Affiliate Program Approvals and Declines from an Affiliate Manager Perspective

One of the key daily duties of an affiliate manager is to look through the list of affiliates that have applied to the affiliate program and either approve or deny those affiliates to the program. There are a few things you can do to help make your approval process easier and lay the groundwork for clear understanding and expectations with your affiliates.

Lay out what you are looking for from an affiliate for approval on your program info page and sign-up page (if allowed). Several networks also send out an email to an affiliate upon application, and as manager, you can customize the email. Even though at that point the affiliate has already applied, I like to also put my expectation in that email as well. This way, if the affiliate knows that they haven’t met expectations with their application, they can still email me with supplemental information.

Also, in that application email, I specify some of the reasons that they might be declined. I offer that if I do decline an affiliate, and they really want to promote the program, please reach out to me via email / phone / IM so I can be made aware of your intention and enthusiasm. It’s VERY rare that I’ve ever “double declined” an affiliate that did reach out to me and let me know how they were planning to promote the program (as long as it was within the program terms). Any affiliate that has the initiative to take an extra step is definitely an affiliate you want on board.

Affiliate managers should always keep the lines of communication open, in fact welcome communication from their affiliates and respond timely to all affiliate inquiries. Any affiliate manager that says they are too busy to answer affiliate emails is full of bologna. This entire job is about communication and relationships.

Re-state in a decline letter some of the major reasons why an affiliate might have been declined, and let the affiliate know that if they are truly motivated and want to promote the program, reach out to you. Managers who shut the door totally on an affiliate, and don’t hear them out and worth less than a cookie stuffer or parasite.

For those affiliates that are approved, lay out your approval emails as a full playbook for the affiliates. Provide clear contact information for yourself. Re-state what the program is all about, and provide tips on how to best market the products and services, give insights into the type of things customers are trying to solve / do with your products and services, and provide links and banners right there in that email to get started.

Successful affiliates might literally be promoting hundreds of programs. They’ve just applied to your program, so you are fresh in their minds, and you’ve approved them. Your approval letter is the single best opportunity to grab their attention right now, so give them everything they need to hit the ground running, and get links up NOW before they move on to another project.

Your approval/decline process is cornerstone for successful affiliate program management, and it’s really not challenging to simply lay out clear ground rules for affiliates, keep open lines of communication, and provide your affiliates with the tools with which they can succeed.

Performance Marketing and Travel in 2012

Two articles, one about the Thailand Tourism Department spending money to promote Thailand for weddings and honeymoons, medical tourism and golfing, the other a Forrester Research report for Rakutan that had a section about the potential in the travel space for affilaites, spurred me to write my own thoughts on Travel and Affiliates in 2012.

There is a ton of opportunity for an affiliate, despite the big guys spending gobs of money, if you can move on certain niches. I discuss my throught here: Travel and Performance Marketing in 2012.

Merchant Affiliate Programs, Affiliate Program Managers and FTC Endorsement Compliance

A couple of years ago there was a huge firestorm of activity and buzz within the affiliate industry about renewed FTC guidelines regarding compliance for disclosing endorsements. In a nutshell, the FTC stated that anyone who endorsed a product/service through media (be in TV, radio, print, or online), and received some kind of compensation for that endorsement should disclose the relationship the endorser has with the product seller (or merchant).

This article seeks to give a quick review of if and when a disclosure statement is needed by affiliates, and what the potential impact is for a merchant who doesn't require their affiliates to disclose: Affiliate Program Managers, FTC Endorsement Compliance and Merchant Affiliate Programs

Mac Software Tools Used for Affiliate Program Management Pt. 3 (Email, Contact Management and Communication)

I’m always looking for a good way for effective contact management with affiliates. Right now, I use a combination of just the regular Mac OS Mail app and Google Mail for Apps. My AMWSO email address is through Google Apps right now. Anytime I have an email account for a client, I either forward it to my main AMWSO account, or simply have Google retrieve mail from the POP of the client mail account. This way I have one place for all of my affiliate contact mails. The Google search in mail is great for tracking down certain affiliate contacts, but I also use IMAP and the Mac Mail app with Quicksilver to do searching. (However, I do find that searching directly in Google is usually more effective and thorough).

