David Fiske A subtle blend of affiliate marketing and web development

The Dixons Group (DSGi) are to leave Tradedoubler in favour of Affiliate Window. The move follows Comet's decision to leave DGM Pro for Affiliate Window.
 
I'm not signed up with Affiliate Window and am hesitant primarily due to the Affiliate Window Index (AWIN). There have been many reports floating around the web that suggest that merchants are pruning their programs so only the elite are left on there.

Adam from Affiliate Window emailed me this in response to my post on A4U:

We pride ourselves on the service we offer affiliates and I am determined to demonstrate that this shift from Tradedoubler will be highly beneficial for all parties.

An immediate benefit for you will be the speed at which you we will now get paid for your work on DSGI. Our unique system means that we pay affiliates twice a month, and often before merchants have paid us. We have never once missed a payment.

He also said:

Far from being a tool used to discriminate against affiliates, the Awin index was designed to bring key programme statistics to the forefront of merchant's minds and thus improve affiliate earning potential.

Before its introduction, conversion rate, approval percentage, validation time and EPC were terms alien to most merchants. Now, we present these stats on the front page of the merchant administration area.

Each statistic, if improved, can be of huge benefit to affiliates, and merchants now regularly analyse each one to see what changes they can make at their end to raise their score.

Most significantly, merchants are accutely aware that significantly high reversal rates are totally unacceptable and are encouraged to constantly analyse the reasons for rejected sales and try and remove them from their programme. One of the main drivers in developing the Awin index was affiliate concern over this issue. Since its launch we have seen merchants such as B&Q, Screwfix and Early Learning Centre all approving 100% of affiliate generated sales. The practice is now becoming popular amongst merchants looking to compete with eachother for affiliates and there is a growing trend towards 100% approvals across the network as a whole.

Bringing EPC to merchant's attention has led to the development of many innovative promotions that have had a positive impact on the ROI of our programmes.

Throughout the rich support network within Affiliate Window, our merchant account managers would never recommend removing affiliates from a programme and would always opt for giving advice on how things can be improved client side.

So I'm not sure whether to sign up. It would be a great loss to Compare Sat Nav if I lost the Dixons group but having said that, I lost Comet a while back and that's not had an impact. Perhaps a trial is in order to see whether losing DSGi results in fewer sales, or the same amount of sales through the remaining merchants.

For future reference, the current conversion rate on Compare Sat Nav is 0.49%.

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