Affiliates bidding on trademark keywords driving sales for Pfaltzgraff
Dinnerware manufacturer Pfaltzgraff grew online affiliate sales by 400% in the program’s first full year with the help of ValueClick’s Commission Junction affiliate services, director of e-commerce and database development Howard Blumenthal tells InternetRetailer.com. And a performance-based search program it initiated with Commission Junction late last year has produced results sufficient to justify triple the company’s initial investment in the program, though Blumenthal didn’t disclose figures. What’s different about the programs is that unlike other brands battling affiliates over bidding on trademarks in search engines, Pfaltzgraff supports its affiliates in bidding on trademarked search terms, and in fact, uses the Search solution from Commission Junction to maximize the practice among its affiliates.
Pfaltzgraff, which sells directly on Pfaltzgraff.com in addition to supplying the brand wholesale to retail stores and their sites, bids directly on keywords only where they aren’t being covered by affiliates. “We work at it to make sure that it doesn’t cannibalize what the affiliates are doing,” says Blumenthal. “It’s a conscious strategy for us to just bid on what fills the holes.” Using Commission Junction’s Search solution, a software and consulting package, Pfaltzgraff finds relevant, timely keywords that aren`t being bid on by its affiliates, then identifies them to affiliates as terms on which they can bid. Pfaltzgraff covers what affiliates don’t by bidding on those terms directly.
“We want to give our affiliates the benefit - they are doing a lot of specialized work for us. But they don’t bid on everything,” says Blumenthal. For example, he points out, many affiliates focus their own keyword bidding strategies on Google, leaving the same terms uncovered on Yahoo. Some search engines include plurals of keywords in bids; others don’t, which leaves them open for separate bidding. “Also, affiliates are busy with a lot of people, and they may not be focused as intensely on our words as we are,” Blumenthal adds. “They may not change bidding on words based on promotions as quickly as we do, which is something CJ Search can take advantage of.”
Blumenthal points out that what works for Pfaltzgraff in terms of encouraging affiliates to bid on trademarked keywords wouldn’t necessarily work for every brand. “We’re selling dinnerware and that branding is important to people,” he says, noting that barring affiliates from using the brand in keyword bids would make it difficult for shoppers to find the brand through affiliate links and therefore difficult for affiliates to promote the brand. He also notes that affiliates’ use of the brand is monitored to ensure the brand is being presented appropriately. “This is a contentious issue for a lot of companies,” Blumenthal says of the practice of allowing affiliates to bid on trademarks. “It’s going to be different for different companies, depending on the product line and the competition.”
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