William Arthur’s bold new website affiliate program
I just received an announcement from Hank Beresin, Vice President of Sales for William Arthur, advising me that William Arthur had launched a new website affiliate program for their dealers. The program is open to all registered William Arthur dealers. The affiliate program provides dealers a 20% commission on each retail sale that links from a dealer’s website to William Arthur. The website affiliate program is managed by LinkShare, “a well recognized and respected third party agent who will track and manage all outgoing activity and payments.”
In a very simplied form, the William Arthur website affiliate program works like this:
- You signup for the program by linking to the website provided in Hank’s letter (I am not providing hyperlink for reasons of confidentiality).
- You complete the application at LinkShare (about five to ten minutes of your time).
- You then provide the William Arthur Sales Department your “Site ID number” which is generated by LinkShare.
- Using your unique LinkShare’s ID number, you will be prompted to auto-create some html code that must be copied and pasted into your website. Some have images and some are text links. You can and should use both.
- Insert the LinkShare code into your website and each time a visitor clicks on that link, it will take the visitor to the William Arthur website.
- Your unique code tells William Arthur and LinkShare that you are the referring website and should the client buy online from William Arthur, you will receive a 20% commission.
Let me provide a hypothetical example. Let us assume that you write a Blog article about William Arthur or include a link to William Arthur on your website. Instead of using the standard hyperlink to the William Arthur website: http://www.williamarthur.com , you will now use the special SiteID html code generated by LinkShare. It might read (entirely fictional): http://www.williamarthur.com/linkshare/?!xdbTr33. Somewhere in the html code provided by LinkShare is a unique code that identifies your website/Blog as the referring website to William Arthur. If the client closes the sale online with William Arthur, you receive a 20% commission on the sale.
While one can debate the conceptual merits of this program and online selling in general, I for one applaud this bold initiative by William Arthur. It sends a clear message to its dealers: Let’s work together to promote the William Arthur brand in whatever media or distribution channel the buyer prefers to use. Furthermore, it is a strong inducement to storefront dealers to adopt “21st century” marketing and advertising strategies. The quicker we start using these affiliate marketing strategies, the stronger we will become as independent dealers. This is just the first of many changes I see sweeping through the industry. As independent dealers, we have the best product(s) in the industry and far more experience and knowledge than online newbies. Get started now! This is one industry where a little knowledge goes a long way. As Heraclitus said “A man with one eye is King in a land of the blind!” Go for it!
Richard W. May
Therese Saint Clair
P.S. Heraclitus also threw himself into a volcano to prove that he was a god. Just settle for being a king.
October 20th, 2009 at 4:12 am
William Arthur is certainly jumping on the bandwagon in aggressively getting out there in conjunction with their dealers!
Good news!
October 24th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
It’s about time William Arthur starts putting themselves out there! And I appreciate that they want to work with the dealers that represent them instead of to undermine them as Crane does.
I recently got a phone call from a long-standing customer, who always orders Crane, wanting to know if it was faster to order personalized stationery than holiday cards, because she thought those took an awful long time. I said it’s about the same amount of time 1-1/2 to 2 weeks (not all that long in my book for a quality product). She then asked what the difference was between her ordering online from Crane than from us. I said the time was about the same, but they would have more options if they came to the store (Crane has only a limited offering online). She then proceeded to let me know that the would receive their order in a week if they ordered online. And I tried to help her understand that was the printing time, but they would still have shipping time. Also, if you read Crane’s information about timing on their website, personalized orders take 7-10 days before they ship. In the end, she isn’t going to be satisfied if she orders online from them either because she isn’t under the correct assumption about how long it takes for a personalized order.
The 2 are competitors of each other and I think William Arthur has finally hit their stride. They’ve got better personalized wedding and holiday products on the market at this moment in time (at least in my market) and it will be interesting to see what happens now that the VP and GM of the Stationery Division at Crane has been replaced. Will Crane make a comeback?
I like William Arthur — they’ve got a good quality product, reasonable prices, great designs and can move the orders along in a pretty reasonable amount of time (certainly faster than Crane). They’ve also got a great team to work with! I consider them a wonderful alternative to Crane, but Crane needs to step it up in their personalized section. Though they’ve got William Arthur beat in the amount of boxed product offerings, I find even there Crane is lacking sometimes.
There is plenty of room for both companies and I understand Crane’s need to sell everything under the sun online, but I think they’ve lost their focus and I’m glad William Arthur has picked up the slack!
January 9th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Great looking Blog! Found it through Google. Just as an FYI, it didnt display right when I opened it in the Opera Interet Browser.
April 9th, 2010 at 6:23 am
Sorry Tamara, it didn’t come through. Send me an email and I will see if your comment is relevant to be posted. Regards