3 Mobile Affiliates - Worst Performing Mobile Merchant?

[Ballswinger]

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Anyone else having problems viewing their stats today??

https://secure.3-mobile-affiliate.com/actions/login.php

[bewise]

I haven't been on the forum in a while and it's not good to see that thiings haven't changed in the world of 3 mobile. I just checked November 2009's stats and I had 49 sales declined and 6 approved. Adam I'm glad that you say you have a good understanding of the affiliate side, however I should let you know that it is now the case that the majority of merchants (90%+) do actually pay per approved sale. Furthermore these merchants are selling top end handsets worth hundreds of pounds and even in those cases where people are purchasing Nokia N97's and iPhones we still get approval rates of 40% as an absolute worst case, not the abysmal rates that we are getting with 3 Mobile. Furthermore I do not think that it is appropriate for you to suggest that we "milk" other affiliate programs whilst it lasts, as that suggests that we are trying to get whatever we can and not deliver value for money. I think I can speak for many of the affiliates here by saying that we pride ourselves on delivering quality leads and doing a good job for the people that we generate business for. I certainly do not want to milk any affiliate program, instead I want to build long lasting profitable relationships with companies that reward effort and hard work. I am proud to say that I do have many great relationships with a number of merchants, where we work together to grow each others businesses. It seems odd that the leading 3 mobile affiliate would tell other affiliates to "milk it", hardly sound business advice is it?

As you have so many stats at your fingertips for both the affiliate and retail channels, could I make a suggestion? Because your credit checking is so stringent on these top end handsets, why not stop selling them? You must be ordering an awful lot of stock that simply sits in your warehouse because nobody can pass a credit check for them. I also find it quite offensive that you say that those affiliates that have chosen to learn and adapt to the program have managed to make it work. Judging by the length of this thread and the lack of anybody saying anything positive on 3 Mobile's behalf, that suggests to me that this is simply not the case. If I am wrong please can the people who have learnt and adapted come forward and tell us what the majic formula is...please, because it seems to me that a lot of people on this forum, people who have been in the mobile phone affiliate industry for a long time just simply can't seem to make it work. Perhaps what we need is a day of training at 3 Mobile's headquarters, where we can learn how to make the program work... A 5 step program maybe?

Maybe I could make a some suggestions to improve the program. I think what you need to do is adapt your program and simply stop offering products that nobody can pass a credit check for. 3 Mobile should not offer top end handsets, they should leave these to reputable retailers that magically manage to get their customers through the credit checking process, the lucky devils, how do they do that? This would make the customer experience a lot more enjoyable and it would also make affiliates a lot happier because they wouldn't see a 10% approval rate or worse each month.

By the way my advice to anybody looking to promote 3 mobile, strip their feed right back so that you only offer extremely cheap phones on cheap tariffs and whenever you can sell a 3 mobile contract through a retailer rather than direct. This will help your conversion rates no end.

[futureweb]

Quick update:

Thought my stats looked Christmassy with lots of Red and not so much Green



Andrew

My stats look pretty much the same - while I see your point, I can also see it from the networks point of view, they can only validate valid sales - things have got worse in the mobile world but to be expected IMO with the current financial climate no one wants any risk at all.

And just to back Adam up a little 3 (sumit) have always been very good to us - great comms, always friendly and helpful and I think it may be a little harsh to blame it all on them, there are other forces at work and mainly the dreaded credit crunch.

[3maffiliate]

I think I may have a simple solution to the issues that everyone on this thread are having with the 3 affiliate program - other than dumping the program completely.

Since most of my sales are failing the de-duping process, and I assume most others are experiencing likewise, the following information, provided by this 3 affiliate program will help re-build trust in the program:

WHEN A SALE FAILS DE-DUPE DISPLAY THE AFFILIATE ID OF THE OTHER AFFILIATE WHO IS REWARDED THE SALE AND IF APPLICABLE THE URL THAT THE SALE ORIGINATED FROM OR OTHER USEFUL IDENTIFYING INFORMATION.

