Greetings All,
You can hardly imagine my delight the other morning when I had a flyer from Dominos through my letterbox – they’ve opened a new outlet just down the road & I can now get deliveries!! The nearest one to me previously was in Farnham & they didn’t deliver this far out. For years I’ve had to make do with dodgy pizzas from our local kebab shop – & they only do deep pan, not the thin crust that I prefer.
This reminded me that a week or so back I saw that Dominos had launched on Affiliate Window – I have a couple of sites where I make a decent amount of money promoting Just Eat & thought that Dominos would be a really nice addition.
So off I went to Affiliate Window to join their program – I was halted slightly by the HUGE block on the page telling me that I really should go & create a darwin account – maybe I’ll post my thoughts about Darwin later. I did a quick search for ‘Pizza’ & spotted Dominos right underneath Just Eat – so clicked ‘Join’ – accepted the terms & waited for approval.
& waited..
& waited….
& waited……
Now call me a bluff old traditionalist if you like, but I would have thought that if a program has only been live for a week then someone would be actively monitoring sign-ups & approving (or rejecting) on a fairly regular basis. I’m fairly sure that it was before 09:00 Thurday when I applied & here we are at 21:00 on Friday & I’ve still heard nothing.
I’ve just logged into Affiliate Window to see if there was anything odd about the program – maybe they only approve applications on a full moon or something? – & whilst there I read fully the Program T&Cs.
I’ll reproduce them in full here :-
- Affiliates are prohibited from promoting voucher codes / special / exclusive offers unless provided to them by Affiliate Window or BLM Quantum.
- Voucher code sites must ensure that they adhere to the 2009 IAB guidelines.
- Affiliates are not permitted to link directly to the Domino’s site or to use the official URL www.dominos.co.uk
- Affiliates are prohibited from using branded URL’s without being given prior consent.
- Affiliates are prohibited from using the term “official” in their search copy.
- Affiliates are not permitted to bid on any brand related terms in any search engine, including miss-spellings.
- Affiliates who wish to promote via email must have prior consent from Affiliate Window or BLM Quantum.
- Cashback / incentive sites must make it clear to their customers that they will only receive cashback if they are a new customer to Domino’s
I’ve bolded the points I have an issue with.
Affiliates are not permitted to link directly to the Domino’s site or to use the official URL www.dominos.co.uk
What? I’m not permitted to link directly to them? So this is breaking their terms (twice): www.dominos.co.uk
Maybe they mean that I’m only allowed to use affiliated links? seems fairly strange to me though.
Affiliates are prohibited from using branded URL’s without being given prior consent.
I presume they’re referring to their own brand (although it’s not clear). I find this really annoying – surely if I write a blog post about how great Dominos Pizzas are, then it’s natural that ‘dominos’ would end up in the url for that post (this post has it twice).
Affiliates are prohibited from using the term “official” in their search copy.
Again – WHAT? I’m not allowed to use the word “official” in MY search copy? what about my huge forums for the official red widget supporters club – we all know that red widget supporters love nothing more than sitting down to a nice takeaway whilst chatting away online about the nasty green widgets, is this site to be excluded because it quite innocently uses the word official in it’s “search copy” ? Actually – I’m not exactly sure what they mean by “search copy”.
Now as you know, I’m not afraid of calling a spade a spade, so, here goes.
It looks to me as if these terms have been put together by a troop of poorly trained monkeys & I think this program is being (mis)managed from the outset, possibly by someone who is qualified to do it due to the fact that they once saw a copy of a marketing book on someone elses desk.
Oh – I just did a quick search for dominos discount – Looks like the usual suspect is breaking the IAB Guidelines – AGAIN.
This all ends on a happy note though – I had a pizza delivered last night – half Texan BBQ & half Chicken Tikka – Thin Crust – it was AWESOME.
TTFN
BFG
I think that could be the ppc terms your Reading there.??
I suspect that you’re right – however – it’s really not clear – here’s a screengrab from the page.
Oh – I’ve also just spotted that commission is only payable for NEW customers – WTF? so if someone bought a pizza from them last year & they happen to be browsing my site & see an article about Pizzas & I get their mouth watering & they click though to arrange a delivery from Dominos – then I wouldn’t get paid – they think I’ve added no value – they think they would get the sale anyway??? I’m probably just being a grumpy tosser, but this is actually getting me more & more wound up – think I’ll stick to Just Eat who pay 4.5 – 5% on every order.
TTFN
BFG
Your right its not very clear as they haven’t created a seperate section for there ppc terms.
Would have to blame the AM for that one.
Alot of the supermarkets, ie) Tesco also run the same sort of setup for their home delivery services.
You only get paid when the member signs up, creates the account and places their first order. After that the customer is solely theirs. I agree its not good value for affiliates.
In fact I think it takes the Mick!
If you have enough leverage you can possibly negotiate on these terms. (always give it a go regardless)
An example would be MySupermarket.co.uk who obviously have made their own arrangements.
If you get no response then go with your instincts and stick 2 fingers up to the merchants who won’t offer you fair value for your work (no matter how big they are) and work close with the ones that appreciate your marketing efforts.
Thats what I do and I wish more affiliates would do the same.
Mike