After some talks with concerned affiliates, I want to discuss the issue of an obviously visible e-mail address on the sales pages. The concern is that when the contact is really easy to see, some vendors might take advantage and take sales away from affiliates through customers who contacted vendors directly. To me this isn't big of an issue, as I feel that the client is always more confident if you e-mail him back a link to your site without any strings attached. As in "just go to http://ps3fixer.com and use the BUY IT NOW button" However, as an affiliate, does this really concern you? Personally, whenever I promote a product and see an opt-in form, I know that a client is lost if he opts-in and buys in several months (or from another PC). So yes, I am strongly against opt-in forms, but all for obviously visible e-mails. How about you?
They way you have it is totally okay. CB won't approve your product unless you have the contact e-mail on the bottom, so you need to have the e-mail, although some vendors remove it after they get approved. The e-mail won't hurt sales. On some rare occasions, you will even get e-mails from customer that are hesitant to buy, and you will be able to get a sale from them if you respond correctly. The affiliate will still get the commission. So having a small subtle e-mail at the bottom is not only required by CB, but can also be considered positive, because the potential customers who are hesitant to buy have a way to contact you. Otherwise, you would've lost that sale for both you and the affiliate.
Exactly, I've had several customers who cleared up several questions before placing their orders. But I'd like to hear some counter-opinions.
The only counter opinion I could think of would be from an affiliate who might be concerned that the vendor might try to abuse the e-mail sent from the potential customer and put his own link on the e-mail response. I'm not aware of any vendors doing this.
There are many vendors doing this. A few days back, I sent around 200 hops to a product without any sale. Then I signed up to his newsletter only to get shocked. I contacted clickbank and the support girl asked me to forward those emails to her. I did so and she just said "The case has been forwarded to our security department". I don't think they do anything about that. Is there anything in their Terms & Conditions that forbids vendors from doing this? I do believe that an opt-in form can benefit the affiliates but its very hard to trust any publisher. So I don't go for products that have opt-ins. Having just the email address at the bottom is fine. Its really very hard to trust vendors about things they control. Just an example: Some vendors allow affiliates to make custom affiliate links. A few weeks back, I checked an old custom affiliate link (it was a xbox repair guide by a vendor who frequents DP) and I was shocked to see that it redirected to another affiliate! So its good to not trust any vendor in anything he/she can control.
Yes, opt-in newletters on the sales pages can be really dangerous for the affiliates. The vendor can do anything he'd like in those e-mails.
hi all. I'm actually a vendor and intending to put in an opt-in email list in my sales page. i always thought that this would be a great thing to do as i could always follow up with the customers who arent willing to buy first time around. but, there seems to be a lot of skepticism from affiliates on the nature of this due to potential abuse of this. is there a way i can reassure my affiliates that this is not the case?
Maybe get an affiliate of yours to sign up to the list on your salesletter to prove its authenticity and maybe let him give feedback to you? Just an idea...