I think the title of the thread is key when it comes to understanding the benefits of CAP Certification. Everyone knows operators pay to be certified. It’s not a mystery and as the person charged with justifying the cost to the company, the response is fairly simple… We pay to put ourselves in the spotlight – to improve and grow our affiliate programme in as transparent and honest a way as possible.
Whether it be using CAP as a channel to promote our programme and latest offers to affiliates, or using it as a tool to improve the way we do business with our partners, certification allows us to be as transparent as we can be with affiliates. All affiliate programmes (even us!) are blessed with issues at some point in their lifetime that need addressing. Being on CAP (and other forums we pay to be on incidentally), provides us with quantitative and qualitative feedback, allowing us to gauge the importance of proposed changes and encourages us to prioritise them appropriately and persuade the companies we work for to make the required changes.
I’m sure there are some certified programmes out there unsure of the merits of the CAP Audit process that has recently started. I do feel for the guys at Rome in many ways, particularly as it now seems their name may have been discredited unduly. What I am sure of is the CAP community’s underlying will to improve the affiliate marketplace and processes like this take time to get right. Transparency comes at a cost and we’re prepared for our results as and when they come! With regard to EMG’s transparency, I can’t possibly comment as I don’t know the facts. What I’m sure of is that some operators will pay more than others to be certified than others, but there are fair business reasons for this, largely most down to the ability to negotiate. Even if a competitor is listed for free for whatever reason, CAP is what you make of it in any case. The price we pay is insignificant compared to the fantastic relationships that we have struck, courtesy of CAP and everyone who has contributed to its development, and from what we have learned from them on both personal and operational levels. (NB that doesn’t mean you can raise the price!)
Provided that CAP and the other forums we work closely with continue to provide this unique quality of conversation channel, we will continue to play a prominent part on the community message boards.