Should affiliates be able to see who purchased through their link?

That is a tough call, isn't it?

I learn towards no, but you have a good point.

it would maintain transparency and affiliates can contact customers on bonuses... I'd like to see that happen

My thought is that what would you get out of this information? Say I purchase a product you are affiliating. What would you get?

You would get my first and second initials.
You would get my last name.
You would get the last four digits of my credit card.

What possible reason would you have for wanting any of those three things?

Clickbank have recently removed this information from the eyes of affiliates for legal reasons. They are planning to replace it with a unique customer id to facilitate tracking what customers do.

The main reason affiliates want this: to be able to send incentives (any kind of bonuses) to the buyers that purchased via their aff-link.

However, through your system, Andy, the affiliate is not necessarily in a "relationship" with the buyers that would justify emailing them.
Possible scenario: buyers is browsing the net; finds affiliate's review site and reads... clicks the aff-link > clicks the buy button. As it works, buyer pays directly the vendor and Paypal splits the amount between the affiliate and the system (digiresults.com) and sends the money from the vendor's account to the 2 PP accounts (aff & system).

Unfortunately, the affiliate didn't really enter in any kind of 'business relation' with the buyer that would entitle him to contact the buyer...

Of course, another possible scenario is when the affiliate promotes his link to his existing list members - but how could the system know this?

BTW, as a vendor on the system I was asked once by an affiliate to provide the name/email of buyers...

When clickbank started doing this, i went great, there goes bonuses. I used the cb bonus software, which is now defunct.

But there is a silver lining in it, The way to do it now, is to get the customers name and email address first, ala mailing list. I didn't use to do this, now that i do, i have found i am getting more sales in the long term, and am better off from it.

They claim legal reasons, whether this is true or not, clickbank changed the goal posts, and adjusting your business model accordingly should hopefully result in the same or better income in the long run.

After all, it's really a business you are running in the end, and to be a little blunt, where are all the steam train makers gone?

Andy,

I think this is the biggest problem to consider. I know of a few occasions where the merchant had their sites taken down because of spam complaints on affiliates. I think the reasoning was that even though the merchant didn't do the mailing, the affiliate is/was representing them and this make them responsible for their actions.

Kind of like a salesperson that works for a company and their actions take place on behalf of that company. If the salesman screws up, the company could be held liable for it, so usually they will distance themselves from the individual, i.e. firing them, etc.

The recommendation is to be proactive with some kind of affiliate agreement that clarifies your position on this before they sign up.

If the affiliates had some way to see sales within the affiliate management script, this would help to verify a sale they made. Then they could still have the buyer contact them direct to claim any bonuses offered.

Hope that helps.

Thanks,

John

I would have to say no, affiliates should not be able to see customers email info. There are serveral sales solutions that allow your affiliates to offer their bonuses directly from your sites download page so there is no legit reason for affiliates to need the customers contact information.

While I'm sure the vast majority of affiliates would use this information purely for good - like to give bonuses - as a vendor I'd be worried about the handful that might put it to use in other ways. Perhaps to harass a customer who requests a refund? Or to try to convince someone not to cancel that membership that earns the affiliate a monthly recurring income?

I also think it depends greatly on the market. In some instances, the buyer may not even aware there is an affiliate, let alone who that person is. And what if the buyer has been contemplating the purchase for quite some time, clicked several links, and then makes a purchase? He or she isn't likely to even know who's link they purchased through, unless they're very aware of cookies and how they work, which isn't the case in most markets, I think.

An additional thought on this is that some Affiliate Networks frown on us offering bonuses on an affiliate purchase, because some people fail to deliver the promised bonuses which leads to angry customers and unanticipated charge backs.

The specific example I saw given was someone offering a rebate on a product purchase, and the person offering the rebate was the affiliate. He was actually buying sales for a portion of his commission. But he failed to deliver the rebate for whatever reason, and the Affiliate seller was getting slammed with deceptive advertising complaints, even though they knew nothing about a rebate offer.

I believe you need to look at this from an accounting perspective - specifically taking an audit & internal controls approach to this. And based on that perspective, I would STRONGLY say NO -- affiliates should NOT have the email addresses.

