Why Don't Aff Networks Allow Email Marketing?

[finnegan]

I'm trying to find an offer for a niche I might be doing and I've noticed that none of these networks allow email marketing promotion. Why the hell is this?

Shitty PPV traffic is okay but targeted email traffic isn't? This makes no sense.

If I can't work with an aff network, what are my choices here? Just Amazon and Clickbank?

 

[Ryuzaki]

I think it might be to avoid spam problems, which always include hacking databases and scraping emails and what not. Email is one of the few mass mediums of communication online that has laws around it so far in the US. It's kind of like the EU cracking down on cookies. They are crazy slow to respond to this stuff.

• Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003: CAN-SPAM

It'll get real crazy when blog comment and forum spam and the like get targeted. I can imagine the Internet Litter Law of 2053.

 

[Steve Brownlie]

@Ryuzaki is right it's because 'marketers ruin everything' as Gary V is always saying. If they allow e-mails they'll have a billion affiliates buying huge junk lists and spamming out and under CAN-SPAM it's not entirely clear that the brands they represent wouldn't be responsible for the e-mails sent on their behalf so it's safer to just not allow it.

 

[finnegan]

@Ryuzaki is right it's because 'marketers ruin everything' as Gary V is always saying. If they allow e-mails they'll have a billion affiliates buying huge junk lists and spamming out and under CAN-SPAM it's not entirely clear that the brands they represent wouldn't be responsible for the e-mails sent on their behalf so it's safer to just not allow it.

So how would this differ for networks like Clickbank who DO allow email marketing? If it's that dangerous for a network to accept email traffic, you'd think that none of these companies would be allowing this form of marketing.

 

[Steve Brownlie]

So how would this differ for networks like Clickbank who DO allow email marketing?

That's just a business decision. The law doesn't allow SPAM, the safest/easiest way to handle it with affiliates is to ban obvious high risk activities, which some networks choose to do. Others may choose other methods to limit SPAM, and allow those higher risk activities. It's like banking... some banks will lend to higher risk business activities than others. Why? Because they feel like it and think they can manage the risk satisfactory and therefore the risk/reward seems worth it to them. I'd imagine Clickbank makes so much from e-mail marketing of their products the risk/reward seems balanced, but naturally I can't speak for their risk management team.

 

[CCarter]

So how would this differ for networks like Clickbank who DO allow email marketing? If it's that dangerous for a network to accept email traffic, you'd think that none of these companies would be allowing this form of marketing.

There are direct consequences of this. Norb from DubTurbo experience this with his Clickbank product DubTurbo. A cracker (hacker in your world) cracked into 2 major record label's database and then proceeded to email every single user an affiliate advertisement of DubTurbo.

What followed was Clickbank, the Record Labels, Norb, and lawyers getting on conference calls to figure out exactly what happened. It was pretty stupid too of the cracker since the commissions... are going to HIM. It took a whole of 10 seconds to figure out his information and get things sorted out. Luckily no lawsuits (that I known of) were filed, but it led to Norb reducing all commissions of all affiliates to 1%, and then only white-listing affiliates at the 70%. Then a year later, he reduced the affiliates base again, and now he's finally killed off his affiliate program for good.

What's the lesson? For Norb it was there are bad affiliates that will do anything including breaking the law to make a dollar. The dude was located in a "remote country" so prosecution is unlikely (from what I remember). But the good affiliates that were making millions per month with Norb are now out of a great income source, which obviously causes a cascading effect. The actions of one individual sent shockwaves across a while sub-niche, main niche, and all the way up to the major plays in the industry.

The biggest take away is simply to not allow affiliates to use email marketing and only whitelist individuals who are responsible. As an affiliate you will have to give up a ton of details about how you plan on marketing and making sure you aren't doing anything shady. There are heavy FTC fines for this. I used to work at a major corporation who's presence online is vast, and AGAIN another affiliate spammed email market huge email lists which they scraped and resulting in the corporation getting fined over $7 millions and having to be put on "probation" where they can get audited by the FTC whenever they want, and has to report to the FTC various activities.

That's the problem with affiliate marketing that's a double edge sword. On one hand you have a force of people that will spread your product, service, and brand. On the other hand the tactics they utilize can be questionable and can cause the corporation, it's brand, or assets to get hit with bad reputation because of a handful of bad actors OR even a single individual.

There are affiliates in this world that don't understand that creating article to rank for "XYZ Scam", and shit for the brand also creates a negative view of the company when users do a quick scan of the search engine results pages and don't necessarily click on what's going on nor read the article from that affiliate. It's shortsightedness and this "innocence of a savage" causes brand erosion and what ends up happening is brand are less likely to utilize affiliate marketing (hence affiliate marketing is dead). That then causes a problem since you have very few good offers as an affiliate to run that no consumer even want.

You can't just let people do "whatever the fuck they want" with your brand, cause they have no real loyalty nor do they care that you have put in the hardwork and sweat to create your brand cause they are just in it for the "quick buck" - so they'll just do "whatever the fuck they want".

Marketers ruin everything.