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How can you Motivate Affiliates???

L

lauraddirectnet

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Hello,

I am the new affiliate manager to my company. Affiliates will sign up for my program but many of them fail to grab the offers that are available. The payouts are competitive and we always have new offers, but still a lack of participation on their part. How can I make affiliates become motivated? Any thought, comments, and suggestions are more then welcome!

Thanks!!
 
Hi Laura,

By now I'm sure you've heard about the 90/10 rule of affiliate marketing. 90% of those that join just won't do anything. Now on the other hand there are lots of good strong busy affiliates that will join and take a long time to get active because they are busy and you are on page 10 of their to-do list.

One thing you can try is activation bonuses. Not sure how much that motivates people but you can try. Send an email to people who joined a month ago and have not put up links yet, offering them a bonus if they make a sale this month or even a bonuse for getting links up.

This time of year, don't even try to contact them, but in the new year you may want to try the Ultimate Affiliate Activation Email from the zZounds Affiliate Manager, one of my clients. Its on my blog.
http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliateprograms.com/2006/08/29/affiliate-activation-email/

My blog is a wealth of info and the search button works really well when you are trying to find certain topics. You'll find some good info below.

5 Star Blog ? Top 7 Reasons Your Affiliates Could be Inactive
http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliateprograms.com/2006/08/30/7-reasons-affiliates-inactive/

This one has some good info too from a busy affiliate's perspective.
http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliateprograms.com/2006/04/03/affiliate-activation-campaigns/

Hope this helps!

Anyone else have any thoughts for Laura???
 
Thanks Linda! I will be trying out your great suggestions in 2007. I will let you know how I make you. Also if anyone else has had success with monthly bonus programs, what are your thoughts.
Thanks again!
 
lauraddirectnet said:
Hello,

I am the new affiliate manager to my company. Affiliates will sign up for my program but many of them fail to grab the offers that are available. The payouts are competitive and we always have new offers, but still a lack of participation on their part. How can I make affiliates become motivated? Any thought, comments, and suggestions are more then welcome!

Thanks!!

just because you have a network with good paying offers doesn't mean success. Try to make your offers unique, if i can find the same offers you have in 20 other networks then you don't stand out.

Also get to know the community ... over time people will begin to trust you and feel comfortable working with you. I think a lot of affiliates have been burned by some bad networks so they are cautious when working with someone new.

Help to teach your affiliates how to make money with your offers, research what people are doing and look for ways to help them improve. I actually teach all my AM's how to be affiliates themselves so they know what the other side is like. Its hard to tell someone what to do if you havent walked a mile in their shoes.
 
Great point! Well, I am currently in the process of adding more offers more often. We are shifting the focus to our program and are looking forward to it taking off. I agree it is hard to understand what the affiliates are going through if you have never been there. I try to get input from my affiliates to see if there are specifics that they need help with. One thing I like to use is AIM and Yahoo Messanger. It is much easier to communicate this way because it is quick and people can get a response from me quickly. Seems to be more personal than an email.
One thing we have started is a weekly newletter, hopefully this will help the affiliates see the new offers and gain their interest!
 
Affiliate publishers generally have a number of sites on the go and in turn a number of merchants on those sites. This means that they receive a large amount of email from merchants. I know that in the past I have just deleted some of these emails without even bothering to look at them because at that point I may not even have much traffic to my site. There is no point spending time messing around with new offers until the traffic turns up.

The first thing then is to grab their attention with a snappy email subject or something a little more personal so they actually open the email. And my suggestion is to keep your emails short. If its a newsletter then have plenty of bold headings so the reader can just scan for the most important info.

I would also send an email stating the top 5 or 10 reasons why an affiliate should promote your offers. Why are you better than your competitor?

Competitions are always a good idea but don't just provide prizes for the top in sales. There are a lot of new affiliates out there just getting started who might not be able to generate the sales but who are willing to promote your product. You might offer a prize for the best promotion of your products or the biggest increase in sales for affiliates that have not yet had a sale of your products.
 
Where are they coming from?

Question: Where are the affiliate sign ups coming from? What are they being told before they get to your sign up page?