I also keep notes on certain affiliate contacts in the Mac address book, and also I use an application called Evernote. The Mac address book has a great freeform field for making any kind of notes (and it’s searchable in Spotlight) I need to make for a particular affiliate contact. I also use another nice note taking app, Evernote, when I want to take a screen clip, or make notes on where my client is getting placement on an affiliate site. Also keep notes on todos for contacting certain affiliates or making offers and proposals.

Number one tools for communicating individually with affiliates is email of course. Occasionally, I’ve tried to call an affiliate (and I use Skype), but with Google Talk and Skype and the ability to just have phone numbers dedicated to voice-mail so easily, it’s rare to find an affiliate that will actually answer the phone. However, leaving a voice message does often get the job done to give an affiliate extra nudge to get in touch. I think everyone working online knows what Skype is all about so no need to get into to much detail on that app.

Lastly, when I’m doing recruiting or a heavy activation campaign, I use the good ’ole spreadsheet to record results that can easily be saved in a format for reporting to the client. My own system is not complicated at all, and doesn’t utilize in whiz bang apps, but it definitely get the job done for me.

One quick note, one might expect us at AMWSO to use a common CRM system, across the company to easily consolidate and share affiliate contact information. A shared CRM should make things easier for us. However, we very much value and respect our clients confidentiality. Even though we run many affiliate programs, we do not share affiliate data or information across those program (without explicit client agreement and approval). This respect also applies to affiliates. An affiliate manager not involved specifically with a program doesn’t need to know the how/what/where in regard to a particular affiliate promoting a program.

Affiliate Program Health Pt. 2

Last post I offered that an affiliate program would be a healthier overall program if the affiliate program manager was able to attract and focus on a number of smaller sale volume affiliates rather than just focus on “heavy hitter” super affiliates. It’s true that the best “bang for the buck” is to get these high volume producers into your program, there are a few reasons why it could hurt the program in the long term.
Consider-

• The super affiliate decides for some reason they no longer want to focus on or even work with your program. The reasons this could happen are too numerous to count. Perhaps they received an offer from a competitor to be exclusive (an offer the program manger is not able to match. Or perhaps they decide not to work in the merchant vertical any longer. Or perhaps they’ve decided to give up affiliate marketing and follow Lady Gaga around the world!
• The affiliate site in question gets an SEO penalty, wiping out their rankings for your vertical and all the traffic they were getting.
• The affiliate sells his or her site, and the new owner does not want to adhere to program policies.

Now, for any of the above reasons, the program big earner leave the program and no longer contributes. Program sales and stats take a walloping. Other affiliates notice (through stats like EPC dropping) the drop-off and decide to start staying away from the program to wait and see what happens.

Not a good situation, and definitely something a good experienced affiliate manager can avoid. How can this be avoided? By bringing on smaller affiliates, getting them up and active (with links up and traffic), and earning sales.

A few tools in the arsenal to accomplish this:

• Rather than just focus bonuses and higher commissions on a sales number, offer an option for a higher/bonus level commission for high quality / content created to promote your program.
• Actively recruiting non-typical affiliates in searching for blogs, forums and/or social networks for people writing about or interested in the area of the product.
• Being prepared to actively help these non-typical affiliates understand the value proposition of affiliate marketing and also step-by-step guidance in getting started.
• Being diligent to check each coupon transaction to make sure the site being credited with the sale is adhering to policies.

The extra work that’s needed to bring in these extra affiliates might only contribute an additional 20–30% of sales, but it’s still a much better situation that having 90% of sales dominated by just a couple of publishers.

The great thing is, AMWSO has been in the outsourced affiliate program management business for 10 years! And we’ve been able to build relationships with a staggering number of publishers across all the major networks and many independent affiliates. Check out the affiliate marketing services we offer if you need help growing and expanding your affiliate program, and getting it healthy and contributing value added sales to your bottom line.

