Your Affiliate Managers

5 Strategies to Create Your Own Super Affiliate

managers — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:55:11 +0000

Did you know you can create your own super affiliate? You sure can.

Contact, Contact, Contact …
Did I say contact? You need to be front and center of your affiliates minds constantly. Keep in touch on a regular basis and create new reasons often for them to promote your product and/or service.

Motivate, motivate, motivate …
Motivation runs a close second behind constant contact. There’s nothing more motivating than affiliate contests and recognition. Offering enticing prizes on a regular basis to recognize a job well done is a surefire technique to motivate your affiliates.

Offer many creatives …
By offering more creatives, you’re not only arming your affiliates with the tools they need but you’re also giving them a choice to pick and choose the creatives that fit them best. Encourage your affiliates to test various creatives to find the ones that work the best for them. You’ll also want to be sure to encourage them to edit the advertisements to add a personal touch. Be sure to use a variety of forms of creatives.

Train your affiliates …
You need to teach your affiliates how to sell your product and/or service. You’re the one who knows the best way to sell what you have to offer so teach it to your affiliates. Consider holding monthly seminars and other forms of training to keep your affiliates up to date with internet marketing skills.

Offer support, service and consultation …
Remind your affiliates regularly that they can come to you with any questions. Offer consultations to help them come up with an individualized plan of action. Offer a variety of forms of contact. By sharing your email address, instant messenger ids and phone number will help your affiliate feel more comfortable in contacting you the way they want to.

Use the above strategies like the bible of affiliate marketing and you too can turn your affiliates into super affiliates.

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Anita DeFrank & Val Selby of YourAffiliateManagers.com offer a full service solution to assist you in building and/or managing a successful affiliate program. Their goal is to recruit, motivate and communicate with you and your affiliates … meeting the needs of both the affiliates and the merchant … and bridging the gap between the two. Visit www.YourAffiliateManagers.com to obtain overall, maximum success with your affiliate program.

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What is an Affiliate Manager?

managers — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:08:21 +0000

Each affiliate manager service has their own set of services to offer but the general consensus is this: Someone who handles every aspect of your affiliate program. An affiliate manager can help you free your time to concentrate on other important aspects of your business such as product purchasing or creation, customer service, shipping as well as everything else needed done in order to run a successful business.

As I’ve said, each service has their own list of services that they offer but some things that one can do is affiliate recruiting (building you an entire sales force), motivate your affiliates to be more active, participate in training and consulting both the affiliate owner and your affiliates in order to create a knock-out affiliate program.

Depending on the manager that you choose, this person may install and set up your program as well as create a “one stop shop” for your affiliates to obtain everything they need in order to be a more successful affiliate.

The aspects of an affiliate program that most managers handle are crucial to your program. How well your affiliates and your program are taken care of could make or break your program. Dare I repeat myself? Crucial.

If you don’t take care of your program and your affiliates … your competition will. Long gone are the days that you simply set up a program, offer some links and asking some friends to promote your products.

With all the new software available making it much more simple, everybody and their brother has an affiliate program now. It’s become more of a competition to gather affiliates.

And let me tell you … affiliates are well aware of this. They now know they can search for the best programs available. They’re looking for not just the best commission plan … they’re looking for the programs with the best conversions. Best conversions come from who affiliates that are properly trained and armed with the proper material to get the job done.

Managing a successful program has become a full time job all in it’s own. Hence the creation of the affiliate manager position.

Conversation with a Not-So-Successful Affiliate Program Owner

managers — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:30:41 +0000

You have the product or service, you set up the affiliate program, you even got yourself a nice little group of affiliates and gave them all the tools they need. Or did you?

Yep, I sure did. I gave them everything they could possibly need. They have ten different sized graphic ads, five reports, three press releases, a ton of signature ads, classified ads of all sizes, blog posts, personal letters, and even a bunch of articles. They have everything they need.

So tell me then, if they have everything they need, why aren’t they making many sales?

When was the last time you contacted your affiliates?

Oh, that’s easy - my program is on auto-pilot! I have an email that automatically goes out to them as soon as they join. It’s a personalized welcome letter from me and it includes all the creatives I just mentioned. Other than that, it was about two months ago. I sent out a last minute free shipping weekend announcement.

That’s a pretty good start - but not good enough.

When was the last time you held an affiliate contest or another form of motivation?

Well, I’m so busy writing articles, creating new ad campaigns, updating my blog and taking care of my customers that I don’t usually have the time to do this. But, about six months ago, I did contact my top affiliate and raised her commission.

Good idea - but not enough.

When was the last time you held a special on your product or service just for your affiliates to promote?

When I held my free shipping weekend, I almost forgot to tell my affiliates but I did send them out a quick email first thing that Saturday morning.

Too little - too late.

Did you offer a new creative for your free shipping weekend?

No, I didn’t have the time so I told them just to use one of the creatives in their welcome email.

Nice reminder - but not enough.

Does any of this sound in the least bit familiar? Something tells me if you’re struggling with affiliate sales, it just may so. Long gone are the days that just setting up an affiliate program and offering some links is enough. Affiliate programs are no longer meant to be a ’set it and forget it’ program. Otherwise, you’ll be sitting there wondering what went wrong.

You have to be a constant reminder to your affiliates.

You have to train your affiliates how to sell and give them the appropriate tools to do so.

You need to create new creatives and promotions regularly. Give them something new to look forward to on a regular basis. Give them a reason to contact their customers.

You need to keep them motivated with contests and some form of recognition. Let them know they’re doing a good job.

You need to create a “one stop shop” to host all their affiliate needs such as all creatives, training materials, frequently asked questions and a way to keep in contact with you. Don’t make them dig out that welcome email - give them the link where they can find everything they need.

These people aren’t “just affiliates”. They are your partners in business, your personal sales team. Essentially, they are a part of a team - your team - so be sure to treat them as such.

Doing things such as what’s been mentioned are sure to transform you from the not-so-successful affiliate program owner to the I-can’t-keep-up-with-all-these-sales affiliate program owner.

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Anita DeFrank & Val Selby of YourAffiliateManagers.com offer a full service solution to assist you in building and/or managing a successful affiliate program. Their goal is to recruit, motivate and communicate with you and your affiliates … meeting the needs of both the affiliates and the merchant … and bridging the gap between the two. Visit www.YourAffiliateManagers.com to obtain overall, maximum success with your affiliate program.