So I've been poking around a lot at this and have not come up with anything solid, but what's up with incentive marketing? I know that "fraud" is one reason why some programs claim not to allow affiliates to do this kind of promotion, but yet some of their advertisers are solely incentive advertisers ("sign up and get a $500 card to Best Buy"). Are there affiliate programs that still do accept incentive marketing? I am running a legitimate site and want to have a contest. All I want to do is have my visitors fill out a form and I'll pass the info (after filtering through my fraud control scripts) to the affiliate program. Should be pretty simple, legal, and straight-forward, no?
"sign up and get a $500 card to Best Buy" is not incentive referred to by the terms of affiliate programs .. it is legit and called "sweep stake".. like you give business card and they have a drawing at the end of conference for a price, iPod.. the incentive refers to that you pay your audience to sign up .. say the pay out is $8 per application, you pay your audience $4 to fill out the form.. that creates a problem because the one who sign up is not genuinely interested in the offer, there will be no conversion, and it is basically a fraud.. a bribe... not a sale..
So if I want to have a contest where users fill out a form, is it possible to pass to pass that data on to our affiliate program as long as we are absolutely clear to the user what we are doing and what they're signing up for? Say I partner with affiliate program X that has affiliate program Y that pays $2 every time someone submits a zip code or email address on their form. If I tell my users that I'm giving away a "brand new shiny device" in 2 months if they sign up for this, is it legit? Is it my problem if the users aren't completely interested in the offer but rather want the "brand new shiny device"?
nope.. prize for clicks.. prize for zipcode entry... same.. none of them is legit even if you state it clearly.. because people are motivated by the prize not the offer itself.. prize for email is OK.. because you are only getting the permission to send more emails... just think for a moment imaging you are running the aff program and receive such entries... how likely it will convert to anything?? it will get your friend banned any way if the network is doing its job
Incentive works best when getting emails. If you want them to buy the product, have them invite their friends, and as a reward, have them see a preview of the product. You may want to capture their email in the process, however that would be more steps... and people do not like lots of steps. So it's up to you to test it out and see what works for you. Remember - You want them to visit your website, invite their friends, give their email and buy the product in as few clicks as possible, because if there are too many clicks to do, you'll lose the customer. Hope that helps.
Incentive works best when getting emails. If you want them to buy the product, have them invite their friends, and as a reward, have them see a preview of the product. You may want to capture their email in the process, however that would be more steps... and people do not like lots of steps. So it's up to you to test it out and see what works for you.