A few months ago, at an affiliate marketing conference in Israel, while discussing foundations of affiliate marketing success I touched upon the subject of proactive affiliate program management.

I’m afraid that we hear (and use) the phrase so frequently that it is quickly turning into a cliché (or a phrase that is losing its true effect and meaning as a result of its overuse). So what is “proactive management” exactly? And how do we achieve it in the context of affiliate program management — specifically on the communications front? Here’s a quick video to answer these questions:

So, in short, being a proactive affiliate program manager (or any manager, really) means “acting in ancitipation of future problems, needs of changes”. In any management context a large part of it is being covered by building a healthy two-way communication channel (with followers, affiliates, subordinates, superiors… doesn’t matter).

If you’ve got something to add to this, the “Comments” are all yours.

It appears that while I do my best to take note of positive news and developments in the industry it is when I blog about problems (read: a negative news/issues) that I get most interest and participation from my readers. And unfortunately this is natural… But today I’d like to focus on the good — especially so since there are some really good news and developments to report. Here are the three that have really impressed me over the past few days:

AvantLink Pioneers App Market

Don’t know what took affiliate networks so long to start something like this, but glad to see it finally happen — AvantLink has launched an Affiliate Marketing App Market, “allowing developers from around the world to add functionality to the network” [source]. The idea is, actually, pretty simple/straightforward: (i) developers create apps using AvantLink’s API, (ii) affiliates use them for free (no additional fees; “you keep your entire commission for any sales made using any app”), and (iii) every time an affiliate sale is made using the developers tool, he/she also gets a commission or “20% of the network’s commission for every sale generating through the app” (yep, they’ve actually structured it as an affiliate program). Good development, and kudos to AvantLink for creating the platform and the good motivation to empower affiliates.

Skimlinks Introduces Real-Time Affiliate Marketing

Remember when Skimlinks acquired Atma Links this summer? Immediately following it I asked Alicia Navarro, Skimlinks’ CEO, if she can give my readers a “sneak-peak into what other new features they should expect from the combined Skimlinks+AtmaLinks solution”. She replied that the combined solution wasn’t in too distant of a future, and said: “what I can share now is that their technology specialises in highly accurate, multi-vertical product identification and matching” and “we can apply this to a number of our existing products (particularly EveryFeed – our aggregated product API) as well as other publisher tools we offer our customers”… Well, they’ve just rolled the combined technology out, calling it SkimWords 2.0. The new creation is being characterized by an “unparalleled accuracy and speed as it analyzes page content to recognize product references and deliver in-text affiliate links, and optionally show product and price comparison information, all in real-time” [more here]. I am particularly fond of this new development, because it is linguistics-related (and, while not many know it, I’m a linguist by first education). SkimWords 2.0 is supported by AtmaLinks’ computational linguistics and semantic algorithms. They match content/text with tens of millions of products, creating real-time in-text affiliate links. Amazing development!

7ThingsMedia Exemplary Communication/Management

Yesterday, 7ThingsMedia, a UK affiliate program management agency, has sent out an “Apologies for the mistake” email to all Agent Provocateur‘s affiliates. Here’s the core of the text:

I just wanted to email you personally to apologise for the email sent regarding an admin error that occured on Commission Junction this afternoon regarding the Agent Provocateur affiliate programme.

The programme was accidently deactivated today at 15.56, the mistake was noticed straight away and the account was re-activated at 16.11. All affiliate links are working and commissions will be rewarded.

If you have any questions about this then please do email me on [email here] or give me a call on [phone number here].

I don’t know about you, but this is the first time I’ve seen an apology sent out for a 15 minute downtime which has probably not even been noticed by the majority of the affiliates in the program. All of this spells out one very important word — integrity. Kudos to 7thingsmedia for doing it right! This certainly gives affiliates hope that there are affiliate managers out there who know how to handle things right.

Important Disclaimer: None of the above news coverage were in any way “sponsored” by anyone. They reflect my sole personal opinion.

Yesterday night a chief executive of a company which runs an affiliate program on a popular network, sent out a newsletter. Most of his affiliates have probably found it in their inboxes early this morning. One of them forwarded it to me. She’s been in the business for a while, but even she was surprised by the tactic used — “Not only is he offensive, but he suggests being dishonest” she wrote to me…

Without any further introductory words, here is an excerpt of that merchant’s newsletter (with sensitive information removed for obvious reasons):

Are you ready for a kickass affiliate newsletter? I hope so.

