Plug that Leak! Affiliate 800# Phone Tracking for Merchants
Affiliates, sometimes you come across a merchant you really want to work with that has a big 800# commission leak. You contact them and it turns out they didn’t realize the problem the way an affiliate sees it - as potential lost sales. They see the light and want to do the right thing, just aren’t sure how.
Where do you send them to get a clear overview & possible solutions? I’ve blogged several times about leaks & phone tracking to try to educate merchants. There are lots of forum posts about it. Almost everything I can find is more about why affiliates get upset about it (rightly so). I can’t really find what I could call a guide for merchants about how to fix the problem, til now.
Linda Bustos over at the Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog just wrote a really good article with the some great suggestions. The info is geared specifically toward merchants, to help them understand the various options for handling phone tracking and plugging that leak.
Tracking Affiliate Orders For Telephone Sales “A major tick-off for affiliate marketers is merchants who prominently display a toll-free number on their websites or banner ads. If a customer decides to pick up the phone to place the order – the affiliate is not credited with the sale unless proper telephone tracking is used. This is called “leakage.”
Some merchants only show the toll-free number on the contact page or in the checkout process itself, nevertheless it’s a leakage opportunity.
High ticket items and B2B supply or software purchases are often completed over the phone, meaning hard working affiliate partners lose their commissions. Good affiliate programs should be ensure that commissions will be paid where commissions are due.
But how can you effectively track telephone conversions driven by affiliate marketers?” Get the answers, read the rest.
Affiliates - bookmark this post for future reference, as it’s bound to come in handy some day.
Any merchants out there, that haven’t figured out this essential element for setting yourself apart by showing how affiliate-centric your program is - I hope this helps!
Again, I have other really good resources buried in other blogs I’ve written about affliate leaks and phone tracking.
If you know of any other good solutions to the phone tracking issue or find any other good articles or resources for merchants, please comment below.
#1 Jeremy Palmer wrote on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008:
The close rate on phone sales is much higher than the web. I have a dedicated phone number with a few of my merchants and the conversions are almost automatic if they call the #.
#2 Keith Bond wrote on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008:
Great article Linda, telephone tracking is not rocket science and there is no reason why it shouldn’t be adopted more widely. I touched on the subject a long time ago here http://www.keithbond.co.uk/telephone-tracking/
#3 Linda Buquet wrote on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008:
Good point about the phone conversion rates. Although some ‘clueless’ merchants I talk to argue, that if a sale happens by phone, then they have to pay a sales commission, whereas an online sale they can afford to pay the affiliate because they don’t have to pay a sales rep.
Thanks Keith for adding your blog on the subject and I’m look forward to getting over to read it. I think it would be great to have a bunch of good references, all in one place. (Like here.)
HEY GUYS
One question I get all the time from merchants is how TECHNICALLY show a code next to phone #. I can talk it all day conceptually but they want to know exactly how to tell their programmer to code it. I initiated and implemented phone tracking way back when I managed Irvs Luggage - but I worked with a coding whiz. I told him the end result I wanted, but don’t really understand technically how he did it. And I gather from things I’ve heard there are different ways to parse the cookie or whatever, to make this work.
If anyone has or has seen a ref that talks about the actual nuts & bolts of how to program it, that would be nice to have.