Affiliate Program Health Pt. 1

The fastest method to jump starting sales for most affiliate managers relies heavily on big coupon, loyalty and search affiliates known for often time delivering 90% of sales in typical programs. In the affiliate marketing industry, a good rule of thumb states that 10% of affiliates often contribute 90% or greater sales in a given program. The 10% big earners typically include big coupon/deal sites, loyalty/cash-back sites, and expert PPC search marketers. Note that a great number of those coupon/deal sites are also expert PPC search marketers, and are driving traffic to their coupon sites via ppc ads.

This is the situation in most affiliate programs, where a heavy reliance exists on a few affiliates at the top to really drive high sales numbers. A more ideal program scenario can exist though with 50 affiliates bringing in 1 sale a piece per month rather than 2 affiliates bringing in 35 and 15 sales respectively.

To find, activate and manage 50 affiliates bringing in 1 sale a piece however, can be a long process. To be successful, affiliate managers have to be dedicated to the task and merchants must be patient for long-tail results. Granted, it’s much easier and quicker to make a noticeable impact in the short-term (but also risky) by focusing on relationships with a few affiliates rather than work and nurture 50 affiliates.

It is the path of least resistance, when merchants push for sales NOW with short-term rapid sales gains. Who can blame them? They’ve made an investment in the affiliate program and want to see sales results to judge whether or not the investment was and will be viable.

Once those top affiliates that find the shortest route to the sale keep generating high results, they are rewarded with higher commission levels. With the higher commissions, they can start bidding higher on keywords, its starts a virtuous cycle for the fast moving/quick-sale generating affiliate and soon there are just a few affiliates dominating all of the program’s affiliate channel sales.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to criticize these top performing affiliates. They are doing their “job” and they’re doing it well. They are professionals and are generating the best returns they can for their efforts.

It’s up to the diligent affiliate program manager to guard against getting locked into this scenario. Along with supporting those high performance / high impact affiliates, the affiliate manager must take time and effort to bring on board smaller affiliates to broaden the base and overall health of the program.

Next post I’ll discuss the main reasons why this is so critical, and how a good affiliate manager can accomplish this.

Win a sweet sweet prize!

Easy to enter and also develop some great content for yourself at the same time!

Simply write an honest review of EncryptStick™. [We're not looking for sycophantic praise, simply an honest review of the software, and how it can help users encrypt and secure their private files]. Once you've written the review, place it on your website/blog [and link to the EncryptStick.com website through a CJ affiliate link]. The competition runs to midnight [Pacific Time] on Sunday 28th March 2010.

The best review will win the Grand Gathering Gift Basket, or a cash prize of $198 if this is what you prefer, provided that your review and affiliate link is still active on the 1st of April 2010. We're not just giving away a gift basket! The first 10 entrants will be given a full EncryptStick™ license worth $39.99.

Simply create your review and email the link to James Nardell (James.Nardell [@] AMWSO.com) [using the subject line '2010 EncryptStick Review'] before midnight on Sunday 28th March 2010. Make sure you include your; name, address and most importantly the URL where we can find your link! The winner will be announced in the April affiliate newsletter.

Check out the latest EncryptStick affiliate newsletter here.

Learn more about the EncryptStick affiliate program here.

Kicking off 2010

Happy New Year! After a pretty slow 2009, we're glad to be moving forwards into a new year. And it's been starting off quickly with a range of new clients getting their affiliate program launches under way. First on the launch pad we have Pixily.com who offer an award winning document management and scanning service. This should be live by Feb 1. They'll be followed in the weeks after that by SStands.com, selling a range of MS office tools and applications, the SexywearAvenue with their wide range of costumes and clothing. A couple more under wraps but aiming for February launches are an Diamond and Jewelry store and a store selling cookies! More on all these programs as they launch!

New Year and New Clients

Well 2008 is done and dusted. An interesting year over all, could have been better but overall it wasn't a bad year. We took on a range of new exiting clients and it'll be great to see them growing in 2009.

January we have a couple of new clients launching with AMWSO. Starting with Organic Bouquet, which kind of started in December but will be really powering up as we head towards Valentines and more "flower giving" focused events. Then we have Beer Machine, which is a very cool, "Beer Brewing" kit and machine. I bought one for my Dad for his birthday and he loved it, so we're really hyped to be working with Ian and Colin at BeerMachine, incredibly we've been talking together with tjhem for 2 years! The progam will be running in the UK, USA and Canada initially.

