PayPal Sends Out Affiliate Links as Monthly “Newsletter”
Apr 19th, 2008 by msdanielle
Did any of you receive PayPal’s monthly “newsletter” today? I was cleaning up my inbox and was shocked that they’re emailing their recipients with affiliate deals. Here’s the email in its entirety:
Here are the reasons this irks me:
- I am to receive their “PayPal Periodical newsletter and Product Updates,” which should (in my opinion) contain PayPal related news and product and service updates.
- There is no valuable content relating to my PayPal account or PayPal services in this email. They could have easily included something of value to me, and included the aff links post content.
- The entire purpose of this email is to push sales from users who use PayPal at checkout for these merchants, not to provide valuable information.
- PayPal is not an affiliate coupon site.
I am also an affiliate of Eastbay and if I fired out an email to everyone who subscribes to my blog with my affiliate links and codes, I bet a lot of people would be pissed off too. I know, PayPal is the merchant and is using the newsletter to send out deals you might not be able to find on their site. I get it. But I have to emphasize this is their monthly newsletter, their one opportunity to reach out to their users, not their coupon feed and I expect they would want to provide some valuable information.
I allow many of my service providers to contact me with updates and surveys since I know the value of keeping the communication channel open, and I like to know if there are changes in their service as well as provide them feedback. I am just especially disappointed with PayPal since their product newsletter appears solely as a means to push sales. As a marketer I feel there are better ways to optimize it and provide value, and as a user/affiliate I feel they’re taking advantage of their right of contact. Disclaimer: This is purely my opinion and I’m not saying PayPal is doing anything illegal. What do you think?
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haha, i never really liked paypal always seemed shady.
Those are some very good points. As a webmaster the chances of me clicking on those is zero and I do find them irritating but… and there is always the other side :p
The but would be twofold.
#1 - Most paypal users are buyers, not sellers, and buyers often DO click on links and ads (unless they are a webaster).
#2 - Yes, if you sent out an affiliate link to your email subscribers they would indeed disaprove, because most are webmasters or blog owners. Affiliate marketing works well on regular folk who don’t know about affiliate marketing. The only affiliate programs that a webmaster can convince other webmasters on is one that earns them money from their website.
Webmasters are the worst demographic to target with ANY affiliate offer imo.
hey thanks for such a great response. i agree that many paypal users are buyers but many are also sellers and “senders”
i mainly use paypal to send money (prob 95% of the time). i also know merchants who use it for their stores. i just don’t see how valuable this email is to the rest of the people who use it for so many of their other services. i think the newsletter should cater to all of their audiences, webmasters, buyers, sellers, etc. you’re right that in the very least a lot of buyers will probably take advantage of their offers, or perhaps forward them to their friends.
I think that it is totally relevant because they used their logo “PayPal” in the upper corner…. and you should never question big brother because they are making billions. HA-HA. Just joking - I think it is rubbish. You should get a job their and manage the marketing efforts because apparently they have a complete jack ball managing it now. I would be irked as well, it’s not professional this kind of nickle and dime tactics.
Cheers
-DC
jack ball? hahaha… what the heck is that??
It’s a term one of my favorite radio personalities used to use. It means like “nutcase” or “weirdo”. Sorry, I am one myself because no one get’s my odd humor. Cheers sis.
You know? Actually today I’m thinking to open a paypal account. But reading your post, make me reconsider it again…
for the most part they’re a reliable resource. i wouldn’t rule them out just because they’re trying to get me to buy stuff.
On one hand… Why not? On the other… Why would an established company flood their customers with affiliate links?
I have a premier paypal account but i haven’t received this kind of email form them.
I have to wonder - If they’re sending out affiliate links in newsletters, do you think their new PayPal toolbar will have the same type of issues? I’d hate to think that I could do all the work to drive a sale, only to have the commission stolen at the last minute by the PayPal toolbar.