I’m [Name here], the founder and president of [Company Name here] — We are the company that owns and runs [URL here] and 9 other retail websites. I’ve temporarily taken over duties as the affiliate marketing manager. I’ll only be doing this for a couple of months, so I figured I could do it my way.

I’m a straight shooter, I’m not very politically correct, and I sell weird shit for a living, so expect some unusual things in these newsletters…

Today’s newsletter is going to be a good beginning. 4 Things Affiliate Can Do To Get More Traffic

1. Create some … content…

2. Use every opportunity to optimize your site…

3. Let other people know about your site…

4. Cheat — That’s right, I’m telling you to take every shortcut you can. Why, because you are an affiliate, you have very little to lose. I would cheat if I could, but I’ve got a warehouse, 11 employees, three kids, and a building mortgage to pay. I also can’t change my domain name overnight. I have to follow the rules. You do not. So use the strategy du jour to create link farms, buy forum links, pay people to write phony reviews. I don’t care what you do and no one else does either. Make your money now before Google figures it all out. Then, if you get banned, try something else…

I must admit, I love the vigor. When you’re passionate about what you do, it always shows. However, regardless of whether you personally are “politically correct” or not, you want to be sensitive to the fact that your affiliates are mixed crowd, and some will find such writing style “offensive.” I would as well.

Additionally, I have a real problem with the advice he’s giving in that thing #4 that an “affiliate can do to get more traffic”. I mean — REALLY?! You want to entrust your brand to affiliates who “do not” need or “have to follow the rules”? You want “link farms” and “phony reviews” [read this]? Wow… I’m utterly surprised a president of the company that owns 10 “retail websites” would give such an advice.

If I’m missing something apart from the “shock therapy” type component had it been intended in the above newsletter, I’d love to learn what it is.

Earlier this morning I tweeted something out (and received an quick reaction from an affiliate):

Immediately people started emailing me for the details. So, here is the text that I was referring to (names removed; we’re trying to learn from the mistakes of others, and not point fingers):

Dear Affiliates

for many months [Name of merchant here] has not allowed any coupon or incentive web sites yet we are still getting affiliate transacations from coupon web site violaters. Please will all coupon affiliates remove themseves from our program?

[Name of business owner here]

I guess, I miscalculated the mistakes. Taking into account the fact that the first sentence doesn’t start with a capital “F” — am I the only one who appreciates the irony of starting this announcement/notification with such a letter? — as well as the unnecessary capitalization of “affiliates” in the address, and the lack of comma after it, that makes a total of 6 spelling and grammatical mistakes. But the number is irrelevant. Misspellings and punctuation errors that we see above are nothing compared to the bigger error committed by this merchant — incorrect overall approach to affiliates. Yes, an “error”, not a “mistake”. Orlando Aloysius Battista was known for saying that “An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.” Unfortunately, this is not the first instance this particular merchant sends out such strange-looking emails.

At least 3 major things were done wrong here:

1. Failed on the individualized consideration front — Note the lack of personal address (which is possible using the shortcodes on the affiliate network they’re on), as well as lack of targeting (the email was sent to all affiliates in the program; not just those who own coupon websites).
2. Accused affiliates of violating rules that aren’t even in place — Note how couponers are called “coupon web site violaters” [spelling of last word retained as in the original]. Well, let me tell you: (a) promotion via coupon websites is neither prohibited in the merchant’s program description, nor in their Terms of Service agreement, (b) this affiliate program is operating on an auto-approval of affiliate applications (hence, it’s inevitable that you’ll get coupon-oriented sites joining you), and (c) the merchant has a 20% OFF coupon (with an expiration set at “Never”) among the creatives they offer to their affiliates.
3. Ignored two of the more important P’s: proofreading and preview — …and this really helped magnify the above two points.

Have I missed anything else?

A month ago, wondering whether the “From” field of affiliate program manager emails matters for affiliates I started a poll asking affiliates to help me figure this one out.

The poll closed on Sunday. We’ve had 46 affiliates cast their votes, and here are the results that I see:

Affiliates, what do you want merchants to use in the email’s “From” field?

My main purpose for this poll was to find out whether affiliates really want to see full names of affiliate managers in the “From” field. The above spread of votes, as well as the comments under this post, basically tell us “it depends” (in some cases the name will improve the open rate; in others, it won’t matter much). The more important thing is that the affiliate quickly and easily understands what affiliate program the email is from and about. Also, when it comes to improving the open rate, the “Subject” field is probably significantly more important. Maybe I’ll put a blog post on it some day too.

