Forum Moderators: buckworks
Is there some other downside to setting 30-year cookies that I'm missing?
It is an interesting marketing gimmick, I will say
-Corey
Aren't good affiliate marketers generally pretty computer savvy? Wouldn't they know that:
a) users may delete their cookies
b) crashes, virii, spyware, etc. may compromise the user's computer, forcing them to reformat, reinstall, etc., which would eliminate the cookies
c) when they buy a new computer, who transfers their web browser and its cookies to the new computer?
And, what's the likelihood of someone using the same computer 30 years later?
A 30 year cookie sounds scammy to me. It's not believable, so I would review your affiliate program right away with suspicion.
A 30-month (or 36-month) cookie might be better. It sounds reasonable and is more believable.
If you do do a 30-year cookie, I wouldn't promote it that way. I'd promote it as a long term cookie or something, stressing that whether a customer returns in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days even 6 or 12 months later, the affiliate will get credit for the sale. That you're with them for the long haul. Maybe even have a "Where did you find out about us?" box on the order form, so that if there is no cookie, but the customer remembers reading about you on domain.dom, the affiliate will still get credit.
It's a good idea, if done right. But, if you don't market it right, I think it can hurt you by making you appear scammy. If you say something like... "We appreciate your hard work as an affiliate, and we want you to get credit for a sale, whether the customer returns in 7 days, 7 weeks or even 7 months, so we set our tracking cookie with a thirty year expiry. While we realize the likelihood of anyone using the same computer thirty years from now is next to nil, what this does is assure you receive credit for returning customers, no matter how long they wait to make a purchase from our site." ...that is makes the offer more credible. That can build goodwill with your affiliates.
But, if you just focus on a "30 YEAR COOKIE! WOW!", you may attract the wrong kind of affiliates, and push away the good ones.
So, be cautious how you decide to promote this.
We're not making any representation that the user's cookie will still be there after many years, just that we're not tossing the cookies (oops) quickly like other affiliate programs. We can't guarantee that the cookie will still be there, but at least we're making it *possible*.
It's a good idea to set the cookie to 3 years vs. 30, since it sounds more believable, and we might get just about as much goodwill from doing so as we would with 30. I'll think about that.
I've written a whole page to explain in plain English how our program works, how it's different from other programs, and how we do things like handle repeat sales and the first affiliate/last affiliate paradox, answers that you often don't get from other programs. So I'm hoping all this underscores our commitment to the affiliate instead of coming off sounding scammy. The thing I *don't* have on our page that many other programs have is "Look how much money you can make!" Now THAT'S scammy. :)
Here's how I'm thinking of wording the cookie thing.
Our cookies last. If you send a visitor to a site but they don't get around to making a purchase until four months later, will you get credit for the sale? With us, you will. At just about every other site, you won't. It's a dirty little secret that most other affiliate programs set their referrer cookies to expire soon; more than half expire in [url=http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=844221 30 days or less]! But when you refer a visitor to us, we set your referrer cookie for 30 years. If your visitor comes back later, even much later, and their cookie is still there, you still get credit for the sale.
Our ToC/Agreement is written in plain English, too, and it's not very long. In there I say:
How we track. When you send a visitor our way we set a 30-year cookie in their browser. Our ability to tie them to you on their first purchase rests on that cookie being there. If the customer deletes their cookies before they buy then we can't identify them as coming from you, and we can't credit you, and that's not our fault. But if a customer makes an initial purchase with their cookie intact, we'll tag them as your customer in our database, so if they make subsequent purchases even after deleting their cookies, we can try to match them to you through various combinations of via their name, email address, city, state, and zip code.
Is there some other downside to setting 30-year cookies that I'm missing?
Some user agents don't handle dates for cookies correctly past 10 years. Not to mention the year 2038 problem, which you would start hitting a year from now with 30-year cookies.
So I was going to revise my description to say that cookies don't expire "until 2037", but that 10-year issue you mentioned is cause for concern. Yet I couldn't find any source to verify that in Google. And my Dec. 2037 cookies seem to be set okay in Firefox, Safari, and IE. Can you point me to a reference about the 10-year limit?
Can you point me to a reference about the 10-year limit?
A while ago I was doing some consulting for a company that had problems with their affiliate tracking. And we found out that setting a cookie to something like 1 year resulted in more users being tracked than with a 10-year cookie. In other words, cookies with high really long expiration ended up either being rejected or treated as session cookies.
In my own tracking (logs and affiliates), I always use 5-year expiration. I doubt you'll find many returning visitors who haven't erased cookies or upgraded/changed computers in such long time.
Or a column in your database which tags that customer for life as a referal by a particular aff id. :)
Ultimately the cookie is renewed upon the session - so if you set it for ten years and I visit your site today - it will expire in ten years. If I visit though in a month, the cookie should be update and expire in ten years. It also depends on the user agent / user when the cookie will expire
There are, of course, many different potential contexts and thus many
different potential types of session. The designers' paradigm for
sessions created by the exchange of cookies has these key attributes:1. Each session has a beginning and an end.
2. Each session is relatively short-lived.
3. Either the user agent or the origin server may terminate a
session.4. The session is implicit in the exchange of state information.
-Corey
Or a column in your database which tags that customer for life as a referal by a particular aff id. :)
Um, that's what I'm doing. If a customer orders the first time as "Jen Smith" and the second time, without a cookie, as "Jennifer Smith", then I need to search on more than just "Firstname Lastname" to see if she's ordered before and if her record has an affiliate ID attached.
In 30 years I plan to be retired living at the beach, so whether or not I get your commission means nothing to me.
Yeah, but the point is, if the cookie is good for 30 years, then it's also good for FOUR MONTHS, which is longer than just about any other affiliate program out there.
If I visit though in a month, the cookie should be update and expire in ten years.
Cookie will be updated to expire in 10 years from the date of revisit if the visitor has clicked the affiliate link, but not if it's a bookmarked or typed-in revisit. I know I have the ability to re-update, but since I'm offering a 10-year cookie, then I'm not sure that resetting it every time is necessary.
Ok. I get it. We require a customer to login, if they forget their old login there is really not much we can do to trace their login to an old account.
With the right design, you can continue to track people if they change computer or change email address. You lose track of them if they do both at once.
Chris
Is there some other downside to setting 30-year cookies that I'm missing?
Being the suspicous type: If you would make a big fuzz of your 30 or 10 year or any other exaggerated expiry date I would probably take a closer look before joining your affiliate programm. Because it would appear to me as if you were fishing for the dumber type or rookie and try to screw them.
Make it six month, make it one year. Maybe even two. Anything else is just exaggerated in my opinion.
Being a content driven affiliate we operate on the principle that if you cannot convert a user in 24 hours (even that is pushing it), you've lost 'em.
Launched the program last night, just had my first three signups to the program. Everything seems to be going well so far, whoo-hoo!