Our other launch for January, is Elance, a firm I imagine just about every affiliate is familiar with, eLance will be launching a brand new program in January on an inhouse platform.

Affiliate Marketing and Appealing to Different World Views

Everything a person looks at, experiences or examines gets filtered through a specific world view. Seth Godin, in his book All Marketers are Liars emphasizes this issue (among other things) as a key point in crafting stories or messages that will appeal to potential customers. One of the key themes in the book, is that merchants should not try and appeal to a multitude of world views, or else they risk their message becoming too diluted, unfocused and generic.

Affiliate marketing can be a valuable tool in expanding a merchants reach to different types of customers with different world views. Just on the surface, consider that couponers know their visitors are hunting for discounts and deals, forums know their customers have in-depth interest in particular niches', and content/blog sites will of course appeal to various niche interests.  Recruiting different types of quality affiliates to an affiliate program allows a merchant to touch these potential customers, through the affiliate partners that they might not never have been able to reach when focusing on their core customer's world view.

For example, consider a trendy woman's fashion merchant. Logic would dictate they this merchant would craft their message to their core customer segment, woman interested in trendy fashions. Now, suppose we have a webmaster who runs a blog with a community of married men who are computer enthusiasts (aka nerds) (note: I would definitely be a member of this community). Right before Christmas time, these men are desperate and searching for advice and tips on gifts to buy their wives/significant others. The blog owner signs up for the woman's trendy fashion affiliate program, and offers this merchant up to his community. Just like that, the trendy woman's fashion site gets exposed to a group of men who wouldn't ordinarily be visiting this site, and who are looking for things to purchase.

Among the advantages of CPA marketing; measurable and clear ROI, it's important not to neglect the huge advantage of expanding the merchant reach to customers not ordinarily exposed to a merchant. Good affiliate managers will be on the look out for these types of affiliates and will be actively recruiting them into a program.

Text Links vs. Banner Ads

As an affiliate manager, I'm often asked, "Which convert better: text links or banners?" At first glance, the most obvious answer it text links. Glancing at a report or statistics will reveal that most of the time text links do convert better than banner ads.

However, there's more to the story than just that. I believe it has to do with how text links are used as opposed to banners that contribute greatly to the higher conversion / success rate. Consider for a moment how text links are employed as opposed to banners.

Let's first take a look at how text links are commonly used. The greatest use of text links comes from product data feeds. These product data feeds employ the specific product name as the text link. Of course, any shopper who is looking for a specific product, sees the product name, and then clicks the link will have the highest possible conversion chance. If a visitor knows what they want, and has already made up their mind that they WILL be making a purchase, then closing the sale becomes a far less challenging task. I discussed this a bit further when examining effective affiliate landing pages.

Another common use of text link: they are placed into the body of a webpage. Content is built around the text link. It much easier to built a value proposition, or tell a story when you have content build around a link then it is to tell that same story with just a banner/picture with a short tag line.

In comparison, consider how banners are commonly placed. Either at the top of a web page, or along the sidebar. Experienced web surfers have already trained themselves to know, banners placed in these spots (especially the leaderboard banner across the top of a page) are trying to sell them something, It's quite easy to automatically tune out to those messages.

The common perception: text links lead to information, banners lead to a sale pitch. Now, this is not to say that banner cannot be an effective tool in promotion. Just don't expect to put up a page and slap a bunch of banners up and expect to have any success. Build up some content, tell a story through that content that appeals to your visitors wants.

Affiliate Marketing: Outsourcing (OPMs) is More Cost Effective Than Hiring In-House

According to Shawn Collin's Affstat Report the average salary for an in-house manager is $50,000 a year and up. Now, factor in health and other benefits, desk space, infrastructure, those costs rise significantly. To support an in-house affiliate manager, a business must plan to spend at least $70,000 - $90,000 in overhead. If the in-house manager decides to leave the company, all of the knowledge and the relationship history usually walks out the door with the manager.