I want to be certain that some legitimate affiliate is getting rewarded for the sale and that these sales are not getting rejected as the result of cherry-picking elsewhere in the process. Having to state which affiliate got rewarded the sale will remove the incentive to state sales as failing de-dupe when other factors may be involved. At least this way there will be more transparency and we will get to the bottom of the problem. At the very least this will build confidence in the program.

I mysel, am just starting to see the effects of de-duping on my sales and it does not look credible.

[TheMole]

Of course ALL 3 affiliates are in the same boat, huge failed de-dupes and huge declines..........or are they?

[TheMole]

I have studied your this thread with interest and the your legal course of redress. If you have lost sales due to any form of deception, skimming, or selective payment without declaring the method of such, this is a crime and under the section 447 of the CA (amongst others) this could be investigated with powers of warrant (Google Companies Investigation Branch). If it were found that any company (or agent of) looked liked they were conducting such a program, they can be ordered to produce the documentation that proves or disproves the allegation. If they refuse to produce the documents, they would be subject to a search warrant / court order. If they were found that a company had undertaken any form of filtering of commissions, and they in total exceeded £1,000,000 over the time of the transactions across all affiliates, it would probably be referred for criminal prosecution of those involved. The service is free and anonymous and having read this, I can understand why you all have concerns. If you would like to message me feel free…you may have private comments. I am sure that all you really all want is a fair reward for a fair effort and that is what law provides for….use it if you don’t get it sorted whether this program or others with similar complaints.

[darrenlc]

I was with 3 on the buy.at program and found that all my sales got rejected. I didn't trust buy.at so I went straight to the direct 3 mobile affiliate program. I was only promoting free laptops with mobile broadband so was expecting the rejections to be high as I was told that the rejection rate was about 80%. This worked out to be true but I wasn't disapointed as it was what I was expecting. The problem is that now my confirmed commisions have dropped to about 5%. This is especially disapointing as I am sending them 4 times more 'refered contracts' than a few months ago but am earning less money from them. The problem i have is that if i lose a sale with 3 mobile then I might have made it with another affiliate partner that has a 40% pass rating with me - therefore losing commision.
I'm gonna stick with then a bit longer because I want to try other products e.g. pay monthly mobile phones and sim cards.

[3_Mobile]

I was with 3 on the buy.at program and found that all my sales got rejected. I didn't trust buy.at so I went straight to the direct 3 mobile affiliate program. I was only promoting free laptops with mobile broadband so was expecting the rejections to be high as I was told that the rejection rate was about 80%. This worked out to be true but I wasn't disapointed as it was what I was expecting. The problem is that now my confirmed commisions have dropped to about 5%. This is especially disapointing as I am sending them 4 times more 'refered contracts' than a few months ago but am earning less money from them. The problem i have is that if i lose a sale with 3 mobile then I might have made it with another affiliate partner that has a 40% pass rating with me - therefore losing commision.
I'm gonna stick with then a bit longer because I want to try other products e.g. pay monthly mobile phones and sim cards.

Hi Darren,

Happy to assist here. Have noticed a slight drop in laptop approval rate lately and had put it down to the Sony Vaio coming in (higher device cost/risk), which incidentally has just gone out of stock.

At the very least we can take a look at what you're giving prominence on your site and benchmark your approval rates to see if we can optimise to connection rather than order.

If you PM me your CD number/handle we'll take a look.

Kind regards

Adam

[kingraja]

3 mobile have got the worst approval rate ever. 73% rejection rate from 3 mobile compared to an average of 2.58% rejection rate from the other mobile networks.

I can't believe buy.at/awin would even let merchants like that run on their networks.

[17thStory]

I know a while ago Three moved SIM Only sales to pay on dedupe (i.e. no declines if you pass dedupe). There was a suggestion at the time that this was an experiment and if successful they may try this with other products. I just wondered what had happened with this - affiliates has it been successful for you and Three has it been successful for you?