Once you pin point that, then you can get into their heads and figure out their hopes and desires. It may not necessarily be a matter of motivation, but perhaps a matter of qualifying your affiliate sign ups more closely.

Affiliate sign ups are the same as qualified leads for prospective buyers. Both bring in money and you don't want just anyone.

You want to make sure that your affiliates are a good match with you!

Hope this helps!
All the best :)
Enigma Valdez
 
Feedback on your site

I looked over your site on your affilate page. I think you would be able to get more affilates if you provided more details on what the payouts are or what the percentage is. If I am looking for an affilate program I would like to promote I would like to see what the percentage is that I would make from a sale.

Also if you had a referral program to get other affilates involve.
 
Thanks for the input! I will have to let check into making the payout details stand out a bit more. We are actually in the process of adding a forum. I think this will help keep open the lines of communications. What would be the benefits of a referral program as far as getting my affiliates to be more active?
 
3 things.

I've found in the last 4 years that there are 3 things that keep affiliates producing.

1. MONEY: this is the primary motivation tool, but it's not enough.

2. CONVERSION: This is the second biggest tool, combine a great or above average conversion rate with high payouts and you've got a great program that affiliates will look forward to maximizing.

3. SUPPORT: Whether an affiliate is emailing you for an increase, or needs some new creative, or is just struggling, they want an answer of some kind. The best affiliate managers are excellent with customer support. Sure, you can run a good program without SUPPORT if the money and conversion are there, but it's never going to see its full potential unless you get involved in management.

Here's my personal case to back this up.

In 2003 I was doing well with a program and although I didn't have much interaction with the account manager I knew that conversion was solid and the money was ok, and payouts were timely. Within a year I had decided to jump to another program and again the conversion was great and the money was double, but the support was pretty much non-existent and turnover in the affiliate manager position was terrible.

Another year goes by (2005 now) and I'm doing well, but focusing on other ventures and not putting as much time into marketing this program anymore. Then I got an email from the new affiliate manager and he did everything he could to get me putting 100% into it again by bumping my commission up considerably and keeping me uptodate on what was going on the industry and with their new products.

Within 2 months I was earning 4 times what I had before he contacted me and we've always maintained a good relationship (I've even met him in person) and although it may seem small, he's always been concerned about my personal progression and did whatever he could to make it easier for me to be a high volume producer. Whether it was getting me my payout earlier to keep high CPC campaigns going, or driving over to their bank branch and depositing my check because there was an issue with direct deposit. This is what affiliate management is about, the amount of effort you put into helping your affiliates will greatly impact the production of the affiliates and in turn help create a successful program.
 
Sign On Bonus?

How about sign on Bonuses? I know many companies do this, but how much usually works. Is $5 or would a higher amount be better. I did see some at $5. Thoughts?
 
I honestly don't think $5 is going to really motivate someone to sign up. Maybe you should consider giving them a higher percentage for the first month, or a bonus for a certain amount of actions within the month.
 
What motivated me was the fact that I did not have to shell out any money to get started.

Another thing that was a motivation to me was the fact I was sick and tired of my 9-5 job. I had to find a better way and I was willing to try anything (legal) to position myself to tell the boss to "shove it" (can I say that?)

Good fortune to everyone.

EZWealth
 
Hi Laura, I agree $5 is not enough to even get consideration. Some offer $25 but even that I don't think is worth doing. To strong affiliates 25 is nothing.

You could do a sign up bonus tied to performance. That was you could promote a number that sounded pretty big without having to pay out unless the affiliate performed. I don't know your numbers so not sure that this would work, just throwing it out there.

$100 jump start bonus after you make your 3rd sale (But you'd want to say - if it's during the same month they sign up.) You wouldn't want to pay the bons if they mosied along and made their 3rd sale finally in month 6. Its a bonus to get them active. MOST affiliates would not make 3 sales their 1st month, so you would only end up paying it out to the ones that got active right away and deserve it.

Just a thought. However even 100 will not motivate the pros and get them to join a program.
 
Great idea! I am going to try it out. Thank a lot. I think that sounds resonable enough to get people motivated. I realize that this will not do anything for some people, but it might get some other into action.
 
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