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Allan Gardyne
How To Inspire Affiliate Loyalty And Increase Affiliates' Sales
Affiliate loyalty isn't easy to win. To encourage affiliates to
be loyal to your affiliate program, you have to do something
really special to stand out from the crowd.
Some of these techniques require considerable time and effort.
However, it's a wise investment because the alternative is so
much worse – spending time and money hunting for super
affiliates, who then switch to other programs.
If you succeed in creating loyal affiliates, they will not only
stick with your affiliate program and promote it
enthusiastically, they'll recommend it to other top affiliates.
28 ways to win affiliates' loyalty and boost their sales
+ Most important of all, HELP your affiliates.
Give them all the tools they need to succeed. Provide lots of
precise, detailed, "how-to" marketing info online. Keep them
enthusiastic with tips in your affiliate newsletter.
Consider adding a toll-free number for affiliate support.
Put someone knowledgeable in charge of answering affiliates'
questions – promptly, in simple English.
A classic example is Corey Rudl.
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/coreys/ Study how he does it.
He was running an affiliate program before Amazon.com and he
owes a lot of his $6 million a year revenue to the fact that he
provides heaps of practical, helpful affiliate marketing advice.
He has a huge number of loyal affiliates.
(I'll assume you're selling an EXCELLENT product and have a
site that SELLS – a site with a high conversion rate. Without
those, your program is dead.)
+ SHOW your affiliates how your top affiliates achieve sales.
Give your affiliates concrete examples. Show them step-by-step,
with all the precise details they need, how your top affiliates
earn a good living.
+ Pour special recognition on your high-earning affiliates.
Send them flowers, champagne or chocolates. Horrified at the
thought of the cost? You'll spend a LOT more finding new super
affiliates.
+ Create FRIENDSHIPS and win enthusiastic supporters.
The first time Ken Evoy
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/ken/ phoned me from the other
side of world for a friendly chat I was very impressed. That
friendly phone call helped win my loyalty.
Phone calls can turn business relationships into lasting
friendships. Turn your top affiliates into loyal FRIENDS.
Remember, you don't just want a collection of affiliates. You
want enthusiastic supporters.
You'll need to understand the difference between shallow
flattery and sincere appreciation. Read or re-read Dale
Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/
Encourage your affiliates to speak up. You'll learn what they
REALLY think about your program, and you'll learn how to make it
better.
+ PRAISE your top affiliate marketers on your site.
This serves three purposes. It teaches other affiliates what
works. It rewards your top affiliates by sending them traffic.
The public recognition increases affiliates' loyalty.
+ Recommend your top affiliates in DISCUSSION GROUPS.
Here's a way to build affiliate loyalty which won't cost you
anything except a few minutes of your time but will have a
dramatic effect on how loyal your top-earning affiliates feel.
Write to a popular e-mail discussion group such as I-Sales or
LinkExchange Digest and recommend your affiliates' sites or
something they wrote.
Your affiliates will LOVE you for that! (I'm extremely grateful
for the public praise which AssociatePrograms.com and
PayPerClickSearchEngines.com
http://www.payperclicksearchenines.com/ have received from
affiliate merchants.)
+ Set those COOKIES fairly.
If a customer returns the next day, the next week, or even a
year later and makes a purchase, the affiliate should receive a
commission. Track your customers in every way possible to make
sure the affiliate receives the commission.
This is vitally important. If your "return days" period is set
at zero, many good affiliates won't even sign up for your
program. The absolute minimum "return days" period should be 30
days. The longer the better.
+ Consider paying LIFETIME COMMISSIONS.
Imagine the power of saying to your affiliates, "They're YOUR
customers for life. Sell once, earn indefinitely." That's a
powerful drawcard which will keep your affiliates loyal and
enthusiastic.
See the article by Christopher Pearce How to start a
lifetime commissions affiliate program.
http://www.lifetimecommissions.com/managers/
It also describes how to set up a residual income program –
another excellent idea.
+ Pay your top affiliates BONUSES.
I received a pleasant surprise when veteran marketer Jim
Daniels, author of Make a Living Online
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/make-a-living sent me $250
for being his top-earning affiliate one month. That helped him
retain me as a loyal affiliate.
+ Pay special affiliates a special high commission.
You know that key affiliates in key positions of influence are
very valuable. Pay them accordingly. Don't embarrass them by
forcing them to ask for the special rate which they deserve.
Residual commissions and two-tier commissions also win favor
with affiliates.
However, don't assume that a high commission ALONE will be
enough. You have to get everything else right, too.
+ Let them buy at DISCOUNT PRICES
Give ALL your affiliates favored treatment. Either allow them
to buy your products through their own referral links, or give
them special discount prices. If you don't do one of these,
you'll antagonize your own sales force.
+ Make things EASY for your affiliates.
They get discouraged fast. Some things are just too darn
complicated for many affiliates.
Need free help to make things easy? The innovative Ken Evoy,
author of the highly acclaimed Make Your Site SELL!
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/ken/ has come to your rescue
with a new section of his site: For Affiliate Managers
Only. http://www.sitesell.com/rejuvenate.html Highly
recommended.
+ Mention loyal affiliates at affiliate marketing CONFERENCES.
Give them a warm glow. Use their site as an example in your
presentation. I just loved it at the 2000 Boulder Summit
conference when Patrick Anderson and other speakers recommended
AssociatePrograms.com to the crowd.
+ Learn from your INACTIVE affiliates.
Do a survey of your inactive affiliates. Ask them what is
wrong. Until you know WHY they're inactive, you won't know what
to fix.
