Communication is one of the main pillars supporting any successful affiliate program. But you’ve probably found yourself in the situation where you sense that your communication with your partners is not as smooth as it should be. Your communication efforts may be able to increase the percentage of active affiliates in your program.
Here are 5 tips for getting the most out of your relationships with your software affiliate partners:
- Offer unbeatable promotions. New affiliates will often get started by promoting the campaigns you recommend when recruiting. If new affiliates achieve good results early on, it will be easier for you to communicate with them and build their trust. Remember that commission, product or service relevancy and brand awareness are the top 3 drivers for affiliates, so you need to present them relevant information and offers that really work.
- Follow up on your emails. If you don’t get an answer in two to three days, follow up with your affiliate. And don’t just follow up once – reconnect as many as three or four times. Often, affiliates are simply busy and can forget to answer you, even though you may be offering an amazing deal. We have experienced many cases in which affiliates actually thanked us for following up with them because they would have missed our special offers if we hadn’t. Still, remember that there is a limit, and don’t bombard your software affiliates with dozens of repeat emails. Offer something a little different every time.
- Keep the conversation alive. Send at least one monthly newsletter to the affiliates in your program. Ping them regularly to keep them interested in promoting your products and services. Once a month, schedule a short (30-minute) call with each of your top affiliates. You can use this conversation to find out what issues they have in promoting your products and gather other interesting feedback about your offers, products, and services. You can also do this check-in via email, if the affiliate doesn’t like to be called.
- Connect at industry events. Events offer great opportunities to network with existing affiliates and attract new partners. You should schedule your affiliate meetings before going to the conference to be sure that you’ll have time to connect. Consider putting on a special event for your top-performing affiliates, as this will surely help strengthen your relationships and generate more partners that you might expect. To get ready, review some more tips about taking part in events and making events a success.
- Teach your affiliates – and be ready to learn. Run periodic webinars with your affiliates to teach them about upcoming campaigns and how they can prepare for them. Send affiliates your promotions calendar as soon as it’s available, so they can schedule appropriate outreach on their websites and in their newsletters. Interact with affiliates by sharing your unique selling points that they can leverage with customers for the best conversion rate. And always be ready to listen to your affiliates and learn what’s going on in the market.
The bottom line is: you need to communicate with your affiliates and earn their trust. Trust plus performance create a win-win situation.
What is your biggest challenge in trying to communicate with your affiliates? Do you have success stories to share?
