Kasper Krog op 14 Okt, 2008 om 13:31
Hi all
We?re a Danish charity concept (been running in Denmark for 5 years) now launching in your home country, and we´ve developed a shopping website and a charity plugin - for people to use if they want to support charity, when they shop online. We work with more than 5000 online stores and 700 charities across the world and have raised more than 3 mio. DKK to the good causes.
We celebrate openness and honesty as core values. Therefore I must apologize for the length of this post, but we want to make sure that you understand everything about our project - and hopefully choose to download AidMaker and support a good cause yourself after having read this.
HOW AGOODCAUSE WORKS
We both have a charity shopping website, http://www.eengoedezaak.nl, and a free charity software download. From the website users go shopping in the stores and are able to search for both stores, categories and, soon, products from all merchants.
The software, named AidMaker, includes a number of smart features for the users such as choosing your favourite charity, searching for relevant shops, adding a charity badge to your social network page and more. Is also has a feature to notify our users when a donation is possibly from a participating retailer. We call this our pre-page.
In this way or shopping website and software helps important charities like Red Cross, Amnesty International and Oxfam raise money for their work. This was also the reason why aGoodCause was founded five years ago - the desire from some Danish entrepeneurs to change things in the world that we live in.
FOR THE MERCHANTS
aGoodCause has proven a big success in Denmark being amongst the top performing affiliates. We?ve received numerous awards including e-commerce awards, innovation awards etc. We offer our merchants the following benefits:
- new customers from shopping lists on the website and in the software
- positive co-branding with the users preferred charity
- added value to their brand
- increased conversion rates
- increased order values.
All this is documented from the Danish markets.
FOR THE AFFILIATES
Considering the debate about Greasy Palm we want to underline the good spirit that AidMaker is made in. We have taken precausions, from day one, to ensure that other affiliates will not have their cookies overwritten. We have even gone beyond the code of conduct from the leading affiliate networks to do so - so we have done things that the industry is not asking us to do - to protect other affiliates!
Therefore the following applies for our charity software, AidMaker (in particular the pre-page mentioned above):
1) We will NEVER pop-up irrelevant ads or competing ads to the merchants
2) We NEVER make auto-installs or auto-redirects
3) We fully comply with the code of conduct for all the major affiliate networks that we?re working with
4) We?ve had the software tested by one of the leading experts in affiliate marketing, who came to the following conclusion:
?I think you?ll be pleased. The essence of my report is that I could not get AidMaker to intercede in any instance where it ought not. AidMaker consistently recognized my prior browsing through others? affiliate links. In all such situations, AidMaker stood down, letting the other affiliate?s cookie stay. That?s impressive. I don?t think I?ve ever tested another loyalty-type software download that successfully achieved this result; I?ve always been able to trick them, often by closing and reopening my browser or restarting my PC. Congratulations on this success.?
We?ve made this protection for the networks that we work with in a number of ways:
1. Our software does not just look at the referring URL, but check whether a cookie is placed - taking into consideration different ways of linking to a merchant site.
2. We respect the cookie lifetime meaning that our software will not be active for that user+shop within the cookie lifetime.
3. We have a clear policy that we?ll do everything possible never to overwrite other affiliates? cookies. This also involves a shortlist of more than 3000 affiliate networks that we have added to our database to ensure that our plugin doesn?t react either, once coming from their links. Despite of the fact that we?re not associated with these networks in any way.
Finally it should be noted that we take further actions than Greasy Palm to protect other affiliates. This includes, amongst other things,:
A) Never using a pop-up not requiring an active action from the user
B) Always respecting cookie lifetime of at least 60 days from more than 3000 affiliate networks.
Please feel free to contact us, if you experience any problems what so ever. We?re busy, so we can´t promise to be in this forum all the time. Therefore do e-mail us on info@eengoedezaak.nl directly, if you have any questions, input etc.
Best regards,
Mads Ellegaard and Jonathan Low
Co-founders of aGoodCause.
