1. Get someone on base.
2. Move them into scoring position.
3. Bring them home.
"What does baseball have to do with affiliate marketing?" I'm glad you asked.
Too many affiliate program managers have no concept of the progression they should try to facilitate to run a successful affiliate program. Too many of us get stuck in "recruit mode," and never take that next step. I hear so many conflicting gripes from my peers on how they don't have the time to manually approve affiliates, because they get too many applications every day to do so. Yet if you ask any affiliate manager what the hardest part of their job is, they'll say affiliate recruiting. But how efficient are they with the applications that they do get? Are we so busy pouting that we're not nurturing our current applicants into the super-affiliates they could become? This alludes to another important issue in affiliate marketing today: the lack of affiliates that can produce large amounts of sales volume. If affiliates were houses, and merchants were buyers, it's definitely a seller's market. But that's another issue for another day, so I digress…
The first step of the initial progression of any program is affiliate recruiting, and in the baseball strategy above, this is "Get 'em on."
There are many different ways to recruit. Most networks have ways of internally recruiting affiliates, but this is limited. Affiliate forums such as AbestWeb.com and affiliate events like Affiliate Summit are your best bet for getting affiliates to join your program.
Congratulations! They've joined! Now what? Get 'em over.
Affiliates are busy. They have their pick of whatever program they want to promote. It's a seller's market, remember? They can just as easily promote your biggest competitor, so treat them well. Make things easier for them, or at least don't make things harder than they have to be. But most important, be efficient with the affiliates you do have.
I apply to many affiliate programs to keep up with industry trends, see what promotions are being used and so on. I can't believe the number of "welcome" emails I receive that are recruiting emails regurgitated. If I were a normal affiliate, they would be deleted without hesitation. This is our first (and best) chance to get them to take that next step! We need to help them get into position to make their first sale, putting links up. Obviously, affiliate managers should follow traditional best practices and include links for use right in the initial email, but everybody does that. What can you do to differentiate yourself? One of the things we do is offer a "Quick Start Bonus" (QuickStartBonus.com). These bonuses are conveyed to the affiliates in the welcome email, and are time-sensitive to create urgency. Affiliates have many merchants to choose from, but all else being equal, they'll put up the links for the merchant offering an incentive.
The next important step is to have valuable content within the email. Include information on your Datafeeds, Dynamic Banners, Best Sellers and so on. The welcome email is not a one-time setup; it is a living, breathing document that changes as your program matures.
Get 'em in. This part definitely varies per program, mostly due to the different skill sets of the affiliate manager. But if the affiliate is doing their part, and has started generating traffic for you, it's your turn to bat. The merchant site has to convert, or that link isn't staying up for very long.
Here are some ways to turn that traffic into sales:
1. Offer Direct Product Links: Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows that links that land people on exactly what they were looking for convert better than links that land on the home page.
2. Educate your affiliates: Affiliates PRE-sell for you; give them the material to do this.
3. Give them tools: If you have a power PPC affiliate, they aren't going to look twice at your program unless you have the ability to put Adword and Overture tracking on your thank-you page. Otherwise, they'll be "flying blind."
Remember, have a purpose for every action that you do. Similar to how your customers have a life cycle, so do your affiliates. Be conscious of where your affiliates are in their life cycle – new affiliate, inactive affiliate, mid-tier or superaffiliate – and have a plan in place to assist them to achieve the super-affiliate status. Maximize the effectiveness of every contact you have with the affiliate, from welcome emails to month-to-date status reports. And last but not least, hold up your end of the deal by converting the traffic they worked so hard to send you. All right, I think you're ready. Play ball.
Michael Nunez is the founder of Suluta.com, an affiliate marketing consulting and services company that manages some of the largest affiliate programs in the industry and all merchants in the TTB Marketplace.
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