please help a rookie AM

C

CharlieIII

Spotmau Affiliate Manager
Nov 22, 2009
4
0
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www.spotmau.com
Hello, guys, I’m Charlie and I’m in Hong Kong. This is my first post in Wickedfire.
Now I’m working for a software company as an affiliate manager. However, I’m totally new in this area, and I really appreciated there are such forums like Wickedfire, so I can learn more from experienced affiliates.
I think an AM’s job is not only to manage affiliates but also to serve affiliates. Communication is very important I think. I want to know affiliates’ mind, so that I can serve them better.
Recently we are running a holiday affiliate exclusive discount promotion. I set holiday banners and coupon code ready, and then sent a newsletter to all my affiliates in Shareasale. But almost a week past, none of holiday banners was used. That puzzles me very much. Do you think the promotion is unattractive? Or do you have any opinions on this? Please tell me.
Thank you for your advice and I’ll take your suggestion seriously.
 


In my experience as an affiliate I only wanted my AM to contact when he had something very important to say, or my offer was being redirected. You should ask your affiliates how you could better serve them. I know that I never really liked seeing newsletters/emails everyday telling me what the "hot" offers were.
 
NVCreatives said:
In my experience as an affiliate I only wanted my AM to contact when he had something very important to say, or my offer was being redirected. You should ask your affiliates how you could better serve them. I know that I never really liked seeing newsletters/emails everyday telling me what the "hot" offers were.
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Thanks for your advice! I know that no one wants a useless newsletter. The matter is, what kind of news is important in affiliates’ mind? Promotions, new software version releasing, new creative upload, or an affiliate supports centre founded?
If I was an affiliate, I would think those things are good news, maybe I will take a glance at those Emails. But whether I will promote this product, it depends on many other things like EPC, relevance to my website, etc. Do you think so?
 
Hi Charlie,

Once a month is the most often I would contact your affiliates. Boil everything you need to say down into a few sentences. Your affilaites want to know what's going on, but they won't want to read a novel. I also agree with NV about listening to your affiliates. I base a large percentage of my decisions around what my affiliates are requesting. If they have image requirements, creative requests, etc, try to accomodate as many as possible.

Good luck with your program
 
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The problem is with the affiliates you already have. I know that you can pay ShareASale and they will hold your hand for a bit. It is not cheap, but it might be worth it if you can get your boss to cough up the cash.

I would start going through your current affiliates and start removing any underperforming affiliates. Make sure you are not getting scammed as there is a good chance that you are, especially if you are auto-accepting affiliates. Depending on your product and your market area you might want to setup a country specific rule to only allow affiliates from the US and the UK or something. Again, knowing your current affiliates is going to help you immensely.

I would first just shoot an introductory email out to your affiliates and tell them you are their new manager and you want their opinion on the current campaigns and what they want out of your program. That never hurts. If you do not get any responses, then I would potentially look at moving to another platform. Or adding another platform to the mix.

You need to look for other programs out there that sell similar products and see what their current offers are right now. Then work on a stellar campaign, new creatives, make sure your landing pages are converting properly and get all your ducks in a row. Then work with ShareASale to get them to promote your program and you might get some better affiliates in there.

If you are going to look at adding an additional program when you sign up be sure to talk to an account manager first and see what they can do about finding you some good affiliates to promote your product. Talk about giving the top notch affiliates a better deal than everyone else and also consider throwing in a little bonus for your program manager as well. Greasing the palms of your handlers works wonders IMHO. I mean I wouldn't offer any under the table money, but offer to pay out a little more of your money to the company as a whole as a bonus for finding you some good affiliates. Your account manager will obviously benefit from this money as well.

Good luck! Welcome to Wicked Fire. As a warning, be careful of clicking on links in here.
 
fholmes said:
The problem is with the affiliates you already have. I know that you can pay ShareASale and they will hold your hand for a bit. It is not cheap, but it might be worth it if you can get your boss to cough up the cash.

I would start going through your current affiliates and start removing any underperforming affiliates.
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1. we will give you guidance without any additional cash.. just contact sarah at shareasale dot com and she can give you a crash course on the merchant side of things...

2. I would not remove any affiliates... what good does that do? If anything it is adding additional exposure to your program for free.
 
