12clicks' Position On Cross Sales

After reading the rash of threads recently regarding cross sales, it's clear that most people don't know much more about the subject other than whatever it is that's been yelled the loudest on the boards. As someone who is in the cross sale business, I thought I would respond to the hysteria.

Pre-checked cross sales are a legal, commonly used way of doing business that both Visa and Mastercard allow. When done correctly (as in, how I do it) there is a huge benefit to the program owner with very little risk. There is also a correct way to handle the surfer so as not to scare them away from adult sites altogether. When done incorrectly, the industry is put at risk.

Hidden, pre-checked cross sales are misleading, wrong, and most likely illegal. None of us should be surprised to see some large programs prosecuted by the DOJ or FTC for this underhanded practice.
I do not support them, condone them, or do anything besides pray for their demise. They hurt us all and we do not now, nor will we ever, do business with people who practice hidden cross sales. If we have a partner who turns to the dark side, we will drop them in a heart beat.


However, there has been way too much lumping together of properly done cross sales with the hidden, shady cross sale practices that we all know are going on. This is done mostly by the uninformed but also by some who's agenda it is to discredit a business practice that is not their own (in typical GFY style)


Take our model for example.
Our prechecks are fully visible and explained in detail above the submit button. There is nothing hidden about them. They are right in the surfer's face. However, if the surfer doesn't understand or somehow doesn't see the checkbox, he WILL receive an email in plain text (so as not to get caught in a spam filter) explaining that he has joined along with the website URL and more importantly, the CANCEL PAGE URL. There is simply no deception. But we go even further to protect the surfer. If, somehow, they didn't see the checkbox and didn't get the email, our descriptors that show up on their credit card statement have our toll free customer service phone number and our cancel page url. If they contact our customer service and ask for a refund, we refund them in full NO QUESTIONS ASKED. It doesn't matter whether they say,"I have no idea what this charge is" or "I just want to cheat you out of money" we give a full refund. All of that is to take care of the surfer!



We also have a few proprietary ways of protecting the program owner who sells to us from the small percentage of disgruntled surfers as well but that's not for public consumption. There's a reason we're better than our competition and I'm just not going to give it away on a chat board.

And just a quick word on retention. Since I also sell off some cross sales, I too, am very concerned about retention. Because of the way we operate cross sales, we've always enjoyed great retention. At a time when you hear people struggling for 3month retention, we're looking at many many many surfers staying with us for over a year. The myth that cross sales hurt retention is just that, a myth.

I'm currently working with some of the biggest most ethical companies in our business and there's a reason for that. If you're a program owner who's interested in cross sales, contact me and find out why.