Affiliates are your business partners and they don’t expect to have a relationship with a faceless program. So communicating with your affiliates on a regular basis, asking for and sharing their feedback with other affiliates, and developing a community that gives your affiliates a forum to exchange ideas is critical in gaining and maintaining affiliate loyalty—and staying ahead of your competition. Here’s why. Affiliates tell you what works for them in other programs by asking you for the same things. Establishing open communications with your affiliates not only helps them, but can improve your program and make it more competitive as well.
It is essential that the lines of communication are moving two ways. Although you must keep in constant contact with your affiliates, it is also vital that you enable them to be in contact with you. Many affiliate programs post a generic e-mail address for the affiliates to contact, and then respond slowly or not at all. You should be treating each affiliate as an important partner, so give them the e-mail for somebody on the affiliate team and respond within 24 hours. Also, make a phone number available, and if you really want to service your affiliates at a high level, provide ICQ/IM addresses, so affiliates can contact the affiliate team for one-on-one interaction in real-time.
Don’t be afraid to revert to the stone ages and use snail mail once in a while to send post cards, t-shirts, or promotional trinkets to your affiliates.
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DO become a four-tool player in affiliate communications by publicizing your e-mail, phone, ICQ/IM, and snail mail. |
Building a communications channel with your affiliates includes the following communication elements:
Affiliate Newsletters
Targeted E-mail
Tutorials
Discussion Boards or Forums
E-mail Discussion Lists
Webrings
Live Chat Sessions
Other Feedback Mechanisms
It is important to keep in mind that one of the key elements of affiliate loyalty is communications. Affiliate communications is a pro-active endeavor. It’s absolutely up to you to initiate communications and respond to all affiliate inquiries for help and information within 24 hours. Put it this way: if you’re not listening to your affiliates, your competitors will.
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DO understand that it’s your affiliates who build your online affiliate community. To have a successful affiliate community at your site, the community features must reflect the users’ point of view. They will define the subject matter—you respond to it. |
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