From my point of view, although SIM only is only a small part of my mix, it's a big upside knowing that these sales won't be declined and it helps me to plan and tweak my campaigns with a more accurate EPC. I'd certainly love to see this extended to other products - perhaps mobile broadband dongles might be a natural next step to try?

Adam, happy to give my input here if you'd like to hear it.

Steve

[3_Mobile]

3 mobile have got the worst approval rate ever. 73% rejection rate from 3 mobile compared to an average of 2.58% rejection rate from the other mobile networks.

I can't believe buy.at/awin would even let merchants like that run on their networks.

Probably something to do with the multi-million pound business we generate for our affiliates each quarter.

Thanks for your feedback.

Adam

[3_Mobile]

I know a while ago Three moved SIM Only sales to pay on dedupe (i.e. no declines if you pass dedupe). There was a suggestion at the time that this was an experiment and if successful they may try this with other products. I just wondered what had happened with this - affiliates has it been successful for you and Three has it been successful for you?

From my point of view, although SIM only is only a small part of my mix, it's a big upside knowing that these sales won't be declined and it helps me to plan and tweak my campaigns with a more accurate EPC. I'd certainly love to see this extended to other products - perhaps mobile broadband dongles might be a natural next step to try?

Adam, happy to give my input here if you'd like to hear it.

Steve

Yes please Steve - very happily listen to your feedback on this - either PM or other.

Has been interesting...
It's obvious why we did it. Has been a lot of negative feedback on our 'poor' average approval rates and I totally get that some of our affiliates benefit from some kind of (almost) guaranteed payment for the leads they generate. Better for risk. Better for confidence.
So with SIMO we basically took more of the risk away from the affiliate and took it on ourselves. But to compensate the risk this has been factored into the commission rate - swings and roundabouts. So as ever it depends what kind of affiliate you are.
What has been interesting is that I've actually had affiliates ask me to take them off the app model and pay them higher commissions. So by taking the risk back to themselves they can increase the reward. I'm sure this sounds familiar with a lot of affiliates.
In short, I'm undecided how to develop this approach for the moment.
Has it helped some affiliates - yes
Has it helped affiliate confidence - a little, yes
Has it helped my sales number - not really, no
Am I tired of spending time looking for the fraud we've opened up to the channel - definitely ;0)

But seriously, it's been interesting thus far. I don't have plans to push out further just yet, but I also don't have plans to U-turn either.

Would welcome affiliate feedback. Have I got anywhere in convincing affiliates that having our businesses aligned is a good thing yet?

Has anyone noticed the speed improvements in approvals on Direct - does this change your mind on app model?

Thanks for bringing this up Steve.

Adam

[LinkBuilder]

Summit Media is run by convicted criminals. Interesting.

[SummitMedia]

Yes - we think it is interesting. At Summit we are very proud of our work at HMP Wolds.

But the work we do at HMP Wolds is only a small part of what Summit is all about (although it will always be a very important aspect of our business because it is where our story started).

The majority of Summit staff at our three centres (we also have offices just outside York and in Prague in the Czech Republic) have not been through the prison system.

The staff who are/or have been employeed through the prison system have worked hard to earn the trust of the Summit team and not to mention some of the biggest brands in the country, our work in the successful rehabilitation of offenders is unparalleled.

For more information about Summit, our clients and our work at HMP Wolds check out: http://www.summit.co.uk/telegraph-article.pdf

John Hayes
Summit

[Ben C]

Summit Media is run by convicted criminals. Interesting.

As John points out HMP The Wolds is not the only part of Summit Media's business. As someone privileged enough to have been out to see them - having worked with Summit Media on and off over the last 5 years - I can honestly say that their team of people at the site are some of the hardest-working and effective people in the industry (no doubt helped by the lack of distractions in their typical day...). I would heartily recommend any of my clients to work with them.

If you ask around you will find a number of people working in online that have left prison rehabilitated with a great grounding in the business because of Summit, and for that I can only applaud them.

Cheers

Ben