Removing affiliates serves more than one purpose. I guess since i do a lead generation campaign on ShareASale things are a little different for my campaign than someone who is obviously selling software.

I had a ton of affiliates in my program (the last manager had auto-approve turned on for all countries) and they were generating bad leads. I ended up keep the same $$$ on the books for two months because I had crap affiliates promoting my offer, they would sign up, process a couple of leads from the same IP address. Or they would have international IP addresses and the program we are trying to generate leads with is a Income Tax service that we have.

My point is this, there are times when it is prudent to remove affiliates from your program because they are only doing things that hurt you. I understand that link juice is all fine and dandy, but if the affiliates who are sending in purchases that are all getting charged back for fraud or other illegal reasons then it would be best to get rid of them ASAP. Again, this is something he is going to have to figure out himself really. I don't know his program, I can only give him advice based on my experience with the ShareASale system, which I do like BTW. His program just needs to be managed like any other Affiliate Program on any other Affiliate Network.

I guess I was mentioning the program you have in place that allows you to work a little bit closer with ShareASale to help pick up some better affiliates to market your program. I have always received good support from the team over there at ShareASale.
 
fholmes said:
Removing affiliates serves more than one purpose. I guess since i do a lead generation campaign on ShareASale things are a little different for my campaign than someone who is obviously selling software.

I had a ton of affiliates in my program (the last manager had auto-approve turned on for all countries) and they were generating bad leads. I ended up keep the same $$$ on the books for two months because I had crap affiliates promoting my offer, they would sign up, process a couple of leads from the same IP address. Or they would have international IP addresses and the program we are trying to generate leads with is a Income Tax service that we have.

My point is this, there are times when it is prudent to remove affiliates from your program because they are only doing things that hurt you. I understand that link juice is all fine and dandy, but if the affiliates who are sending in purchases that are all getting charged back for fraud or other illegal reasons then it would be best to get rid of them ASAP. Again, this is something he is going to have to figure out himself really. I don't know his program, I can only give him advice based on my experience with the ShareASale system, which I do like BTW. His program just needs to be managed like any other Affiliate Program on any other Affiliate Network.

I guess I was mentioning the program you have in place that allows you to work a little bit closer with ShareASale to help pick up some better affiliates to market your program. I have always received good support from the team over there at ShareASale.
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lead gen = makes complete sense to drop non or under performers from the program. I wasn't thinking that that way since we don't typically offer to many lead gen offers. The mass Majority is PayPerSale.

So.. sounds like everything is on track for you now?
 
Not really. Our creatives suck and our program sucks. lol. But that is not your fault. I just inherited a program that we are not really working too much any more. Not any fault of ShareASale though. I have other projects I am working on now that we will integrate into our program.

I don't really want to hijack this thread, but I would like to potentially talk to you a little bit more about some things we have going on.

Thanks,

Fred
 
fholmes said:
Not really. Our creatives suck and our program sucks. lol. But that is not your fault. I just inherited a program that we are not really working too much any more. Not any fault of ShareASale though. I have other projects I am working on now that we will integrate into our program.

I don't really want to hijack this thread, but I would like to potentially talk to you a little bit more about some things we have going on.

Thanks,

Fred
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feel free to email me jason at shareasale dot com
 
Omni Mike said:
Hi Charlie,

Once a month is the most often I would contact your affiliates. Boil everything you need to say down into a few sentences. Your affilaites want to know what's going on, but they won't want to read a novel. I also agree with NV about listening to your affiliates. I base a large percentage of my decisions around what my affiliates are requesting. If they have image requirements, creative requests, etc, try to accomodate as many as possible.

Good luck with your program
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Thanks for your help, Mike. I'll take your advice. And I will ask my affilites for their opinion ASAP. If there are any good news or feedback, I would like to share them in the post too.
 
Thank you all guys! Sorry about reply you late. These days I was working on another new affiliates program, so it took me much time.
I benefit from your discussions. I think I won't remove my affiliates because my program is promoting software, so it basically won't generate shipping fee. Though, I would be careful in monitoring whether there are cheating deals.
We want to make the inactive affiliate active. And I intend to ask them directly.
 
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