5 Foundational Pillars of
Affiliate Program Success
Geno Prussakov
CEO, AM Navigator (affiliate management agency)
www.amnavigator.com
Founder, Affiliate Management Days (conference)
www.amdays.com
888-588-8866 | Washington, DC
geno@amnavigator.com | @ePrussakov
.

The 5 Pillars

- 1 -
Affiliate Recruitment

2 Kinds of Affiliate Recruitment
Active Passive
You reach out to them They find you

Active Recruitment
Source: 2013 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report
Active:
Direct contact: 42.4%
Conferences: 8.9%

Source: AffiliateBenchmarks 2013 Global Affiliate Questionnaire
Active:
Network emails: 36.3%
Blogs: 29.6%
Aff. manager emails: 13.9%
Active Recruitment

Active Recruitment
5 Key Principles
o Automation
o Personalization
o Persistence
o Leaving Options Open
o Education

1. Automation
au·to·ma·tion
noun ˌȯ-tə-ˈmā-shən
the technique of making an apparatus, a
process, or a system operate automatically
Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Employ Tools to Perform Routine Tasks
E.g.: don’t just “google” it, but have Google
Alerts deliver prospective affiliate’s info to
your inbox!

Free & Inexpensive Tools
1. SEO Quake (free)
2. Backlink Watch (free)
3. Open Site Explorer (free)
4. Citation Labs (~$20 per 500-1000)
5. BuzzStream ($29/mo - $249/mo)
6. Raven Backlink Explorer ($99-$249/mo)
7. iBusinessPromoter ($250-$500)
Paid Tools
1. AffiliateRecruitment.com
2. Linkdex
3. Syntryx

Linkdex (sector/niche-specific)

Linkdex (advertiser level query)
Interrogating affiliate program-specific tracking domain(s),
yielding lists of affiliate sites linking in

Personalized subject lines are 22.2% more likely to be opened.
Adestra July 2012 Report
Personalized emails had a 5.13% higher average open rate than
the regular emails. …they also had 17.36% higher
clickthrough rate.
2012 AWeber Case Study
A study by email marketing provider YesMail found that
personalization increased their clients' response rates from
4.7% to 14.8%.
"The Quiet Revolution in Email Marketing" by Bill Nussey
2. Personalization

3. Persistence

Effectiveness of Following up:
 Initial email: max. 4% sign up
 Follow-ups: ≈12% more join
Frequency:
1. A week from original email
2. 1 more week down the road
3. 2-3 months
4. Half a year
5. A year
3. Persistence

4. Leaving Options Open
Besides Primary Call to Action (“join our
affiliate program”)…
Embed also a Secondary CTA into your
affiliate recruitment emails!

5. Educating Them
Source: Technorati Media 2013 Digital Influence Report

Source: 2013 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report
Passive:
Merchant site: 51.3%
Search engines: 38.6%
Directories: 38%
Word of mouth: 20.3%
Support efforts: 14.6%
Passive Recruitment

Source: AffiliateBenchmarks 2013 Global Affiliate Questionnaire
Passive:
Support pages: 47%
Network sites: 44.7%
Search engines: 33.1%
Forums & directories: 17.6%
Word of mouth: 17.5%
Passive Recruitment

Passive Recruitment
Ways to Get Found by Affiliates:
o Program description (with visible link)
o Program FAQ and/or support site/blog
o Affiliate directories
o Social media
o Second-tier affiliates
o “Subscribe to affiliate news” link
o Press releases

- 2 -
Affiliate Activation

Affiliate Activation
What % of your current affiliates are active?
…between 5% and 10%

Pattern to Follow:
1. Remind them of your program details
2. Include an activation promo
3. Enclose performance-based incentive
4. Pre-coded affiliate links (incl. coupons, feed, etc)
5. Detailed contact information
Start With Approval Email!

“What’s the maximum acceptable affiliate program
application response time?”
Source: 2010 AffStat Report

Motivate Continuously!

