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Our top tips for Merchants |
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While we have the technology, the reputation and the expertise these alone will not guarantee your program success. As in the real world some products or sites have more appeal than others. Large companies have their own affiliate managers, who know how to develop their programs. You may not have these resources but you can still maximise your chances of having a profitable program, so here are some tips we recommend to ensuring your greatest chance of success:
Pay Affiliates on time, by
always paying your invoices in a timely manner, you can
quickly establish a good reputation with Affiliates. It is
important to remember that Affiliates talk to each other and a
Merchant who pays commissions on time will always be
preferable to one who does not, (even if their commission rate
is slightly lower).
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| Don't bypass your
Affiliates. Never put your phone number or web
address on banners used for Affiliate marketing. Remember the
goal of Affiliate marketing is to make sales, as a result you
will get free branding, but to put a phone number or a web
address on your creative will result in Affiliates not
promoting your site at all. Save these for CPM advertising.
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| Validate sales quickly and often. To ensure you have a successful program prompt validation of sales is paramount . Delayed validation will substantially damage or destroy a program. This can be irreversible as bad news spreads quickly in the affiliate marketing community. Key Affiliates can now choose from many lucrative programs and they must invest to generate leads or make sales. In order to sustain investment, they need to know about the return on their investment as soon as possible. Therefore, programs which can provide prompt validation are preferred by Affiliates. We have a track record of guaranteed payment for valid sales and this greatly assists the loyalty of many of the top Affiliates. However, this cannot counter a program with slow validation. Affiliate marketing is unique, in that the advertiser does not pay unless a sale has been made or a lead has been generated. Wise advertisers recognise this invaluable benefit and provide the necessary validation and funding to successfully develop their program.
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| Help them to help you, if
you have a data file of your products, allow your Affiliates
access to it. Doing so means that you will get more of your
products on more websites and, in turn, more pages with your
products will be indexed by search engines. This will
ultimately increase the number of products you sell.
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| Shout it out! Let the world
know about your Affiliate program, add a sign up facility for
it on your homepage. Mention it in press releases and so on.
This will attract new website partners who have seen your site
directly and wish to promote it.
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| Keep your commission rates
consistent. Always set your initial commission rate
for Affiliates at a level you can sustain. Nothing is more
annoying for an Affiliate than a Merchant who starts off with
a high rate only to drop it a month later. This can be
perceived as underhand. If however, you wish to offer a higher
introductory rate, this will not be looked upon in the same
light as long as you explain, in advance and clearly state
what the ongoing rate will change be after the special
promotion.
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| Communication is key. Always
try to inform Affiliates of changes to your service or
products so they can adjust their campaigns. It is also good
to keep them informed of up and coming downtime or site
changes. Finding out after the event, that something major has
changed, never goes down well with Affiliates. Remember this
is your virtual sales force so keep them in the loop.
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| Think like a customer. Try keying in the terms you imagine people might use to find each of your products to a search engine such as Google. View the top 30 sites for each term and contact them to let them know you have an Affiliate program for their product/service. If you do it in a non-spammy personal way you might just find the people you contact will be amongst your best performing Affiliates. This is because they already have on target traffic coming to their site. |
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| Provide the right incentives to Affiliates,
Reward your top performing Affiliates with prizes for meeting
targets and so on. You can, for instance, let them know you
are running a competition to win (decent) prizes for those who
achieve a defined sales target. You'll be amazed how this will
incentivise Affiliates into making an extra effort to promote
you knowing you offer a target bonus.
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| Never use adware or spyware to promote your site, this will only damage your reputation with online consumers. This will result in them being inundated with adverts when they try to use the Internet. Also these programs target your own site directly, affecting your revenue. Additionally they target your competitors' sites making it possible that they could sue you for "virtual trespass" on their site. |
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It is a team game. The
Merchants who are most successful tend to be those that
understand the symbiotic relationship between them and their
Affiliates. Affiliate Marketing works best when Affiliates see
you as a pro active Merchant. By keeping Affiliates informed
of what you are doing, you are showing them that you take the
relationship seriously and that you value their help in
selling your merchandise online. This respect of Affiliates
can be highly beneficial to you in future campaigns and in
recruiting more good Affiliates. 
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| Long life cookies taste good. Setting a long cookie will show to Affiliates you value the users sent by them, this is very important for seasonal sites, as often people will find out about your site via an Affiliate and bookmark it, returning later to spend money. Merchants that only offer Affiliates short lived cookies will find they are often over looked in favour of their competitors who are offering longer cookies. Experienced Merchants know that 96% of all sales happen in the first 48 hours of a cookie being set, so offering a 365 day cookie will have little impact on their commission costs but will generate goodwill with their Affiliates. |
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Softly Softly Don’t do everything at once, use a slow drip approach. Expect to build your program over several months. Remember, on-line sales are growing significantly world wide and you are ideally placed to take advantage of this.
Be careful not to pester affiliates or use non-advertising (discussion) mediums to promote your program.
Avoid ‘spammy’ emails of a general nature. Concisely describe what is special about your program/goods/services. Key related terms into search engines and email non competing sites to advise them of the benefits of linking to your site.
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Keep the feeds fresh Supply product feeds and keep them up to date. If your feeds are linking to stock that is no longer available Affiliates will quickly swap links to a more reliable Merchant.
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Keep in touch We can both benefit from 2 way feed back. Let us know what works for you and what doesn’t, as well as any suggestions you may have. We are making constant improvements and will advise you of any relevant developments |
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