Inactive affiliates and under-performers could be next month's
or next year's winners.
+ Learn from your BEST affiliates.
You'll probably receive a far more useful response if you ask
your loyal super affiliates how to improve your program. Many of
these winners will know the best features of the best affiliate
programs on the Net. They'll be happy to give you useful tips on
how to improve your programm.
Study what your top affiliates do. You'll probably find that
they're earning money in all sorts of creative ways you've never
thought of. Their knowledge can help your affiliates earn more.
+ Make affiliates feel part of your TEAM
Find ways to build a sense of community. For example, you can
use Yahoo! Groups http://groups.yahoo.com/ to set up a
free discussion list for your affiliates.
"The basic function here is an e-mail discussion list where
your affiliates can interact with one another to share tips,
strategies, and success stories with your program. I use my
eGroup to make announcements and bounce ideas off a segment of
affiliates," says Shawn Collins of ClubMom.com.
+ VISIT your affiliates' sites
Here's a good tip from Joel Gehman in ClickZ:
http://gt.clickz.com/cgi-bin/gt/
"We have someone on our affiliate marketing team personally
visit the site of every super-affiliate every month. All
super-affiliates get a personal email with specific comments and
suggestions. We offer tips on which links are performing best
and propose new placements on the site for our links. We also
try to broaden the depth of the affiliate's relationship with
our program by suggesting new products or services for possible
inclusion."
+ ADD new items AUTOMATICALLY.
Here's an excellent tip from "Mr Branding", Rob Frankel, author
of the delightful book The Revenge of Brand X.
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/revenge/
Rob has just added a new product, "The Frankel Tapes, Volume
One". It's a six-tape, six-hour series, which Rob says is
selling nicely from his site.
Affiliates don't have to do anything to start receiving $50
commissions on this new product.
"I think that automatically adding items without the affiliates
having to register for them is a good thing. This is what I did
for my guys," Rob says.
The tape set requires NO EFFORT at all. Everything goes through
the same link.
+ PIGGY-BACK on the winners.
Some affiliate merchants provide excellent resources for their
affiliates. Encourage your affiliates to sign up with those
merchants and learn from their tips. You can even earn a
commission when your affiliates make sales in those programs
while learning how to help you – and saving you time!
Excellent places to start are: SiteSell
http://makemy.sitesell.com/ and ActiveMarketplace.
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/net-profits/
+ IMAGINE you're an affiliate.
See things from the affiliates' point of view. Visit the
Associate Programs Message Board
http://webwizards.net/AssociatePrograms/discus/ and read what
affiliates complain about. They're worried about lack of
response to e-mails, late payments, bait-and-switch tactics,
high payment thresholds, low payouts. Do whatever you can to
avoid those mistakes, or your affiliates will dump you fast.
DON'T send them junk. Every time you contact your affiliates,
sending them something USEFUL, such as new artwork, a search
box, top-performing links, search engine hints, and other tips
on how to maximize their earnings.
Now that you're imagining you're an affiliate, have another
look at your affiliate agreement. Is is FAIR? Would YOU want a
sign a contract like that?
+ NOTIFY THEM
Provide immediate e-mail notification when the affiliate makes
a sale. This reinforces good behavior and encourages more sales.
Give busy affiliates the option of switching off these messages.
+ Send a WEEKLY REPORT
Affiliates find it terribly time-consuming checking stats on
many sites. Make it easy for them. If you provide complex stats,
make sure there's a link which gives the most important stats at
a glance.
Consider e-mailing affiliates a weekly report of
click-throughs, sales and commissions.
+ Pay affiliates in TWO WAYS
Pay them per click AND a commission. For example, you could pay
your best affiliates pays 5 cents per click AND 20% commission
on sales.
+ Pay affiliates for POSITION.
Persuade your top affiliates to promote you "above the fold" on
their main page. Offer them 5% or 10% more if they'll do this.
+ Pay them MONTHLY
Don't make your affiliates wait three months for a check. Pay
them monthly – or even twice a month for your super affiliates.
+ Pay them PROMPTLY
After the end of the month, pay your affiliates as quickly as
you possibly can. Imagine the powerful impression you'll make if
YOUR check is the first one an affiliate receives after the end
of the reporting period. Paying fast shows you care about your
affiliates.
+ AVOID making silly mistakes
I know you're in a hurry, and so mistakes are understandable,
but if you make too many silly mistakes, affiliates will dump
you. See Silly mistakes affiliate merchants make.
http://www.associateprograms.com/search
+ Treat your affiliates as BUSINESS ASSOCIATES.
Respect them or they'll switch to someone who does. DON'T
siphon off some of the traffic they send you to products on
which they don't earn a commission. When referred customers
arrive at your site, all money-earning links on that page should
earn a commission for your affiliate.
DO provide real-time statistics. Serious affiliates need to
know immediately whether their promotions are achieving results
so they can test repeatedly, fix mistakes and maximize their
sales.
Don't have time to coach affiliates? Get expert FREE help
Ken Evoy provides more useful affiliate marketing support for
his affiliates than any other affiliate merchant I know. Ken
provides an incredible amount of useful information for
affiliates: THREE practical newsletters, a 224-page free
affiliate marketing manual, and an "80-20 Report", and the newly
revamped and enlarged "Affiliate Masters" free e-mail course.
Now he's ALSO helping affiliate merchants.
Be sure to visit the newly launched section of
SiteSell: For affiliate managers only.
http://www.sitesell.com/rejuvenate.html
I strongly recommend it.
It helps your affiliates while you earn substantial lifetime
commissions.
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