CPA Networks, A Cautionary Tale

We recently did some work with a well-known CPA network. I’ll not be naming names here as we have much respect for the people over there, but wanted to tell you a cautionary tale about working with CPA networks.

We signed up with the network for one of our clients and they did a number of email drops for us over a short period of time. A few weeks back we informed them that they should take the offer down. We were told that was done rather quickly.

However, we continued to receive opt-outs from this network’s activities. It was one of the reasons we stopped the campaign: we were getting tons more opt outs than clicks or orders. Performance was not the issue we had for termination, nor the reason I am writing. We queried the network, thinking that the offer must still be running, as the opt-outs continued to flow in, until one day our client received his own offer in an email from a sender he did not recognize.

Okay – so they forgot to take down the offer. Mistakes happen. We weren’t too upset, until he clicked through on one of his links. What did he find? The links in the email went to another site altogether! So you are saying to yourself, well that sounds like spam. So was our client and so were we. And no one was happy. We did a little research and contacted our CPA network. They confirmed that this was their affiliate that was continuing to send emails on behalf of our client and that it went to a different site because our offer had expired and that is what their system does, redirects to a current offer.

Hmm, that got me thinking. There are some real risks working with CPA networks.

After a campaign with a CPA network is over, is there any guarantee that our offer will no longer be sent? After we shut ours down I had no idea who kept promoting it, how often or in what manner. Not being able to control this could lead to some huge brand issues, tracking issues and in some cases legal issues, especially if you are a consultant or an agency. You need to be able to control the time and duration of any offers you are promoting. Do you get that with CPA networks?

Can we control the links that are used in the ad? Apparently, we have no control whatsoever; in this case our client’s brand reputation was continually damaged as users opted out from the client’s list (and built a negative perception of the client as spammers) but never even had a chance to click through to their website – since all the links went to a different site. Without control your message could be lost, your customers could be expecting something different and you could lose even the chance for sales and lose reputation as well.

How do we know who it is it sent to? We received so many opt-outs that it would be hard to argue that this were qualified leads in any sense. This brings up some serious spam issues and the merchant will be responsible for dealing with it.

Now I may not be the most experienced one when it comes to CPA networks, but I thought I would pass along my experience at least to give those of you who are contemplating working with them some things to think about. They can have their benefits, just be aware of some of their limitations.