Befree Free Chocolate and Free Glass Vase Enhancement
Project Overview
During peak holiday times the affiliate team would like to give Proflowers' Befree affiliates special offers for customers. More specifically we would love to give the Free Chocolates (FCH) OR Free Glass Vase (FGV) offer to ALL affiliates. However, we need to make sure that certain affiliates (about 500 or so) are excluded from receiving this universal offer. Ideally, this functionality can be turned off or on at the affiliate team's discretion.
A Brief History
In the past, Befree affiliates were not able to offer their customers free chocolates or free glass vase with purchase. This is due to limitations in our system and Befree's inability to process certain data. To solve this issue, a table was created (FL_referralcodes) that would verify whether or not an affiliate would receive a FCH or FGV with purchase. When any REF code comes through the site a check is made against this table to see whether or not a FCH or FGV should be added to the front of the REF code. If the affiliate REF code is found in the table a FCH or FGV would be added to the front of the REF code (similar to radio). If the affiliate is not in the table the affiliate would not be given the promotion.
The Problem
Due to the sheer number of affiliates it is impossible to keep track of all 40,000+ affiliate REF codes in this table. In addition, the table was supposed to keep adding new affiliate REF codes as they "arrived" on the site. Unfortunately, this table is not complete and does not add new affiliate codes as it goes along. As a result, numerous affiliates have not been receiving the FCH or FGV promotion. In addition, if this table continues to "add" new affiliate REF codes to itself, the table would be enormous and could potentially slow the site down.
Proposed Solution
The Affiliate team would like to flip flop the situation. ALL Befree REF codes are ten digit numeric codes that begin with zero. Because of this uniqueness, it should be easy to create a rule that if ANY ten-digit numeric REF code that begins with zero "arrives" at Proflowers it should be given a FCH or FGV. There will, however, be some exceptions. For these exceptions (about 500 or so) there should exist a table that excludes them from receiving the universal Befree affiliate promotion. A special offer will later be Ref/Discount Mapped to these excluded affiliates. This table can have a back office interface that allows the affiliate team to add/remove affiliates at will. Ideally this table will have four fields. One to input the REF code of the affiliate being excluded, two to input the affiliate's name, three to input a description of the promotion type, and four the ability to remove an affiliate from the table. Additionally, in an ideal world, the affiliate team will have control over what time periods the FCH and FGV promotions will run.
Benefits
- Now that the table concentrates on the small number of exceptions instead of the larger, overall, number of affiliates there is no danger of the table slowing down the site due to size.
- The Proflowers Affiliate team can now give the FCH or FGV promotion to ALL its affiliates and not worry about the size of the table or timing.
- Once complete the IT team will no longer need to maintain a forever augmenting table of active affiliate REF codes or deal with inputting/excluded affiliate REF codes into a table. This will all be handled and maintained by the affiliate team.
