How to motivate affiliate publishers to partner with you

Affiliate programs have become part of many companies’ marketing strategy. Their success not solely relies on the form of product promotion or services but also on building relationships with affiliate publishers. In this article, we will lay down some key rules to help you encourage publishers to participate in your affiliate program.

What exactly is affiliation?

Affiliation is basically a marketing channel which focuses on acquiring new online traffic sources. Its main goal is to increase the conversion rate, i.e. a specific activity that the owner of a given website expects from their users. In most cases, it’s sales. Affiliate publishers play a vital role in the process as they promote their products and services by using various online channels, such as blogs, discount code websites, Facebook groups, or publishing display banners.

Affiliate marketing is based on unique links for each publisher to track traffic and conversions. This allows you to attribute specific results to the right source and hold publishers accountable for the results of their work.

An undeniable advantage of affiliate marketing is that you can collaborate with them based on performance billing models, e.g. CPS (cost per sale) or CPL (cost per lead). After the end of each month, all conversions are validated to ensure that they have been correctly attributed to the appropriate source and that the ordered products have not, for example, been returned to the store. This way, we settle accounts with publishers based only on their performance. Affiliate partners do their best to promote your brand because the better results they achieve, the higher their profit will be. On the other hand, the advertiser can make sure that the campaign costs are proportional to the results obtained.

Regardless of whether you are already running an affiliate campaign or just considering one for your marketing mix, below you will find 6 pro tips that will help you effectively build your network of publishers and grow their engagement in promoting your business.

1. Prepare an appealing offer

Your first step towards a successful affiliate program is designing a reliable and attractive offer. The description of your campaign and key assumptions must be clearly stated so that publishers can quickly decide whether to join the program.

What does your affiliate program description need?

• Campaign goal: sales, valuable traffic generation, leads

• Definition of conversion: conversion tracking model

• Rate: attractive to publishers

• Validation process: how transactions are validated and when the settlement happens

• Cookie lifetime: determine how many days after the first click cookies are going to disappear from the user’s browser.

• Monthly settlements: specify the time for the review of the recorded transaction; plan in some extra time for a possible product return.

• Available tools and materials: all promotional materials which you can prepare for your publishers, e.g. banners or a product feed.

• Prohibited activities: If you are already implementing paid activities in another channel, such as SEM, and you don't want publishers to act in a similar way in your program, make it clear.

2. Build partner relationships

Affiliate publishers oftentimes take some risk when promoting your brand. That is why you should appreciate their work and maintain partner relationships with them as it translates into increased engagement.

How do you build partner relationships?

• Make sure your partners receive a complete and comprehensive set of information at the beginning of collaboration; the first impression gives the publisher an idea of what further cooperation may look like;

• Be there for them to help resolve issues and respond to their concerns. Long or no response time discourages publishers from moving forward.

• Inform your partners about the promotions available in the store well in advance.

3. Be accountable for the product

In order to encourage users to make a purchase, publishers usually promote discounts, available benefits or a specific product from your offer. Having said that, the final decision to make a purchase is made not only based on the appeal of the offer, but also on what the purchasing process looks like in your online store. Page load time, lack of the most common payment options or high delivery costs can effectively discourage the user from finalizing their order. It is important to provide a positive customer experience at every stage of the shopping journey. The shipping time, access to the answers to frequently asked questions or an easy customer complaint handling process also have a major impact on your reputation. In the case of smaller brands, maintaining a good level of positive reviews is a key factor driving your growth as it often attracts new customers to the store. 

A negative image can discourage both website visitors as well as publishers from further cooperation. Make cooperation with publishers an inherent part of your business. By developing and taking care of your e-commerce, you create a gateway to collaboration with increasingly larger Internet portals, which are most often interested in publishing offers from well-known brands.

4. Keep your rates attractive and your settlements timely

By offering your publishers the rates that reflect the current market conditions and maintaining them at a consistent level is key to strengthening your position in the market. It is equally important to settle transactions on time to keep publishers motivated as they invest their time and resources to promote your offer with no knowledge of the size of the payout they will get at the end of the month. Stick to the review time specified in the program terms. In case of declined transactions, make sure you comment on the reason why a given commission is lower.

Settlement of transactions on time is key, especially when working with cashback and loyalty publishers, as these publishers pay commission to the users who have used their links. Delays in approving transactions can lead to customer dissatisfaction, which negatively affects the brand image. It is well worth establishing with them a clear complaint process, i.e. how to complain, how often, and after how many days following the placement of the order, etc. This will surely do everyone a favor, especially during hot sale periods, when there may be significantly more complaints than usual.

5. Respond and communicate

Fostering good relationships with publishers requires active communication. Quick validation of partners in the panel and efficient flow of information are key elements to success. If the program partner validation takes too long, publishers may get frustrated and their engagement level may drop. Active communication is not only about ongoing response to current issues. It is also about timely provision of information about the offers that are worth publishing. 

What should you communicate?

• Information on promotional campaigns with clear terms.

• Bestseller products with brief descriptions of their advantages. 

• Permanent offers, such as free shipping from some price level, or discounts for newsletter subscriptions.

• Sales, especially so-called ”clearance sales” with really attractive prices.

Start your collaboration by asking your publishers what banner formats they need and make sure this info goes into the required banner list you prepare for each creative line.

6. Acknowledge good results

The affiliate publisher network is diverse. Both private persons with their social media profiles and large top price comparison sites or promotion aggregators can join your affiliate program. It is a good idea to analyze each and every publisher separately and adjust your offer to the scope of collaboration they are able to handle. You can support them by offering  additional tools. Here are the most effective ones:

1. Prepare dedicated discount codes for particular publishers. It’s a tool that will improve your brand visibility, and it can be utilized by various publishers, e.g.:

• Discount publishers: they can embed your code in strategic places, such as home page or tabs with other promotions to increase the visibility of your offer.

• Content publishers: portals with articles or social media creators that can give their users added value by promoting your code.

1. Offer a temporary increase in commission in exchange for non-standard publisher actions that can reach a wider audience.

2. Introduce higher billing rates for new user conversions. Convincing people who are not yet familiar with your brand to make a purchase is more difficult than in the case of returning customers, so it is worth rewarding them additionally.

3. Organize a competition for your publishers to further grow their motivation. Set ambitious but achievable goals, and reward the best with attractive bonuses. Such initiatives will attract attention to your program and encourage publishers to go the extra mile. 

All in all, a seamless affiliate program is not only about attractive terms of cooperation, but also being able to build relationships with publishers and paying attention to every detail of the process. Affiliate marketing is a team game in which the success of the program depends primarily on the commitment of the advertiser. Smart planning and effective communication with partners will save you time and resources that you can spend on other purposes. Bear in mind all of the above tips regardless of whether you work with affiliates directly or through an agency. 

If you want to optimize your affiliate program or are planning to run it, contact us. We offer professional consultations and audits that will help you boost the performance of your affiliate efforts and achieve even better results. We will help you build lasting and fruitful relationships with publishers and translate into the success of your business.