Additionally, it may be difficult to find an experienced affiliate manager within a specific geographical area. Some larger organizations leave the affiliate program in the care of a junior level marketing staffer. This can be a mistake with lasting consequences. A well run affiliate program can be responsible for 10-20% or more of overall company revenue. Likewise, with the advantages of added revenue and reach, there are dangers in not carefully managing an affiliate program. Brand messages may be damaged and revenue from other channels pillaged via malware and parasiteware.

Most OPM firms charge either a flat fee plus revenue share, or at least a monthly minimum revenue share. Generally the monthly minimum of flat fee is between $2000-$5000 a month.

Now also consider the other benefits an OPM brings: experience, relationships, knowledge, and stability. An OPM has established working relationships with many if not all of the top performing affiliates. They've built a history of performance, and generally an affiliate will know the style of any certain OPM such as does the OPM have a stance against parasiteware, or are they accessible?

In relation to the experience benefits, the cost savings strongly favor an advantage to outsourcing an affiliate program. Focus on the business, do what you do best, and leave the success and growth of a well-managed experience program to experts who are focused on growing your business.

Valentines Day for Affiliates

Next to Christmas, Valentine's Day is one of the biggest shopping holidays of the year. Close to a billion dollars will be spent for Valentine's day, and affiliates are in an excellent position to grab a piece of the pie. Most of the shopping is done the week prior to the 14th of February, with another surge occurring just a couple days before the day as shoppers search for those last minute ideas and gifts.

The expected usual suspects: jewelry, flowers, chocolate and other gifts are the hottest items for the Valentine's Holiday.  Thankfully, most respective merchants have affiliate programs in all of these niches.  Men average over $100 spending for the holiday, with woman averaging just over $50. While it's true that many people are actually turned off by the commercialization of this day, 30% of people surveyed by the NPD Group appreciate the romance of the day, and 8% are pressured into making a purchase, "so they don't get into trouble."

Jewelry and the like will be the most promoted items, however do consider that women might also be making purchases for men. Also consider, once people are prompted into a "buying mood", anything might get purchased for anyone, including purchases for oneself!  According to Google checkout, 50% of people shopping for Valentine's Day make multiple purchases.  According to the National Retail Federation, 22.4 percent of men and 7.3 percent of women plan to purchase jewelry.

AMWSO runs several jewelry and fashion programs that are positioned well for the Valentine's holiday. We've set up a special Valentine's Day Affiliate Programs page to highlight the specials, deals and offers that are being promoted just for Valentine's Day.

This is really the last gift giving holiday until Mother's Day in the USA (although some people gift for Easter), so gear up, get those banners, links, promotions and coupons posted!

Holiday Affiliate Campaign Preparation

Well, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Years, Thanksgiving, they are all almost here and of course this means lots of consumer buying. For affiliate marketers, it means lots of site work, deal preparation, and testing. This is often times the busiest time of year, but for good reason, since it's usually the most profitable time of year.

Are you looking for help or guidance as to what you should be doing to prepare your affiliate business for the holidays?  Take a look at this Holiday Season Tips article prepared by the folks over at Share Results for some ideas and tips.  Some other ideas for niche research for the holidays can be found over at 5StarAffiliatePrograms.com

Many of the AMWSO merchant partners offer some revenue supercharging bonuses and consumer sale campaigns, so sign up for the AMWSO Affiliate Program News feed to get the latest breaking promotions and affiliate program news.

According to the Linkshare Holiday 2007 Trends reports, the top reasons people shop online during the holidays are:

1. Find discounts
2. Save time
3. Compare prices
4. Gift ideas

Free shipping is the most highly favored promotion according to consumers. followed closely by sales.

If you're still looking for ideas, don't forget to reach out to your affiliate manager. You affiliate manager is an excellent resource for ideas and help, and is all to often not thought of as an asset to be utilized when searching for help and ideas.

AMWSO will be at Ecomexpo

EcomExpo starts on Tuesday and the AMWSO team will be represented in force. This year, AMWSO is a gold sponsor at Ecomexpo, and we will have our own booth. The booth will be staffed throughout regular business hours with all of the lead affiliate managers representing all of the AMWSO managed affiliate programs.

