Personnel Requirements
The most important investment you can make in your affiliate program is that of staffing an adequate affiliate team. Most programs build their program, then add the responsibility of Affiliate Manager to an existing employee along with that employee’s existing duties at the company. This is a mistake. You’ll need a full-time team to manage your affiliate program.
Do
| DO join the United States Affiliate Manager Coalition at www.usamc.org where you can pick the brains of fellow affiliate managers, learn what ideas have worked, and what is a huge time waster. Network, ask questions, pick up tips, and improve the caliber of your affiliate program. |
You need to make sure you have the right number of staff members. According to the “Merchant Report 2001” from Affiliate Metrix, 45% of merchants have two full-time employees or more managing their respective affiliate programs.
Finding the Right Team Members
The team would have the responsibility of targeting, identifying, and recruiting potential affiliate partners and designing win-win programs for them. They should also be responsible for managing existing affiliates by communicating personally with your top performers, communicating via e-mail and telephone frequently with your other affiliates, and creating ongoing promotions for all affiliates and rewarding highly successful ones.
They should also be prepared to offer any technical assistance necessary without having to bother your existing IT staff. Your affiliate staff should be the ones designing the promotional banner links, writing contextual links, creating coupons, gift certificates, tracking stats, promotions, and special offer pages, and fulfilling many other merchandising needs for an active affiliate program. The team is also responsible for developing best practices and education materials for the affiliates.
Finally, whoever they are, your staff members should be easily accessible via e-mail and phone.
When building your team, your affiliate manager is key. Choosing the right kind of manager will set the tone for your entire program. Don’t expect to find someone with years of experience in affiliate management. The industry is too new for that. Also, don’t look for someone from the corporate world or a recent b-school graduate. What’s important here is experience with Internet marketing and some experience with affiliate programs, or the ability to recruit and manage business partners.
Look for someone who is high on people skills and can adapt to change quickly. You’re looking for out-of-the-box thinkers who can see relationships that others don’t see. This is particularly important when choosing affiliate candidates. Knowing the Web well and having good browsing experience are prime skills necessary for targeting, identifying, and recruiting good affiliates.
Do
| DO look for an affiliate manager who has good people skills. He will be dealing closely and on a personal basis with your affiliates. |
Look for people who have experience buying online. They may not have e-commerce experience on the business side, but they should at least know what it means to be a customer on the consumer side.
A person who has joined an affiliate program or two is another good candidate. She would be exposed to the mechanics of affiliate programs and would know from day one what works for affiliate and what does not. In fact, it’s a good idea to have both your affiliate manager, when hired, and her staff actually join some affiliate programs themselves. Have them set up a Web site on one of the free domain servers and experience first-hand those programs that closely match yours. Then, to help educate your other company employees about affiliate marking, have them set up their own sites and join those programs. This way you’ll be establishing more awareness and support for your program.
Above all, you’re looking for a person with vision. One who will set the direction of your program and be its evangelist to the rest of your company. His or her focus should be the customer first—that is, your affiliates—and he should have very good communication skills. The affiliate manager will be responsible for showing your face to your affiliate partners, and what they see and hear from the affiliate manager will drastically affect the success of your program.
Compensation
And what should you pay your affiliate manager? Compensation is all over the map. The United States Affiliate Manager Coalition recently surveyed affiliate marketing professionals regarding their annual incomes, and based on 43 respondents, the survey showed that 7% of affiliate marketers are making less than $40K per year; 44% earn $40K to $59K per year; 30% earn $60K to $79K per year; and 19% earn $80K or more annually.
With a lot of work and some luck, you might be able to find team members who will work for less than the average just to gain the experience. These are students or other young people looking to gain Internet marketing experience as unpaid interns. You can look for these people at Internship Programs.com (www.internshipprograms.com) or call your local universities.
Ultimately, the best affiliate manager for you is not necessarily the one with the Harvard MBA, but rather the person who has his or her own site and knows how to make money with affiliate marketing.
Although it is recommended that you at least have an affiliate manager to oversee your program, it is preferable to have an affiliate team. The affiliate manager will excel if she is able to focus on managing the program, budgeting and coordinating with the finance people, and building support within the company. There should also be an affiliate outreach person on the affiliate team who proactively scours the Internet to recruit targeted sites.
It’s a tremendous help to have a dedicated affiliate tech on the team. This person coordinates back-end implementation and functionality of the program (especially necessary for an in-house program), troubleshoots any breakdown in tracking, and pulls reporting data for the affiliate manager. Last, an affiliate analyst is a key position to focus on some of the items that are often neglected by affiliate managers, such as managing relationships with top affiliates, analyzing the performance and trends of affiliates, and developing promotions and offers for the affiliates.
Outsourcing
Affiliate marketing is growing, and it’s growing fast. According to popular quotes, some sites are making 40% of their revenue from affiliate sales. And if that number is overstated, and a more realistic figure is a 10%–15% increase in revenue, who wouldn’t like to have 15% more sales right now? So time is of the essence. The time to start is now.
Do
| DO participate in the CashCorner discussion board. It’s an interactive message board that connects you with affiliates and merchants so you can learn directly from others already in the field. It’s at www.cashpile.com/CashCorner/conferences/. |
One way to build your management team and your program quickly, or to jump-start a stalled program, is to outsource it to a knowledgeable consultant or organization that specializes in managing affiliate programs. Some of the better-known affiliate program consultants were named in Chapter 4, “Step One—Planning Your Affiliate Program.” Some others are listed here.
