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Voucher Codes can be a problem

Discount voucher codes have their uses, but more often than not they are misused. What is the point in a merchant giving away voucher codes so everyone gets a discount? In running an affiliate program there are legitimate expenses such as paying commission to the affiliates and paying the affiliate marketing company, but giving away free money as voucher codes seems to be a needless expense, and a practice which may lead to attracting problems that are undesirable. It's a bit like thinking it's a good idea to leave food out to feed the birds and then carrying it too far by leaving loads of food out day and night and you know what that attracts? Rats! In a way, voucher codes are the new PPC, as surely as PPC is the new spam.

I was first alerted to the problems of voucher codes when the well known traditional games supplier Camberwells had a purge on problematical affiliate activity. Some affiliates were giving away voucher codes indiscriminately, as well as overpromoting, and doing other things which, it has to be said, brings the affiliate business into disrepute!

I've also heard cries of dismay from marketing people when they find the "loyal customer bonus" vouchers have mysteriously found their way into publically available websites. However, I have an algorithm which can crack this: Use the loyal customer's name as a scrambled key into a hashing table to generate the voucher code and then give that away to the customer. The voucher then only works for that customer. (talk to me to find out more)

Voucher codes as a means of tracking: If you have an affiliate program in the physical world, tracking is more tricky than online. If you have a shop in the town and your affiliates are giving away leaflets in the streets, one way to get customers to tell you which affiliates are doing any good is to print a voucher code on the leaflets, a different code for each affiliate. When the customer presents the leaflet to claim their code, you can record which affiliate has attracted that customer.

In contrast, in the virtual world, you don't need a voucher code for tracking, as each affiliate has unique tracking URLs. So instead the voucher codes are being used for other purposes.

Another problem with voucher codes, at least those voucher codes I've seen being given away in emails to all affiliates at an affiliate marketing company, is that they are short term temporary offers which can be exploited by the type of affiliates who have short term campaigns (PPC, spam, etc), but not by my own affiliate website where there are thousands of pages and there are better things to do than to post up yet another near-expired code for no good purpose!

I say if you are a company with your own affiliate program and you want to sell more stuff, there are much better things you can do than to chuck away money on voucher codes! It would be better to give away affiliate prizes than that, and better still, talk to the actual affiliates and have some good business relationships.