The reason is, that basically - affiliates are essentially independent contractors, and the point of sale is through the vendor offering the product. A "buyer" may go "through" an affiliate link to order the vendors product.

However, in the end, all full customer responsibility relies on the Vendor. The Affiliate received their commission & should not have any interference with the service provided by that Vendor. If the affiliate has "bonuses" etc, that should be provided through collaboration with the vendor.

The buyer opted into the Vendors service, not the affiliates. So the "affiliate" has no reason to be contacting the buyer of the vendor. Additionally, I'd advise you to take a look at this from a tax base perspective & I'm sure you will find the answer.

No.

I am buying a product, I don't want to be added to your list. I'm already drowning under the weight of costco, 1-800-flowers, victorias secret and every other site I've ever purchased anything from.

I really don't need to be on Johnny Marketers list as well.

I'd say no becasue the affiliate is nothing but a vessel between the merchant and the consumer. Any questions or concerns should be for the merchant, not the affiliate.

Hi Andy:

I think you have to think like the customer. The customer is paying you, you pay the affiliate. Would the customer want you handing out their personal information?

I think the only way to get a green light on this is if the customer gives you permission to pass on their details. The result would be one of two things: Difficult to manage in quantity with permission-seeking follow-up emails, or loss of sales before they are made.

Sydney

As a Customer i will say "No". If affiliate offers some bonuses they will provide a way for me to contact them directly after purchase.

This way i believe my information will be safe.

Andy, you're dealing with apples and oranges here, and I think you're seeing that in how people are responding.

If your concern is about how to allow affiliates to deliver bonuses for purchases made through their links, then create some kind of bonus mechanism for that. There's an addon for RAP, for instance, called the "RAP Bonus Manager" that lets affiliates deliver bonuses to buyers directly via the vendor's download page. There are two options: you can give a bonus to everybody; or you can give it only to the people you refer. I wish it supported both options.

In practice, it works a little like a giveaway script, and it's up to the vendor to use it. Very few do.

As for the premise behind your question, I'll relate this story.

A new marketer once hired an affiliate manager and told him to go forth into the Kingdom and find as many affiliates as he could in order to make tons of sales for the vendor. The affiliates got 50% and the AM got 50%. This is how the marketer built up his initial mailing list for "free".

The problem is, I started getting emails from the AM as if I knew who he was. I had no clue who he was! These seemed like spam to me. I'd opt-out of one list then get more stuff on another list.

It seems this AM acted as the marketer in all of these promotions, and was given free license to use the buyer lists that were generated, as well as the marketer .

It took me a while to figure out who this guy was. He never SAID who he was, and I couldn't figure out how the heck I ended up on so many of his lists!

I finally put two and two together when I started to get duplicate emails from both the marketer AND the AM as one of his affiliates.

The approach used in this case was dishonest, IMO -- by both the marketer and his AM. It would have been ok if either of them had said what's up, but neither of them did. I just kept getting more and more mail from someone I didn't know and couldn't figure out why. I just kept opting-out and finally stopped hearing from him.

So ... don't do it.

If you want a way to deliver affiliate bonuses, add that ability as a nice feature to your sales site. It'll be a nice market differentiator.

-David

One thing everyone needs to consider as well, is two of the biggest players in the affiliate market don't give out details of their customers to the affiliates either.

who are they ?

ebay and amazon

Why i can understand people are upset over this, as portions of peoples business models where based around getting that information, it's something that really should of been considered a bonus rather then a right.

If the bonus was helpful in the persons reasoning of buying the product, then if you have a way for them to contact you, they will. However if the buyer has no reason to contact you, why should you get their details?

If amazon or ebay started giving out customers names to affiliates the FCC would be all over them. Clickbank might not be anywhere as big as them, but they are starting to move some serious amount of products, and don't want to be in the governments sights for anything.

I appear to have run out of "thanks" half way down so I just wanted to take the time to thank everyone that took the time to share their thoughts. Pretty conclusive answer it seems.

Cheers,

Andy