Webgains Blog - Pound Punch

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Noticed this blog post last night - Pound Punch! : Webgains Blog

Just curious as to the nature of the relationship between Pound Punch and Webgains?

Can't help but feel any 'official' relationship between a network and such a site might cause a bit of a conflict of interest for Webgains when dealing with other voucher code sites?

Not a big issue, just surprised to see such a post (Can i have a link from the webgains blog too?! )

[sgpratley]

Interesting move. If there's an open door to promote affiliates to merchants rather than just the other way round I think that's a great idea.

Not sure I'm happy about any preferential relationships with particular affiliates though.

[Hero]

let me clarify the partnership - we upload our generic codes to the site on behalf of our merchants, so we ensure the information distributed is accurate and includes start and end dates, terms etc. We do the same with icodes and promotions.co.uk.

This isn't preferential treatment, just a service we provide. Rather than merchants having to upload their offers individually, or the specific affiliates having to manually input them from the spreadsheet we provide, we do that on their behalf.

These affiliates then distribute the vouchers and offers in a feed that subscribing affiliates get. Simple as that.
We have presented our merchants of these affiliates and it's up to them to give them exclusive codes if they view the potential. This is something we do very frequently: present affiliates to merchants with the promotional opportunities they offer.

Any affiliate who wants to get in touch with our merchants on a wider scale, all you need to do is get in touch with me. A simple powerpoint is also very powerful in convincing merchants

Any questions, please let me know
thanks

[befuddle]

Cool, so I just need to develop an admin area and that's 10% of my workload solved.

[Hero]

not unless you offer your site as a service for other affiliates to populate their sites with (copy - paste not accepted)

[befuddle]

I can't see where PoundPunch.com offer that functionality to other affiliates. Befuddled.

[Hero]

I need to investigate this - the information I was given contradicts what I can see on the site.

mea culpa

[hpops]

Also, I clicked on exclusives offers and saw one advertised for FeelUnique, which said click here to see the exclusive offer. Link went through to homepage, might just be an incorrect page link but its currently against guidelines.
Nice site though

[befuddle]

The Feel Unique offer is genuine. I have one myself. When you add an item to the basket you'll see the discount at checkout.

[hpops]

The Feel Unique offer is genuine. I have one myself. When you add an item to the basket you'll see the discount at checkout.

Ahhh, nice! Would be nice to see it reflected in landing page, just a thought. Consumer might not realise its been applied?

[Hero]

an update on the blog post. I have taken it down as this is indeed different to the service that was described to me.
We are always happy to help with services that the affiliate community benefits from, like the various affiliate program directories, the voucher systems, the datafeed aggregators etc.
But this is indeed quite different, so we will not be uploading codes by default. Merchants who wish to have their codes uploaded and request us to do that, we are happy to do them on their behalf as part of the account management service.

Hope this clarifies things and thanks for bringing it up

Duncan, for feelunique, they have changed their code system and the customers need to click on specific links now without the need to quote a voucher at checkout. I agree that it would be best for the customer to be notified prior to seeing that the discount has been applied during the checkout. I'll relay this to the merchant.

[islandcosmetics]

Just to put feelunique.com's perspective regarding our new inbound URL discount system, below is a copy of an email I just sent to Hero at Webgains:

Cheers,

Aaron
feelunique.com
----------------------------

Good idea about the pop-up showing the discount. We are working on revising our added to basket pop-up at the moment and I will definitely add that to the mix. We are presently relying on the affiliate to tell their customers about the discount before they click as you point out, this in reality though is no different really to the old voucher code system where the affiliate still had to relay the degree of discount the code would activate.

What I am investigating is the possibility of showing the % off on the actual prices shown on the website once the click through has been activated, but then I reckon I’m more likely to get customers saying they didn’t get the discount.

The response we’ve had from the merchants from both networks has been surprisingly positive. And some of our best performing affiliates have taken the URL option, as I say I was really surprised at some of the encouraging comments received. I suspect you may see more merchants going down this road.