A lot of skill is required to launch and grow a successful affiliate program. For one of the biggest emerging industries of this century, you would expect that to be the case, but the truth is many don't fully understand how partnerships and marketing go hand in hand together.
This week highlights some common industry bugbears and how to overcome them with and for your partnerships to flourish.
Affiliates keep ignoring your emails
Unfortunately, this mostly comes down to the fact that most affiliates are utterly sick and tired of being sold AT and approached with cold call emails. They've trained their index fingers to simply hit delete with all the transactional sales emails they have received.
The chances of you getting your sales pitch acknowledged or answered these days are slim. The best way to avoid your affiliate partners ignoring your emails is to cultivate a personal relationship with them—just as you would with your customers.
You need to nurture your relationships with your affiliates and referral partners to maintain a healthy partnership that works both ways. Keep your partners updated on any changes that might affect them, feature success stories of affiliates in your marketing, and offer perks that matter.
But most of all, you want to make sure your affiliate is heard and treated like a human, not a number - just as you strive to do with your casino customers by giving them better experiences with your team, program and brands daily.
Partnerships are built on trust; yours want to feel like they can come to you with a problem and not lose a brand deal. Ensure them that you are open to compromise and will do what you can to help them. Offer guidance where you can and ask if they want any pointers.
If you're past that point and you're finding that you're not getting a response to emails, don't panic yet. No response doesn't mean you're being ignored. They could be taking on what you're saying and implementing it, so if that change to their shoutout script is being implemented, they're not ignoring you; they're just not responding.
If you have questions or a problem and they're not answering you, you might have to catch their attention, even with the idea of renegotiating your deal, since you can't get their say on any issues.
It's hard to headhunt new partners
So, you've got a brand to publicize; now, you need to onboard new affiliates. Where do you find them? There are plenty out there, so the question isn't a matter of "how do you find them - but more of how do you find the right ones?"
Take another look at your brand's demographic. You can decide where you aim your radar for recruitment from there. There are a lot of affiliate blogs out there, for example, but they typically fall into genres of reading material, like "lifestyle", "parenting", "business", etc. From there, you can contact affiliate blog owners and creators to collaborate.
The same rules apply to socials as well. If you are on Reddit, Facebook, or TikTok, you can infiltrate a niche forum/group/community and market your brand to a cultivated group of users. Contact some of the names in the group with the most extensive following, and you've got a micro-influencer affiliate partner. They have a smaller following but a more dedicated follower base because they're considered more relatable.
There is also the Instagram Affiliate Marketplace feature, where you can quickly sift through the platform's influencers putting themselves forward for collaborations. Filter through numbers of followers, likes or engagement, or genre of content to find the right partner.
Affiliates are no longer SEO or PPC partners, so look outside the box and headhunt from various niches if you want to grow your program faster.
Affiliates keep turning down your offers
There are two likely scenarios for why your affiliates refuse your brand deal: either it's not worth it for them, or it's not worth it for their audience.
The best affiliates will look at what you're trying to offer, consider factors like your brand awareness, quality/price ratio, unique selling propositions, and more, and determine that this is worth their money. If you're getting feedback that affiliates don't want to promote your brand or product, ask them why.
Many influencers pride themselves on not promoting something they don't believe in, so they will have a reason. If nothing else, it's product feedback that you can forward, and if it's something small, you can sweeten the deal with an offer to put forward to their audience.
On the other hand, they could be turning down the brand deal because it isn't worth it to them. Monetization is squeezing influencers for all they're worth, and they will be looking at your competitors to see if they have a better deal to offer. Make sure you stand out when it comes to commissions, cookie life, conversion, average order value, locking period and samples to review.
Conclusion
Ultimately, affiliate program management is more about the management aspect than the affiliate part. Sure, you need some know-how on making a successful affiliate marketing campaign and the latest SEO and social media trends. Still, you also need to know how to manage multiple people who are used to being their own boss.
People skills are, therefore, a must.
