As digital marketing has evolved over the last couple of decades, companies have used affiliate marketing to drive traffic to their websites and generate sales. This article will explore how affiliate coupon codes can affect your brand and how Bluepear’s advanced brand protection technology can address the challenges while ensuring fair traffic generation.
Understanding the Potential Challenges of Coupon Affiliates
1. The Potential Impact of Coupon Codes on Your Marketing Funnel
These coupon codes often appeal to existing customers instead of attracting new ones. Usually, those who seek out affiliate coupon codes are already familiar with your brand and are ready to make a purchase. These customers likely had the opportunity to learn about your products through ads, organic searches, word of mouth, or an influencer who is affiliated with your program.
Thus, affiliate coupon sites can end up at the bottom of the conversion funnel, which can lead to additional costs for traffic that has already been attracted to your site through other channels.
2. Coupon Codes Can Lead to Discount-Seeking Behavior & Lower Cart Values
Coupons incentivize discounts merely by their nature. As with many brands, your goal for offering a deal will likely attract new and repeat customers. However, this can also backfire because it teaches consumers to secure the lowest price possible for the products they want. This can result in reduced average order value (AOV) over time, which can impact profitability. Encouraging a reliance on discounts can be an unintentional consequence of coupon affiliates.
3. Customer Frustrations & the Risk to Brand Reputation
Coupon affiliate programs work to accomplish their own business goals, which is to attract a constant stream of traffic to their own websites. To do this, they scrape all the possible codes and distribute them all, whether they are valid or not. This can lead to customers coming across expired coupon codes, which may create a less favorable experience with your brand.
4. A Lack of Transparency in Coupon Code Distribution
A common problem with affiliate coupon sites is that they often fail to disclose the methods of attracting users to their websites. They may be driving traffic through paid search campaigns, deceptive SEO practices, or unapproved partnerships with other websites and marketing platforms. This lack of clarity can make it more difficult for brands to formulate an effective marketing strategy for their affiliate programs.
Affiliates who don’t disclose their network connections and activities leave many brands in the dark about whether their codes are being used in ways that decrease the value of their brand, if and when violations occur, and what specific affiliates or third-party partners engage in the misuse of these codes. This uncertainty can challenge trust and hinder collaborative relationships between brands and affiliate partners.
How Bluepear Can Help Brands Track Coupon Affiliates
Though coupon affiliate programs are often seen as a challenge in digital marketing, Bluepear can provide a solution with its brand protection technology. Below is a hypothetical brand, “Jam,” to illustrate how Bluepear’s technology helps combat affiliate coupon misuse.
Step 1: Identifying Violations
Jam has to establish clear guidelines in its affiliate program terms and conditions. These terms include prohibitions on promotion through coupon codes and brand bidding.
Though the policies clearly outline these guidelines, Jam notices that users access codes after searching ads that feature phrases like “20% off Jam coupon.”
Step 2: Using Bluepear to Detect Coupon Misuse
Jam partners with Bluepear, and with their help, they are able to gain visibility into how their coupons are being misused. Bluepear makes this possible through tech-driven features:
Filtering for Coupon Codes
Bluepear provides Jam with a platform that includes a coupon code filter, which is built to identify all instances in which the brand’s name is associated with coupon advertisements.
Analyzing Violations
The Bluepear platform provides a comprehensive analysis that shows specific violators, including insightful information such as screenshots where search results show the brand’s name and mentioned discounts. The platform also captures landing pages where these instances of misuse are found and the affiliate IDs linked to these actions.
Building Evidence
Bluepear collects and stores all affiliate violations, helping Jam gather the evidence required to address the issue with their affiliate networks or partners.
Step 3: Taking Action
Beyond identifying and collecting proof of coupon code misuse, Bluepear’s system also includes a feature that will send the affiliate a notification letter with attached evidence. This feature will streamline the process of addressing affiliate program misuse, save Jam precious time, and ensure affiliate accountability.
Why Choose Bluepear for Protecting Your Brand?
Bluepear is proud to offer an all-encompassing solution for managing and monitoring partners participating in аffiliate programs. Its features will empower your brand to:
Identify Misuse at Scale
Bluepear’s analytic tools will help your team unveil any patterns of voucher misuse among your affiliate partners and networks.
Enforce Compliance with Your Terms & Conditions
The brand can notify affiliates who violate program terms directly through the Bluepear platform. The brand can attach screenshots or links as proof.
Optimize Traffic Generation
With increased transparency with traffic sources, your brand can ensure that your affiliate coupon codes are being used by new customers only.
Preserve Your Brand’s Reputation
Bluepear’s active monitoring of coupon code misuse will help you address the issues of distribution of codes and maintain your brand’s reputation.
Maximize the Value of Your Affiliate Partnerships!
While affiliate coupon codes may appear to be a simple and effective way to boost sales, they can come with challenges, including potential impacts on AOV and brand reputation, which may outweigh the perceived benefits. However, with the help of Bluepear, you can regain control over your affiliate program. Discover how Bluepear’s brand technology can safeguard your brand and optimize your affiliate marketing strategy today.
