New merchant guidelines for direct response marketing

[KC-Coop]

According to an email sent out by one of my friends merchant providers, there are quite a few changes being made by at least this particular merchant. It seems like they are trying to predict what Visa/MC's new guidelines will end up being.

Check it out, I'm reading it now thought I'd let you guys know.

Online Direct Marketing & The New Visa MasterCard Merchant Account Rules | Bill McIntosh

 

[Webwonder]

Do you even do affiliate marketing?

 

[gopher]

Hardly anything new. And let's just say most of that isn't going to be in the new guidelines.

Except the bit about the third-party service, which however is going to play a far bigger role.

 

[directresponse]

The good thing is that the merchant providers are still going to allow the trial offers. For a while we were being told that these would be disappearing completely.

Gopher, you're correct. The third-party offers are being changed substantially to where the the customer will need to completely re-enter their entire credit card number on the upsell page. Due to the decrease in conversion, the customer will be worth less to the advertiser and affiliate commissions will begin to drop.

 

[johu]

The good thing is that the merchant providers are still going to allow the trial offers. For a while we were being told that these would be disappearing completely.

Gopher, you're correct. The third-party offers are being changed substantially to where the the customer will need to completely re-enter their entire credit card number on the upsell page. Due to the decrease in conversion, the customer will be worth less to the advertiser and affiliate commissions will begin to drop.

I'm wondering if the third-party offers terms will apply to Vertrue, Webloyalty, and Affinion - The companies that run the "$10 reward" style shopping clubs at the end of ecommerce carts. (See NY attorney general investigation info at http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100127-715157.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines )

Apparently the conversion rates on that were around 4x higher when the card was passed automatically (keep in mind, this is a consumer initiated process, where they enter the path to get their reward, rather than a hidden upsell) than if the consumer has to enter their card manually. With manually entered cards, my guess is that there's a lower chargeback rate, so the true value could be different.