Chapter 12. Communicating with Your Affiliates

Chapter Summary

Ongoing communications with affiliates is vital to the success of your program. You should provide a number of different ways for affiliates to communicate with you, you with them, and with one another. Your affiliate program should include a newsletter sent at least monthly to all your affiliates informing them of changes in your program, new offers and marketing tips, and other motivational and inspirational advice to help them sell your offers better.

In addition to the newsletter communications, it is important to send targeted communications to affiliates. Tutorials are an important communication tool to provide your affiliates with the know-how to succeed in affiliate marketing. You should also include communications and feedback mechanisms on your site that help build a sense of community and a team feeling among your affiliates. Examples of these are affiliate discussion boards and forums, e-mail discussion lists, Webrings, and live chat sessions with your affiliate management team and among affiliates themselves. Finally, surveys and an affiliate advisory board will often provide constructive feedback that will help you improve your program.

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.

Do

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.

Do

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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