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"One nice thing one of my affiliate managers did for me was set me up with my own 800 number. When people call the number on my site the person answering the phone knows the calls are coming from my site and answer the phone using my company name. When I added the phone number my sales increase about 25%."
[webmasterworld.com...]
We are in the process of putting together a lead based affiliate program, and have been seriously considering this tool for our affiliates, only we would be answering the calls with our company name, rather than the affiliate's, and tracking for the affiliate calls that came in on the affiliate line.
At this point, we do not have a way of determining which of those calls actually converted (our CSR's would not know which 800# the call came in on) so we have been trying to come up with a decent/fair way to credit the affiliate. I am sure all of you will be full of great ideas! :-)
We are looking for posts that share:
1. Experiences with this type of arrangement in your affiliate relationships
2. Opinions as to the benefits and/or challenges of such a program
3. Suggestions/ideas on how to track and properly credit conversions on calls to affiliate 800#
TIA!
Simplest solution: single shared 800 number.
use a unique promo code for each source of leads. Have your operators ask for the promo code from the caller and enter it into the order screen. Important -- give your customers a reason to cooperate, for example: bump your shipping price $5 and then offer a shipping discount if they give you the code. Make sure your affiliates place the code next to the 800 number on their site.
Better solution: separate 800 numbers.
make use of the ANI data that is sent along with the telephone call to display the actual telephone number called. If your call center doesn't support it, then they are amature, and you need to consider consulting with a phone expert. Problem with separate 800 numbers is the overhead. Perhaps you offer separate number to high producing affs or give each aff the option to order their own number and forward it to the POTS line of your call center. The ANI data will still transmit their unique phone number.
BTW, You mention some issue with CSRs tracking conversion, but it's not clear what you define as a conversion. A filled lead form? A later sale?
In almost every new merchant site critique I've seen, the first thing that all the potential affs say is "Get rid of that 800 number"
And in three years of doing this and meeting and talking to many high earning affiliates, I've yet to meet one that disagrees and makes good money from an 800 number. I'd be interested to be corrected, and to find out which industry is capable of bucking the trend.
Michael - thanks for the heads up.
Anyone else have experiences with 800#'s that they'd like to share.
Given the cost of running these numbers it really depends on what you are selling, how complicated the product is and what the value might be.
e.g. health insurance would justify a 800 number while DVDs would not
Then using our own call statistics we could formulate a payout plan for incoming calls on that line. Something like this:
Assumption #1: there will be a number of wrong #'s misdials, non-serious inquiries, "curious looky-loos" etc. that reach the number.
Assumption #2: Non-serious inquiry calls tend to be shorter than serious inquiry calls
Assumption #3: Calls lasting over 2 minutes are more like to be valid inquiries.
Assumption #4: Calls lasting over 5 minutes are likely to be serious inquiries.
Assumption #5: Calls lasting over 10 minutes are likely to have set up a confirmed appointment for our services.
We realize the problems with trying to track EXACTLY what happened on each and every call, and we also realize we cannot trust promo codes and CSRs to "remember" to ask for them, so here is what we are thinking:
Knowing that there will be some calls we may not be able to receive info on (Caller ID's blocked etc) We will offer to pay a higher commission on what we can track --- the number and length of calls to your 800#.
calls less than 2minutes pay no commissions.
calls 2-5 minutes generate a $1 commission
calls 5-10 minutes generate a $4 commission
and calls 10 minutes or longer we treat as a confirmed appointment and pay full commission of $10
we would give no payment for duplicate #'s, but would pay the longest call when duplicate numbers do occur.
At the end of each month we would provide you with two commission reports. One for your phone conversions and one for your web conversion.
If your volume is high enough, you will see fairly predictable conversion rates in an aggregate sense. Just be sure you police the fraud. Eliminating duplicate numbers is a good start, but of course you also don't want some nut publishing a free babe 800 ad.
You know, on our radio 800-...-2222 number, which is only played in a few large metro areas, we still receive a fair amount of "noise" calls -- they originate from all 50 states.
Regarding caller ID blocked: I still see the numbers, since I pay for the call.
Are you set up with a RespOrg to dole out blocks of 800 numbers to you? It's a nightmare to deal with the large providers when a RespOrg issue pops up.