Congratulations!
You have been chosen as a CSN Stores Affiliate Program Rising
Star.
All the members of this group have been able to bring in a
significant amount of traffic to our sites over the last few month. We
want to help you make sure those visits lead to sales and
commissions! For the next month, April 1st - May 1st, the CSN Stores
Affiliate program will be offering an exclusive promotion to the
members of this Rising Stars group.
If in the month of April you can convert just 10 sales you will receive
an additional $150 bonus on top of your commissions.
Example of Motivating Newsletter

To motivate others effectively, managers must have “a clear, unbiased
understanding of the situation at hand, deep insights into the
vagaries of human nature, the establishment of appropriate and
reasonable expectations and goals, and the constructions of a
balanced set of… incentives.”
Bronwyn Fryer, "Moving Mountains“ (Harvard Business Review on Motivating People, 2003)
 Start with the truth
 Appeal to greatness
 Make them proud
 Stick to your values
 Provide constant & consistent communication channel
 Build trust
 Care for the little guy
 Set different incentive levels
How to Motivate

- 3 -
Compliance Policing

Remember…
Do not call it a “violation” unless you’ve
defined it as such in your TOS!

What to Police
o Trademark use
o FTC disclosures
o Coupon usage
o Brand placement(s)

Trademarks
 TMs (and domains) as PPC keywords,
 TMs in domain names;
 … “misspellings and variations” wording

How to Police:
In Paid Search Campaigns:
• iTrademarkBidding – www.itrademarkbidding.com
• Brandverity PoachMark – brandverity.com/poachmark
• SearchMonitor – thesearchmonitor.com/affiliate_monitor
• AdGooroo Trademark Insight – www.adgooroo.com
In Domain Names:
• CitizenHawk – www.citizenhawk.com
• Typo Assassin – www.typoassassin.com
.

BrandVerity PoachMark

FTC Compliance

FTC's Rules on Endorsements
In essence…
• merchant-affiliate = sponsor-endorser relationships
• relationship must be clearly disclosed by marketer
• advertiser responsible for educating, equipping, and
policing compliance

What to Do:
1. Sub-clause of Affiliate Obligations clause in TOS
2. Provide affiliates with disclosure template(s)
3. Routinely analyze sites of top performers
4. Look into content monitoring solutions by
BrandVerity and TheSearchMonitor to automate
policing

Coupon Usage
 Coupon harvesting or usage of protected
coupon codes
 Pseudo-couponing
 Click-to-reveal “technology”

BrandVerity for Policing (on LS)
Protected coupon codes posted on affiliate sites

Brand Placements
Brand = your most valuable asset.
Safeguard it!!

Linkdex for Policing (on SaS)
Filter on specific affiliate ID reveals 155 websites with their links

Linkdex for Policing (on CJ)
Filter on one of tracking domains for a single affiliate ID - 34 sites

- 4 -
Communication

Global Problem

Global Problem

Communication Channel
Build a two-way communication channel
(via all available means, including
social media)

Source: 2014 AffStat Report

Communication Frequency
Source: 2010 AffStat Report

- 5 -
Optimization

How to Optimize
o Replicate your
own successes
o Employ
best practices
o Spy on your
competition

Monitoring Competition
Competitive intelligence – “the process
by which companies inform themselves
about every aspect of their rivals’
activities and performance”
(Christopher West, Competitive Intelligence, p. 12)

What to Monitor:
 Technologies used
 Product/service features
 Price levels
 Customer-oriented promos, discounts, rebates
 Perceptions they create for their brand
 Means of creating perceptions online
 Affiliate program specifics (cookie life, locking
period, creatives, marketing collateral, etc)
 Types of affiliates used (and avoided!)
 Affiliate-oriented incentives (bonuses, contests,
tiered commissions, private commissions, etc)
 Affiliate program policies

Focus: Practical Application
“The real purpose of competitive intelligence
is to learn and to act” …not merely
collect data or “develop information”.
(Seena Sharp, Competitive Intelligence Advantage, p 101)

How to Spy on Your Competition:
1. Analyze their performance stats
2. Become their customer & affiliate
3. Create automatic monitoring
campaigns
4. Do friend and follow them
5. Employ traffic measuring tools

Beware of Misleading Metrics!

Example:

To Recap:

In Conclusion…

Give "old" stuff tools new life!