Red5.co.uk – Too Good / Too Bad
Last week a canny lass over at red5.co.uk sent me one of the best affiliate marketing emails I think I’ve ever read, so I thought I’d share it with you as an education.
Hi there,
let me introduce myself – my name is Taz and I work for a gadget company called RED5. Our company was founded by Jonathan Elvidge who also co-founded the original gadget shop in the UK.
I noticed that you mention the Bladefish Sea Scooter range in one of your posts. We have just received a delivery of both the lower end models and hope to be getting the higher end models soon.
I wondered if you would be interested in putting a link to our page in your post as I notice that IWOOT does not have them in stock as of yet (I believe that we are the first in the UK to get the new models in stock).
You can view our product page here:
http://www.red5.co.uk/Bladefish-pr-826.html
Many thanks, hoping to hear from you,
Tasmin Harney | Customer Services | RED5 Retail Ltd
So on first glance this may not seem to be anything special, but lets look at it closer. Taz hasn’t come to me and said “hey feature all our products and plaster our banners on your site”, she identified a clear opportunity on a specific product page for a mutually beneficial relationship.
It’s also clever on Red5′s part because in the SERP’S for the product name, we sit second to IWOOT, whereas Red5 don’t appear on the first page for the product name, meaning if we did link to them, they’d have an instant presance. What impresses me even further is that it would appear Taz works in customer services, putting shame to many marketing departments out there!
Working at IWOOT for 3 years I obviously know of red5, but I’d be honest enough to say I haven’t featured them on giftsguideuk.com for no other reason than I forgot about them. Revitalizing my interest through such a simple way would certainly get me featuring them more.
I named this post too good / too bad, because there was no happy ending. Having whipped an email back saying yep, if you have an affiliate program let me have the details andI’ll get a link up for you, Taz replied telling me her colleague would be in touch, and one week later, still no contact from said colleague.
This is canny marketing at its best and I wish more affiliate managers would look for genuine opportunities like this, even if Red5 only did half the job it’s a good start guys, just follow up the opportunities your creating for yourself or surely it’s wasted effort?
October 8th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Oh dear, as you say that was a brilliant opportunity wasted. By now IWOOT have got stock in and Red5 have missed out.