I have affiliate accounts with a number of affiliate networks through which I both monitor what my competition is doing, and analyze different things. I seldomly check the email account to which these affiliate-geared emails come, but yesterday when I did, I was stunned by how many affiliate program managers do not use their names in correspondence with their affiliates.

Out of 100 randomly selected emails only two (obvious below) used their full names in the “From” field. The rest had either their company name in that “From” field, or something like “[Merchant Name] Affiliate Team” in there:

Also, out of 100 emails that I have analyzed, only 31 were signed by real names (19 of which were OPMs, and 12 in-house affiliate program managers), while the rest (or nearly 70%) were signed either as “Your Dedicated Affiliate Team”, “Affiliate Manager”, or again followed the format of “[Merchant Name] Affiliate Team”.

While I firmly believe that de-personalization of affiliate program management — which starts with “Dear Valued Partner” type of addresses that open emails to affiliates, and ends with “Your Affiliate Team” type signatures at the end of them — negatively affects manager-affiliate relationship, I don’t know what to say about that “From” field. There is an opinion that in traditional email marketing personalization of “From” fields “with a person’s name” is recommended “only if that person is well known and closely associated with the type of message you’re sending”. But since in the affiliate program management context we’re not only trying to communicate something, but also build a relationship, using your real name in that “From” field may be a sensible extension of this effort.

What I do with the programs I manage is (a) use my full name in the “From” field, (b) use the merchant’s name in the “Subject” field, and (c) always use my full name and all ways to contact me in the signature of the email.

Now, I can talk all I want about what I think; however, the only way to find out what affiliates think is to ask affiliates. So, here’s a poll that I’d really appreciate affiliate participation in. As you can see, there’s also an “Other” option. If none of the suggested options work well for you, please choose “Other”, keying in your brief reasoning in the poll, and elaborating on the details in the “Comments” under this post.

Many thanks in advance for helping us (merchants and affiliate program managers) understand what works best for you.

A year ago when blogging about communication with affiliates at Econsultancy.com I summarized that while electronic messaging is by far the most preferred method (by affiliates), “the second avenue you want to be actively utilizing is your own company’s website” because almost 22% of affiliates [AffStat 2010 data] chose it by voting for either company site (13.8%), or affiliate program’s blog (8.1%) as their “preferred method for finding out information from an affiliate manager”.

I do not see much difference between the two options highlighted above, and allow for a possibility that some of the respondents assumed affiliate program support blog to be a part of merchant’s website (as is often the case) when voting for “company website”. So, that’s your first good reason why an affiliate program manager must blog.

Speaking of the second reason, let me illustrate it with a real-life example. Every time we take a new affiliate program management client on board, we recommend starting an affiliate program support website (if they don’t already have one), with blog being an integral part of it. Some merchants agree, others don’t. A health insurance company, that we’ve worked with some time ago, agreed. Pulling some SERP analysis reports earlier this morning, I’ve also checked on their affiliate program support blog, and guess what? While there definitely is room for improvement, they are doing pretty well (on a very competitive search term) for a website that has under 20 pages, and last blog post made a year ago:

So there you have it… Two good reasons to maintain an affiliate program support blog:

1. Affiliates prefer that you do
2. There is huge SEO benefit in it

If you have anything to add, I would, of course, be grateful for your input (which you may submit through the “Comments” area below).

When running an affiliate program on a tight budget you inevitably face a challenging reality: good tools normally cost good money. You, on the other hand, may not necessarily have enough to invest into all of the paid tools you may need. Do not despair! There is a number of great tools out there that are available for your use at no cost. Of course, you do not want to depend only on the free ones (and have a number of robust ones that you do pay for), but it is useful to know which good ones are free.

Here’s my alphabetical list of 10 such tools (all of which I myself use on a daily basis):

1. Facebook — if you haven’t done so already, create a fan page for your affiliate program (and use it as a part of your affiliate communication channel)

2. Forums — use affiliate marketing forums (like ABestWeb and Affiliate Summit’s forum in the US, or affiliates4u in the UK) to participate in the community and gently get the word about your affiliate program out

3. Google — yes, the search engine! you can use it to find potential affiliates (when there’s no contact info on the prospect’s site, use Who.is to pull it up)

4. Google Alerts — use it to monitor what competing affiliate programs are doing, as well as for recruitment of new affiliates

5. Google Website Optimizer — use it for testing and optimization of your affiliate landing pages

6. iTrademarkBidding — monitor affiliate violations of your paid search rules and restrictions

