Affiliate marketing, done right, can do wonderful things to your bottom line as a retailer. If your affiliates are successfully sending potential customers your way, you’ll soon reap the benefits. However, it’s not always as simple as that. The affiliate and merchant relationship works both ways; as the retailer, you cannot simply sit back and expect your affiliates to do all the hard work.

Mistakes are easy to make when running an affiliate programme, but here are the top faux pas you should be looking to avoid:

1. Don’t be unprepared
Running an affiliate programme and having affiliate websites send potential customers your way is a great start, but these will only convert to sales if your website can cope with the demand. If you want to boost your activity by sending information about a discount code to all your affiliates, you must be prepared for the extra traffic that could end up on your doorstep. Make sure you can cope with the volumes of site visitors and that your website won’t fall over at the first sign of increased activity. If your coding and hosting is all up to scratch, your potential customers will turn into actual paying ones.

2. Don’t give affiliates the silent treatment
Keeping in regular contact with your affiliates is absolutely vital if you want to run a successful programme. Your role, as the merchant, is to make sure you are providing the affiliate websites looking to help promote your products or services with everything they could possibly need to do so. Whether that’s banner ads, specific affiliate links to relevant and seasonal products or updates about commission rates or incentives. A dedicated area on your website, regular newsletters, or a frequently updated Twitter or Facebook account specifically for your affiliates will work wonders, so that they’re always in the loop with the latest offerings from you. Yes, they’ll want to earn commission by helping you drive sales, but they can only do that if they have the right tools, which is up to you to provide. Don’t leave them in the dark.

3. Don’t get commission rates wrong
If your commission rates don’t suit your margins, you’re going to be in trouble. Of course, if you set your commission rates sky high at 50%, affiliates are going to be willing to walk over hot coals to promote your brand. This could result in shed loads of sales, but you have to honour that commission. Also, if your commission rates are too low, no affiliates will think it’s worth the time and effort to try and drive sales for you. Find the middle ground and a commission rate that will sufficiently reward your affiliates without damaging your margins.

4. Don’t get the cookie period wrong
The longer the cookie period you set, the better. Why? Well, affiliates will be looking for merchants that offer long cookie periods, so that the point at which a potential customer leaves their website for yours and actually makes a purchase can be as long as possible. Consumers often take a while to decide if they’re going to part with their hard earned cash, so longer cookie periods will be more beneficial for your affiliates and, in turn, your business. If you don’t offer these long cookie periods, affiliates will just find other retailers that do and could choose to promote them above you.

5. Don’t let content get old
At certain times of year, you’ll need to make sure you are providing affiliates with content that’s relevant to the time. So, near Valentine’s Day, you could offer links to products that could be nice gifts or banner ads with a romantic theme. Keep your product feeds up to date, so that you aren’t still pushing items that you no longer sell or that are sold out. If everything is kept current, you’ll be in the good books of affiliates. Make sure you have some content that’s relevant at all times of year too, so that affiliates have a good selection.

So, there you have it; the five main ‘don’ts’ when it comes to running an affiliate programme as a retailer. Mistakes are easy to make, but limiting how often they occur is key.

 

By Graeme Sandwell, Managing Director of www.paidonresults.com.

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