ADNet International (www.adnetinternational.com) (see Figure 11.1) launches and develops performance marketing for companies of all sizes, monetizing traffic through tested, proven Internet strategies that generate profits. Its team members include Patrick Anderson and Declan Dunn. ADNet provides automated storefronts, systems, and training to improve conversion and sales by creating immediate, responsive relationships with visitors, building viral marketing lists of consumers and businesses, tracking knowledge of customers’ buying behaviors, and automating businesses to generate residual income with little extra effort.
Figure 11.1. ADNet International launches and develops performance marketing programs for companies of all sizes.
ADNet helps funded companies, such as Internet Wire (www.internetwire.com) and WebPartner (www.webpartner.com), grow their business through strategic action plans, pay-per-performance marketing, and innovative methods of converting Internet traffic to sales. Some of the privately financed properties in development are Active Marketplace (www.activemarketplace.com) and AssociateZone.com (www.associatezone.com).
As mentioned in Chapter 4, two other consultants with an intimate knowledge of affiliate programs are Keith Kochberg and Linda Woods. Keith Kochberg runs a small marketing consulting firm called imarketing ltd. (www.imarketingltd.com), and Linda Woods offers a variety of affiliate marketing services as the Affiliate Goddess (www.affiliategoddess.com).
There are many companies on the Net that can help. One such company is Affiliate People (www.affiliatepeople.com). It can provide you with a turnkey solution for the daily management and marketing of your affiliate program. You are given a dedicated affiliate program manager who spends 40 hours per month marketing and supporting your program. With E-Base Interactive (www.ebaseinc.com), you can outsource your junior-level and senior-level affiliate manager duties. It provides affiliate management, recruitment, and support, and helps you communicate with your affiliates.
EcomWorks (www.ecomworks.com) is similar to E-Base Interactive and Affiliate People, but it also manages your affiliates by applying retail merchandising techniques as well as attracting new customers to your site, building brand identity, and generating sales.
Do
| DO investigate using an affiliate consultant to bring your program up to speed quickly and efficiently. |
Rob Flynn, a former client program manager at Be Free, started FlightPath Marketing (www.flightpathllc.com) (see Figure 11.2). The services available from FlightPath include day-to-day management, affiliate recruitment, compensation analysis, affiliate base analysis, affiliate communications, and performance analysis.
Figure 11.2. FlightPath will provide your program with everything from affiliate recruitment to day-to-day management of your affiliate program.
Mass-Transit Interactive offers clients a wide selection of affiliate marketing services, including the establishment of a client’s network, recruiting and management of both base affiliates and super affiliates, structuring and managing different promotions to affiliates, reporting and analysis, and providing innovative tools to optimize network performance.
Another company that manages affiliate programs is TargetMarket Interactive (www.tmi-la.com). Its staff has knowledge and expertise in managing programs through Be Free, Commission Junction, and LinkShare. TargetMarket Interactive develops affiliate program strategy and implementation, including the defining of program objectives, managing and assisting in the launch of the program, and the development of an in-house affiliate marketing staff for its clients.
Other affiliate management companies include Affiliate Performance (www.affiliateperformance.com), Carat Interactive (www.carat-na.com), i-traffic (www.i-traffic.com), LinkProfits (www.linkprofits.com), SK Consulting (www.skconsulting.com), and Vizium (www.vizium.com). The services of these companies don’t come cheap (see Table 11.1).
| Affiliate People http://www.affiliatepeople.com/ | $2,495 per month |
| Alliance Builder http://www.alliancebuilder.com/ | Begins at $2,000 per month |
| E-Base Interactive http://www.ebaseinc.com/ | $50,000 to $65,000 per year for full-time management, or $50 to $60 per hour for part-time management |
| Greater Than One http://www.greaterthanone.com/ | $5,000 to $15,000 for strategy, creative and Web development, technical integration, testing, and launch; $2,000 to $10,000 per month after launch depending on client needs. |
| Vizium http://www.vizium.com/ | $30,000 to $45,000 for First Stage and then $7,000 to $10,000 per month. |
Not to be left out of the affiliate marketing revolution is the United Kingdom (UK). As affiliate marketing has gained popularity in the UK, companies have emerged to help UK online merchants manage their affiliate programs. Like their U.S. cousins, DVisions Limited (www.dvisions.co.uk) and simplesiteUK (www.simplesiteuk.com) will establish an affiliate network for a merchant, recommend a solution provider, make commission structure recommendations, and perform contract negotiation and implementation. They will also recruit and manage affiliates, create and structure promotions to affiliates, and create banner links.
Ukaffiliates.com (www.ukaffiliates.com) is a full service, UK affiliate marketing solution, and it handles all the administration of running an affiliate program using bespoke tracking software. Its services include the promotion and marketing of client affiliate programs to its network of affiliates, monthly reports with analysis of sales, and the management of commission payments.
Do
| DO consider using an affiliate solution consultant outside the U.S. if you plan to offer your affiliate program internationally. |
One of the premier consultants in the UK, is Neil Durrant (www.affiliatemarketing.co.uk/consulting.htm). He not only runs a very good affiliate directory site in the UK but also consults with merchants on their affiliate program and can work with their management team.
Any way you want to approach it, there is an affiliate management solution to meet any size program. Since new resources become available all the time, be sure to look at the latest affiliate consultants, listed at www.affiliatemanager.net/consultants.htm, and companies available for affiliate program outsourcing at www.affiliatemanager.net/outsource.htm.