How To Engage Your Affiliates So They Promote You!

With so many networks and so many merchants wanting an active affiliates time, it’s vital that the affiliate manager engages their affiliate’s attention and makes them want to get promoting. I’m not sure how some merchants perceive affiliates, but some days you do feel as though they think you’re just sat, drumming your fingers, and waiting for them to offer you such glorious opportunities such as this:

Merchant X are launching a TV campaign. Now is a great opportunity to promote Merchant X and promote us harder on your site. What more can you do for us in terms of promotion and bringing in new active players?

This approach gets a big thumbs down from me!

There was no information about what the campaign was to be about, no Youtube link to the advert for us to perhaps use on sites and no additional incentive for us to create content or promote the merchant. It just comes across as “we’re a great big brand name and we have a TV campaign - what are you going to do about it”.

My answer to “what more can I do” was simple… nothing! I can’t do any more to promote a merchant, which comparatively to others in the sector doesn’t generate decent revenue and who doesn’t give me any information about their great new promotion. If the merchant was good enough it’d be promoted more.

In an attempt to be helpful I responded to Merchant X enquiring further about the campaign and whilst my questions were answered they did little to make me think “ok let’s give this a try then”, especially as conversion isn’t that good. Despite raising this with Merchant X, the response was a laughable “we convert at 50% and we wouldn’t be a great converter for you as your not promoting us at all” (we do)!

So what’s the point of all this…

The point is simple - affiliate managers need to do more to get affiliate interest and here are some suggestions:

1. When contacting affiliates about promotions give them information! Make suggestions about promotions, provide links and make sure creative is in place and ready for the affiliate to use.

2. Visit the affiliate site and see what they do! Are they promoting you - don’t assume they’re not just because you can’t find a link. Ask the affiliate for information if you’re stuck.

3. Don’t make your affiliate laugh by giving duff conversion figures. Check their stats and if the conversion rate is low suggest how they could improve it.

4. Big brand name doesn’t equate to an affiliate falling over backwards and promoting you. It’s a numbers game, and if there are no numbers after the £ signs on my account, your brand counts for nowt.

5. Don’t expect an affiliate to instantly come up with great promotional ideas. Make suggestions (a banner on xyz page might be good, perhaps you could send this copy in your newsletter, we have a fantastic content unit for you to use) to help your affiliate!

6. Don’t ask “what can we do for you” and don’t say “what are you going to do for us”.

7. Do say “here’s some great stuff we have, is there anything else you would like” or “it’d be great if we can get some promotions up to support this, we’ve checked your stats and site and have some ideas about…”!

Why?

The reason why is simple… we’re not sat waiting twiddling our thumbs. There’s 101 things to do everyday! So, for a merchant to jump to the top of the “to do” list they need to make their approach armed and ready with information so that the affiliate can get on and do their job.

If the information is lacking, as in the Merchant X case above, then the affiliate is more inclined to work with those merchants (and thankfully there are plenty) who do a brilliant job engaging their affiliates.