Back in January I blogged will our conversion rate ruin your affiliate program. The reason behind that blog was that a retailer, Thorntons, were concerned that our clicks to sales rate was an issue. The reason for that issue was because we can drive a large amount of competition traffic, and at the time Thorntons were running competitions.

Guess what?

Yes, Thorntons have now kicked us off their affiliate program and gave us 48 hours to remove their links.

After careful consideration, we have decided to discontinue our relationship with you as our analysis shows that your conversion rate is significantly lower than most affiliates on the programme. Although we greatly appreciate your efforts in promoting us, we see no value in continuing this relationship at this time.

Now I guess that’s their perogative but let’s just examine this so called relationship!

1. Are we causing Thorntons any work?

No! We’ve never once asked a Thorntons affiliate manager, network or otherwise, to do anything for us that would take up a large amount of their time.

2. Are we costing Thorntons any money?

No! Not unless they’re having to pay Affiliate Window for every click we send. We also “cost” them the time they’ve taken to email us generic offers and also to ask why we send them so many clicks. Hmmm, not a big cost now is it?

3. Are Thorntons getting anything from us?

Yes! They’re getting free promotion and visitors to their site. They’re also picking up users for their mailing lists. Oh yes, they don’t pay for those sign ups and they still have an awful “thanks for entering” page.

4. Do we get anything from this?

Not really! Some sites we send competition traffic to get us sales, some don’t. Thorntons rarely converted, even on gift and chocolate related elements. The only time it really did well for us was on one of those “spend £20 get a box of chocs free offer”. We did get several emails asking us “what are we doing” so that’s a bonus.

5. Did it cost us much time?

No. Our only “cost” is the time it takes to add the fact that Thorntons have a competition into our database. We may, because it’s an affiliate link, include it in our newsletter too. So more free exposure!

So the question is this – why kick us off the program? Is it really costing Thorntons much time or is something slightly more sinister?

Yes, it’d be nice if we were doing sales, but the only reason behind this is that our click/conversion is upsetting someone’s stats. We’re not taking up anyone’s time, we’re not doing anything wrong, we’re the one’s giving Thorntons exposure and not being paid for it.

Thorntons could have looked at their competition mechanisms, let us get on without taking up any of their time, paid us for leads or simply just said “hey, don’t use an affiliate link to link to our competition please”.

Kicking off affiliates because to make your stats look pretty. Done!