an affiliate myself, and know how it can be demotivating. It’s good to hear your comment on whether others follow suit. It’s a constant concern I have – whether we’re ironically too transparent, or too accurate – you guys need something to work with after all.

Anything is possible within reason and it’s the comments we receive that drive these decisions.

The good news is that the efficiencies we have put in place this year mean that we are in good shape for 2009. The bad news for affiliates is behind us now and although you’ve highlighted some existing faults (that we’ll work to fix), the only way is up from here. I can think of at least three initiatives for 2009 that will increase the EPCs for the majority of you.

Key things for me to focus on:

• Transparency over all platforms
• Increased communication – including A4U
• Increasing EPCs for all affiliates

[BruceyBonus]

As I don't specialise in advertising mobile phones, I don't have an affiliate relationship with 3. I'm sitting at this from the other side - a customer.

I decided to use a cashback website when making a purchase from 3 for the reason above.

The purchase was for a PAYG USB modem back in September. The cost was £50 and the cashback/commission due would have been £11.

The sale has today been rejected.

The product has been used everyday since its delivery. From day 1, I've been applying top-ups every month - so far £65 worth. This month, my top-up expired whilst I was at my parents for Christmas, so I'm waiting until I get back home to top-up. The rejection happened two days after the third top-up expired - coincidence? This is now over three months since the modem was purchased.

As for making other orders from 3 - I've never bought from them before. No-one else in our household has either so there is no fraudulent activities. Although it isn't required for PAYG, I would pass a credit check so that can't be the problem either.

I honestly cannot see a reason here why 3 would reject this transaction and why they would be rejecting such a large number of PAYG purchases.

[3_Mobile]

To me it is simple. Either pay per lead or don't show 'sales' to affiliates untill they have been verified or as the title suggests 'COMPLETE SALES READY TO GO IN YOUR BANK'.

Hi kungfu,

Cheers for this. It's a good point. Our aim was to give affiliates the most visibility we could so we show all 'sales' regardless of status - I guess I come from a background where you can't have too much information given to you, but I can see how this could easily be deemed negative for those that aren't 100% on the full process.

I think I'd prefer to improve our education/description/reporting side of things rather than actually hide any of the current info we provide - I know that there are affiliates out there that do find the initial sale count informative once they understand what the figures mean. We've gone some way to address these issues on the direct programme but I agree we can make further improvements to make stats clearer for everyone.

This is great timing really as I'm currently finalising the development plan for 2009. Again, I'll make these improvements a priority. Already have key meetings in the calendar.

Thanks for your input.

Adam

[3_Mobile]

As I don't specialise in advertising mobile phones, I don't have an affiliate relationship with 3. I'm sitting at this from the other side - a customer.

I decided to use a cashback website when making a purchase from 3 for the reason above.

The purchase was for a PAYG USB modem back in September. The cost was £50 and the cashback/commission due would have been £11.

The sale has today been rejected.

The product has been used everyday since its delivery. From day 1, I've been applying top-ups every month - so far £65 worth. This month, my top-up expired whilst I was at my parents for Christmas, so I'm waiting until I get back home to top-up. The rejection happened two days after the third top-up expired - coincidence? This is now over three months since the modem was purchased.

As for making other orders from 3 - I've never bought from them before. No-one else in our household has either so there is no fraudulent activities. Although it isn't required for PAYG, I would pass a credit check so that can't be the problem either.

I honestly cannot see a reason here why 3 would reject this transaction and why they would be rejecting such a large number of PAYG purchases.

Hi BruceyBonus,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience with cash back. As with all cash back arrangements there can be legitimate reasons why the sale failed however I'm sending you a PM to discuss your case further.

Kind regards,

Adam

[affiliatemarketingltd]

Difficult decision this. What are your thoughts? What difference would it make to your affiliate model if we paid on app?

Yes :thumbsup:

why not be like O2 or T-Mobile & pay between £30 - £45 per app

[mobiles4everyone]

I'd also like to see pay per app. Seems like the logical solution. It works really well on Orange, O2 and T-Mobile. If a sale is reported we know it's going to be paid. There are no removed, declined or duplicate sales.

As for commission rates, affiliates who deliver unusually poor quality leads could be asked to leave the programme or move to pay per sale. That is how other merchants deal with the problem of lead quality on a per lead programme.

[max99]

I'd also like to see pay per app. Seems like the logical solution. It works really well on Orange, O2 and T-Mobile. If a sale is reported we know it's going to be paid. There are no removed, declined or duplicate sales.

As for commission rates, affiliates who deliver unusually poor quality leads could be asked to leave the programme or move to pay per sale. That is how other merchants deal with the problem of lead quality on a per lead programme.

Same here, pay per app definately would prefer that. In last week ive got about £600ish commission pending from Three and i havent a clue what part if any of it will be paid. It makes it very hard to predict what actual commission/margains to work with