Affiliate program software:
designing a great program
by Sarah Jamieson
If you want to attract affiliates and keep them loyal, structure your
affiliate program around these guidelines. They will help ensure both
you and your affiliates peacefully make money.
Establish yourself as trustworthy
All those great-sounding claims about your affiliate program will
ring hollow if you don't establish your credibility. Include some
verifiable character reference-type quotes. Even more valuable, guarantee
that your affiliates will get paid!
Set competitive commission levels
Setting commission levels requires striking a balance: payments must
motivate affiliates and be competitive with other programs, while
still letting you price your product competitively.
Commission reports
Reports should appear in two places:
1. Online
2. In an affiliates newsletter you e-mail on a regular basis.
Why bother with reporting in two places? Because …
Online tracking is necessary for instantaneous, 24-hours-a-day availability
of commission info. The availability is convenient for affiliates
and adds to your credibility.
The newsletter keeps affiliates involved. Make partnership more than
a promise by building community and team spirit with great content,
incentives (like increased commissions for bringing in customer feedback),
tips from other affiliates and, of course, the commission reports
themselves.
Make regular payments
Pay monthly on amounts exceeding an agreed-upon minimum (put it in
your contract). $50-100 is pretty standard; it keeps affiliates satisfied
but doesn't eat up your profit with postage costs.
Your goal is site domination
Your objective is to take up as much prime space on each affiliate's
site as possible. This might mean the transfer of a link to a different
page, links on two pages of the site, and so on.
Think of affiliates as customers
Your goal is to make affiliates "consume" your links and
place them on their sites.
To get affiliates actively working for you and promoting your products,
you have to take a hands-on approach. Communicate with your affiliates;
build a relationship with your partner's newsletter.
Send monthly e-mails to your top-performing affiliates praising their
performance and supporting them with marketing tips or telling them
what links have been performing well for other affiliates.
Publicizing results
To motivate your other partners, try publicizing the earnings of your
top affiliates. Few things pack more of a motivational wallop.
Underperformers
Weed out underperformers. This is the advice given by some merchants.
They argue that there is an admin cost in running affiliates: tech
support, e-mails, and more newsletters and checks to send. Most of
the benefits of running an affiliate program come from a small percentage
of the partners.
Well I'm not convinced. Most affiliates can bring in some sales -
sometimes. Not all sites are equally well suited to your product,
and not all affiliates put the same amount of work into focusing and
marketing their sites. But over a given time those Underperformers
may come good. If you offer a wide range of products your own affiliate
may buy a product from you - eventually.
With discussions my ITS team has had with merchants - few of them
have ever dropped an affiliate. Generally merchants believe that an
affiliate may eventually come good.
If you want to run a tight ship of only high achieving affiliates
make sure you specify in your contract that you reserve the right
to drop an affiliate.
Make residual income policies fair
If there's one error that really stands out most with affiliate programs,
it's their one-sided policies regarding "lifetime commissions."
Repeat customers
If someone makes a repeat purchase after finding you the first time
through an affiliate, she will likely go straight to your site rather
than via the affiliate again. Guess what? A lot of programs don't
pay the affiliate for this repeat business.
However, a customer who is a repeat buyer is extremely valuable to
you, the vendor. Pay your affiliate a commission every time someone
s/he initially referred buys from you.
As affiliates try more programs and become more sophisticated, it
will become clear that paying a lifetime commission is the only way
to operate an affiliate program.
Let customers return easily to the affiliate's site.
Don't implement self-defeating policies
Don't charge affiliates a fee to join or stay, require customers to
enter the affiliate's name when they order, or any of the other silly
things some merchants regrettably do.
Automate, automate, automate
This prevents headaches for both you and your affiliates.
1. Let affiliates download the setup package.
2. Automate your training program.
3. Write a FAQ to address common questions.
4. Use autoresponders.
Stay up-to-date
New affiliate programs crop up every day, and affiliates are trying
more programs and becoming savvier. To stay informed about this field,
take a look at our Training Center at ecommerce-training.com. Please
email us for one month's FREE access.
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