By Courtney Miller – Assistant Account Manager
In this industry, it can seem overwhelming and nearly impossible to stay in contact with all of the affiliates you work with. This responsibility is one that seems too often to get shirked, when in reality if done effectively, can make for a sizeable increase in sales.
It goes without saying that it isn’t entirely feasible to reach out individually to each affiliate all the time, but simple, regular communication to “top affiliates” is critical. The more actively you can engage the affiliate, the more successful the relationship is going to be. For example, during launch periods, I send out individual stats to each of the top affiliates every single morning. The first half of my days during launches are dedicated to affiliate communications:
- After I pour my coffee (which seems to always be in really short supply during launches) I sit down at my computer and pull individual sales stats for each affiliate from the previous day.
- Once I have everyone’s statistics in a spreadsheet, I sort it into a “leaderboard”; which gives these affiliates a sense of competition.
- Once my carefully crafted, and often witty form email is drafted, I personalize each one with the individual affiliate’s statistics and ranking in the leaderboard
Not only do these emails let the affiliate know what their activity has been, it also intensifies the competition and motivation. Although this process can be rather time consuming, it is well worth it and that is apparent in the sales. It’s amazing how hard some of these affiliates will push if they know there’s something on the line!
You may be thinking ‘there are too many other places of focus, I don’t have time to engage this much!’ but the good news is that you can hire an affiliate management company to help with some or all of these simple, but time consuming “chores” and drive your affiliate sales higher!