Question of the day – Why are those promotions so short?

Today I received a great question from an affiliate.  They were asking us about the short duration of some of our consumer offers for one of our retail programs.  “Why are they so short, can’t we get longer ones?”.  That is a great question and one we here often and have been asked many times over the years.

The answer is a simple one.  Our clients plan their consumer promotions around their consumers, their schedules and their plans.  Many times, not always, the affiliate channels piggy-back upon these site wide or company wide promotions.  Many times they are one day, two day, or three day promotions.  Those durations have been historically difficult for many affiliates to promote, or merely an annoyance to put it up today and take it down tomorrow.  We completely understand that.

We often lean to the side of providing our affiliates with more information, education and promotional materials than less.  So although we understand that many won’t be able to get these short term promotions up and promoted, we don’t want to limit those that can by not sharing.  We know it can be frustrating to see a great offer and know you can’t promote it due to the duration of the offer.  What we try to do for those affiliate partners is attempt to create a special consumer offer that has a longer duration just for them, or just for the affiliate channel.  Many times this doesn’t fit in with the promotion calendar of the merchant’s entire marketing department and that can’t be done, or it can’t be for as an attractive discount as the short term.

So, all in all, we know it can be frustrating, but we want to make sure our affiliate partners have the information so that if they are able to take advantage of the offer they can.  More often than not, those short term offers are deep discounts and perform very well, so if you can promote it, don’t get left in the dark.  They usually drive a lot of sales.

If there is a better way you would like to receive these offers, outside of email and our NewsForAffiliates.com blog, please let us know.  We strive to service our affiliate partners for all our clients better, so we’d love to hear the feedback.  How can we be better for you?