Coupon confessions

Awkward moment of the day.  I rolled into Church Brew, the 1902 church that was converted into a stunning microbrewery.  As I get out of the RoadShow-branded car, two women smile at me.  I smile back and start walking towards them, they must be the two affiliates who had RSVP’d a couple days ago.  All of a sudden, their smiles are replaced by looks of apprehension, and I realize that they are NOT affiliates, and that I may have even frightened the locals. I quickly turn heel and walkrun into the church.

The Church Brew is simply beautiful.  All the markings of faith still exist, from a marble basin of holy water, to eye-lifting stained glass windows and soaring ceilings.  However, today, instead of a pulpit, there are humongous tanks of beer.  Instead of the 12 stations, there is a bar, made from wood salvaged from the church’s original pews.  The communion aisle?  That separates the bar area from the dining area.  It’s a wonderful stop for the ShareASale RoadShow.

I had the chance to meet up with a couple coupon affiliates, and a merchant who does not currently work with coupon sites.  Hearing the two parties compare notes was a learning experience.  I’ve heard it all in theory, but hearing the conversation firsthand was even more enlightening.

Merchant POV: Coupon sites overwrite direct load sales.  When a consumer hits the shopping cart and sees the coupon box, they immediately go coupon hunting.  If they find a coupon on a coupon site, the direct load sale has now become an affiliate sale.  The merchant loses margin on these sales.

Coupon site POV: Today’s economy has heightened the sensitivity of the value-conscious shopper.  So much so that consumers often start their online shopping sessions at coupon sites.  They may not be looking to purchase anything in particular, they are just looking for solid deals.

Both points of view are certainly valid.  The other concern is that many coupon sites have been around for so long, that they’ve racked up so much natural SEO that their site appears whenever the merchant’s name is typed into the search engines.  However, what we learned today is that the biggest barrier between merchants and coupon affiliates is simply communication.  Merchants get frustrated when they see invalid, expired, or mischannel codes on an affiliate site.  Affiliates get frustrated when the first communication they have from a mercant is a strongly worded demand.  Unfortunately, many coupon affiliates are managing thousands upon thousands of merchants, so there are a lot of times when request simply fall through the cracks.  It’s not because of a disregard for the merchant’s coupons, it’s usually simply because of a lack of manpower.

By the end of lunch, the merchant and the affiliate were both willing to work together to at least test a partnership.  The affiliate agreed to add negative keywords to the campaign, and the merchant agreed to work with them directly.

Coupons are so viral these days.  It is unreasonable to expect that a coupon code created for the sole purpose of retaining customers is only going to be applied by repeat visitors.  Codes are passed along from one consumer to another…and this is a good thing!  This is what the marketer wants…coupons are viral, that’s just their nature.  Knowing this piece, any coupon code, any deal, no matter what the core intent of it is, should be designed knowing that the code has a high potential of getting passed along through other channels.   As today’s coupon affiliate observed, “As long as the merchant accepts online coupon codes, those codes are going to filter in from any channel.”

We did come up with a potential solution though for one specific issue: A direct load consumer temporarily exits the purchasing process to search for a coupon code.  They find one, and this direct load consumer is now tagged as an affiliate consumer, and the merchant ends up paying commission on a sale that should otherwise have been “free.”

Would it be possible for the merchant to look at timestamps?  The merchant knows at what time the consumer hits the order information page.  The merchant can also detect at what time the affiliate cookie was set.  Is it reasonable to say, that if the affiliate cookie was set a few seconds after the order was initially registered, that the transaction could pay out, but perhaps at a lower commission rate?  Both parties today seemed to think this was a fair solution…

The other thing I learned today?  Cleveland and Pittsburgh…now that is a serious urban rivalry.  When I left Cleveland yesterday, I was asked to relay some “smack talk” to the Pittsburgh peeps…  This challenge (all in good fun, of course!), was heartily responded to…