Ecomexpo is a great venue (virtual expo) to really talk about business and start to build relationships with companies and individuals. Of course it cannot completely replace the social aspects one gets at a real world conference, but since it's virtual it really focuses the attention to specific business matters. A very good mix of disciplines will be represented, from affiliate marketing to SEO to lead generation and to contextual advertising. There will also be many presentation sessions on a variety of online business topics, which are all free during the Expo (October 9 through 11). Once the expo closes, one must pay for a pass to the Ecomexpo university to have access to the sessions and panels.

Whether you have a business selling goods and/or services looking for ways to promote online, or you're a publisher / affiliate looking for new partners to promote or ways to monetize your site, Ecomexpo is well worth checking out. Also, please do stop by the AMWSO booth and say hi!

A level playing field in affiliate program selection?

One thing I get asked frequently by new clients is, "Will our program be as big as Brand XYZ?". One issue they face right away is that affiliates prefer big brands to no brands, they convert better just for starters.

Nicky Senyard from Share Results put together this very good article on the topic of considering brand awareness when selecting affiliate programs;

There are several things that go into selecting a merchant affiliate program, such as creative selection, affiliate support and reporting capacity. Brand strength is another important factor to consider.

As much as I'd like to say that every new brand stands a great chance of doing as well as their big brand competitor, the reality is that the Internet is not the level playing field that it once was, not even when it comes to affiliates picking partners.

There is the occasional new brand that bucks the trend, but the reality is that big brands will still take in the majority of the online dollars. Small brands need to tell a very compelling story if they want to attract big affiliates to their programs. Going beyond commission and product price, and selling not only their program but also their product and brand to the affiliates. Else affiliates will generally not consider signing up.

Baghaus Launched on ShareaSale

Launched just last Thursday on the ShareaSale Network, - AMWSO’s newest partnership with designer inspired handbag retailer, Bagahus.com.

We’re all very excited to be working with Baghaus, as the owner Jason has an excellent grasp on what affiliate marketing is, and is always open to recommendations. A fine demonstration of this followed a thread started by an affiliate over at ABestWeb regards potential leakages from the site. Jason understood the concerns raised by the knowledgeable folks at ABW and removed the offending items almost immediately. This is why I know we’ll all benefit from working with such a clued-up and open minded merchant ;-)

This program benefits from having two managers, Dave Oliver and myself Patrick Goodfellow, and we can be reached at affiliates@baghaus.com.

Dave, what don’t you chime in and let potential partners know why promoting Baghaus will be a financially sound idea….

Cheers,

Patrick Goodfellow

Top Affiliate Programs for December 2006

The results of the Christmas sales are in and from the below data we can see that there were no great surprises from the top programs. Except perhaps GT Media which usually has an average Christmas and then powers up in Q1 as fitness and diet sales kick in. The GT Xpress was the big seller there.

As I mentioned above fitness and diet will be the big focus over the next two to three months, so we expect to see Gaiam, Waterfront Media and GT Media dominate the top places, especially GT Media with a brand new Billy Blanks fitness program about to launch. Drop us a line if you'd like the pre-launch marketing kit for Billy Blanks 2007.

On to the results.....

The following are the top Affiliate Programs for December 2006 based on the highest earned commission.

1. Western Union


2. Gaiam


3. Forzieri


4. WaterFront Media


5. Panda Software

The following are the Top Affiliate Programs for December 2006 based on the best Average EPC for ALL active affiliate partners.

1. Shopster


2. Gaiam


3. Panda Software


4. Western Union


5. Overstock Jeweler

The following are the top Affiliate Programs for December 2006 based on the best Average EPC for ALL Active Earning affiliate partners.

1. GT Media


2. Gaiam


3. Overstock Jeweler


4. Forzieri


5. Western Union

The following are the top Affiliate Programs for December 2006 based on the best Average Coversion Rate ALL active affiliate partners.

1. Western Union


2. Gaiam


3. Forzieri


4. Overstock Jeweler


5. GT Media

The following are the top Affiliate Programs for December 2006 based on the best Average Coversion Rate ALL Active Earning affiliate partners.

1. Panda Software


2. Western Union


3. GT Media


4. Gaiam


5. Overstock Jeweler

See the full affiliate program directory of AMWSO managed merchants here