7. Omgili — use it to monitor what’s being said about you affiliate program, your brand(s) and your competitors in forums and other online communities

8. Quantcast — analyze the volume and type traffic your prospective affiliates get (for a better picture always use it together with Compete.com‘s data)

9. Twitter — monitor it to spot prospective affiliates (use both Twitter Search, and tools like TweetDeck for streamlining the monitoring process)

10. WordPress — if you don’t already have it, start an affiliate program support blog on it (I personally prefer the self-hosted solution; hence, the link to the .org site)

Have fun exploring these free tools, and if I haven’t mentioned a great tool that can help affiliate program managers in their day-to-day tasks of affiliate recruitment and monitoring, competitive intelligence and program optimization, please do chime in with your suggestions using the “Comments” field below. ↓

It so happened that over the past few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of online shopping, and while altogether sad/uncomfortable it was interesting to register some of the mistakes online merchants (aka e-tailers) make. As I was watching them commit their mistakes, I couldn’t help but also make parallels with affiliate program management. Today I’d like to bring you the 3 mistakes that I, as a consumer, found most bothersome, and also list the corresponding affiliate management mistakes you want to avoid.

Mistake #1: Failing to Acknowledge Order Receipt — It is not enough for your “thank you” page to confirm the order placement. You also want to email your customer their order confirmation. Simple, isn’t it? Unfortunately, not all merchants do this.

Affiliate Management Parallel: Affiliate application confirmation receipt. Are you confirming those? If so, what exactly does the text of your confirmation say? Do you commit to respond within a certain time period? Ideally you want to do it within the first 24-48 hours after the receipt of the application [more here].

Mistake #2: Canceling an Order Without Notice — This is one of the most irritating ones. When a merchant acts as if that order is only their business, and cancels it without notifying you (either because they ran out of stock, or because your credit card address didn’t match your mailing address, or on any other reason), that spells out one word to the customer: dis·re·spect!

Affiliate Management Parallel: Failing to send out a personalized “affiliate application declined” email. Just as is the case with merchants losing absolutely legit orders when failing to communicate their concerns/circumstances to the consumer (who told them these situations are hopeless?), so it is with merchants declining affiliate applications and failing to notify affiliates of it. Did you know that a missing or an improperly-worded decline email may hinder the development of your affiliate program [more here]?

Mistake #3: Accepting an Order, but Failing to Notify Your Customer That the Item is Out of Stock — I’m sure you’re familiar with such situations. You place your order, the merchant gets their authorization to charge your credit card, but doesn’t ship merchandise, because it is actually not available. They don’t notify you of this, but wait until it’s back in stock, which is when they ship it to you hitting your card weeks (if not months) later. Is it really that hard to keep the customer informed throughout the process?

Affiliate Management Parallel: Accepting affiliates into your program, but failing to motivate them to activate (put up your links), and not equipping them with the tools/links/tips/instructions necessary to start producing for your affiliate program [more here].

As is obvious, all of the above are essentially communication problems. One of my favorite people in business, John Kotter, says that “good communication does not mean that you have to speak in perfectly formed sentences and paragraphs” or “slickness” of speech. “Simple and clear go a long way.” So, if you’re reading this today, realizing that you aren’t simple and clear in one (or more) of the above, it’s time to get that changed!

It isn’t unusual to see affiliate recruitment emails, newsletters or other pieces of merchant-affiliate correspondence come from email addresses dissociated from the actual merchant on whose behalf they are being sent out.

This often happens when the program is being managed by an OPM (outsourced program management) agency, and at times also when the merchant doesn’t really understand the value of having a dedicated, properly-set-up email address for their affiliate program.

I believe this subject to be of extreme importance. Hence, this post.

Here’s my 3-point advice regarding email addresses:

1. Set up a dedicated affiliate program support email address, a generic address to which affiliates can always turn to.

2. Have it follow affiliates@[merchantURL] pattern, also setting up a forwarder from an affiliate@ (singular form) address to your main one. Flee from AffiliateMgr@[merchantURL] or any other non-conventional ways to word your email address.

3. Stay away from free email services when corresponding with your affiliates. Trust me, those don’t add credibility.

In my past experience, I have seen email addresses help improve affiliate engagement and increase response rates, and every time I registered such improvements it was because I was following the above-quoted 3 principles.

Whether you’re reading this as an affiliate program manager, or as an affiliate, your feedback is appreciated (as always). So, if you’ve got something to add to this, do not hesitate to use the “Comments” area under this post for this.