Affiliate marketing cold stats: According to a Forrester report, more than 80% of advertisers questioned use affiliate networks to increase sales and customer reach. In this blog post, we will discuss five critical strategies for increasing affiliate engagement, sales, leads, and total ROI in your affiliate marketing program.
So, let’s get started!
Table of contents
Create a lifecycle for your partners’ onboarding.
It is important to assist affiliates in expanding their online presence and increasing the possibility of turning traffic into leads and sales. Creating an automated affiliate onboarding program is one method to accomplish this. When affiliate partners sign up, they should understand exactly what they need to do next in order to become a successful income.
While affiliate marketer is usually skilled at driving traffic online, they may simply forget about you if you do not present them with simple directions on how to start making cash with your program.
Consider your affiliate lifecycle in the same way that you consider your customer lifecycle.
- What do affiliates require when they first join your program and start learning about your products and services?
- What can you offer to start them, in the beginning, to generate income and build loyalty and confidence in your program?
Make it possible for your affiliates to sign up quickly and easily, and offer them all of the affiliate program details or affiliate tools they require, such as affiliate links, banners, and creative. Including the URLs in the affiliate welcome emails makes it extremely simple for affiliates to take the next step and go live once approved.
Affiliates frequently sign up for affiliate programs through an affiliate network or SaaS platform. Ensure that the platforms you’re utilizing contain all of the affiliate program information and tools your partners need to get started with your program.
By including affiliate partners at the start of their user experience in your program, you may improve rapport and provide added value, which can help you save money.
Select affiliates carefully and conduct preliminary due diligence on their objective.
Signing new affiliate partners is always a risk. Not because you can’t be confident they’ll drive enough traffic or sales to your program, but because some of these affiliates may already have partnerships with multiple businesses in their niche, and it’s probable they’re signing up with you to gain insights into your conversion and audience metrics. This is something I’ve personally witnessed.
Any affiliate who has previously produced affiliate marketing income online is likely to be hungry for more, but if they are already associated with other programs, your diligence and active participation at the start can be the key to developing a rewarding arrangement that provides results.
Make sure you conduct regular due diligence checks on partners that join your affiliate program. This should include verifying site ownership — generally, asking a partner to copy and paste a piece of code on the site to validate ownership, or verifying website registration — as well as contacting them via phone or live chat to inquire about how they drive traffic, engage customers, and where they will promote your brand. Make contact to check that the person behind the email is the partner you want to collaborate with and allow to promote your brand.
Collaborate, but don’t micromanage or limit affiliate creativity.
One of the most important affiliate program duties is keeping affiliate partners engaged in your program by sending them promotions related to their own brand, niche, or both.
It is important to communicate with affiliate partners to establish trust, loyalty, and rapport by sharing affiliate product news and real-life instances of customers who have profited from using your products and services. Your affiliates are already fantastic at what they do — they just need to get better at it for your business, which is where motivational management comes in.
It’s important to remember that you’re there to help your affiliates, not to micromanage them or try to control the story they’re building about your brand in order to reach niche audiences.
Suppose there is one thing affiliate managers should never do. In that case, it limits your content creators’ creative liberties and digital gurus (i.e., your affiliate partners) in engaging new audience groups that you aren’t reaching through your own direct advertising channels.
Provide individual assistance and incentives to encourage their success (and yours too).
Personalized support can inspire your affiliate partners to activate their promos more quickly, resulting in sales as soon as they sign up.
Consider providing a personal account manager to answer inquiries at the start of your partnership and inviting them to pop-up groups or communities to discuss issues or concerns. Also, make sure to provide them with the documentation they require in order to generate engaging and competitive reviews. Give them the information they need to succeed.
Because not all affiliates are motivated by commission, offer a variety of other forms of prizes as part of your program. Provide incentives to go active sooner in your lifecycle mailings. Offer bonuses that will go live the same week.
Use a specialized agency rather than a general agency.
If you inspire to be successful in affiliate marketing, you must first find the right partners. Working with an agency that specializes in performance and partner marketing is one option.
If you required a neurologist, you wouldn’t go to your primary care physician. Both have medical degrees, but one is a specialist who is well-versed in dealing with difficulties relating to the complexity of the brain.
The same can be true for generalist digital marketing companies.
While they may grasp the idea of affiliate program management and affiliate recruitment tactics, they are unlikely to be fully immersed in them in the manner that affiliate agencies are. As a result, you may be missing out on expertise that could benefit your program early on or even accelerates your outcomes.
Conclusion
Activating affiliates and producing consistent sales, commission pay-outs, and affiliate campaign for a client base run by an affiliate manager – does not have to be difficult. All you have to do is follow these five suggestions and give your affiliates some breathing room, and your sales will follow.
Last Updated on January 17, 2024
