Ahhh - It Make the Affiliate Manager Feel Good & Productive (Part 2)
I got a response from the affiliate program that decided to suspend my account for inactivity. Before I get into that, I wanted it to be known that the only email I ever got prior to the suspension was my confirmation that I was signed up as an affiliate. They had no autoresponder to help get started with the affiliate program and never sent any updates or anything. In short, they did virtually nothing to help me (or any other affiliate) get motivated and get started.
Anyway, here's what the guy wrote:
Hi Alice,
First, I have reactivated your account.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful response. You make many valid points and I want to address a few of those.
You asked how suspending affiliates streamlines anything. Here's one example. We measure our marketing investments, of which the affiliate program is just one of many. It is an investment--we have invested in the software, pay for the clicks and impressions generated by affiliates, and pay commissions. If we simply include 100 affiliates who are non-performing, or in many cases, affiliates who simply signed up and never followed through on creating their website (and thus will never contribute to the program), the measurements we track and report will not be accurately represented. That makes it difficult to determine the true value of our marketing investment, and xxxxxxx's owners prefer to make decisions based on the most accurate information available. So, when we eliminate the need to use manual processes to reduce bias or skews to our measurement data because of underperforming/inactive/never active affiliates, it increases our efficiency. Streamling is also important to xxxxxx because we do not have a full-time person who manages the affiliate program.
I agree that many affiliates may sign up for a program today but will not start promoting the product/company immediately. Many of the affiliates who signed up to be a xxxxxxx affiliate did so as far back as April, 2005. A year later these affiliates still have not completed their website or have not put a xxxxxxx text or banner ads on their site, and have no intention to do so anytime soon. Several affiliates who signed up more recently, including you, were included in our review.
I agree that banner ads do not provide the best sales conversions. We strongly emphasize that our affiliates use text links as they produce a much higher click through rate and conversion rate. You have a clearly defined method of the best way to convert sales as an affiliate. Sadly, many affiliates do not participate with such a strategy in mind.
Congratulations on your successful endeavor as an affiliate with other programs. The latest information I reviewed regarding affiliate programs was that a large percentage (90%+) of affiliates never make money at it (generate commissionable sales). Historical data for xxxxxxx affiliate program can validate such information. xxxxxxx certainly wants to provide the best to its affiliates who "actively" use customized web pages, text links, banner ads, or other means to generate awareness, interest and sales of our product.
Thanks.
XXXXX
I still don't get it. Yes, I understand data would be "skewed" if they counted activity of non-active affiliates in their calculations of their active affiliate effectiveness. But from all the affiliate programs software systems I've used from the backend (not a huge number, but there's been a few), you can always separate the stats of your performers from your non-performers, but it seems that clicking a few buttons might be too much for some affiliate program managers. Instead, it's more effective to alienate people from promoting their products. :-( This particular program uses MyAffiliateProgram.com, so if you know anything about that software, do enlighten me.
Outside of that, does it make sense to dispose of your potential business partners, just to have your stats look at little better to nobody but yourself? Also, as an affiliate manager myself, it is my constant goal to move more of my affiliates into action. The statistic of how many of your affiliates are active vs. how many are inactive is very telling of the quality of a program. Simply removing people who are inactive doesn't make your program more effective - it means you're messing with the stats to make it look better...and that's not going to mean anything to anyone, but yourself.
This gentleman told me they don't have a full-time staff person to work on the affiliate program, yet he probably took several hours to manually search affiliate sites so he could suspend anyone without the company's link on them. Seems those hours could have been spent on more positive affiliate program building activities.
Yes, inactive affiliates don't help me for my own affiliate programs, but they don't hinder me either. I know most affiliates produce nothing, but that's because they're aren't really sure how to be productive. As a business owner looking for sales people who work for FREE unless they make a sales, I need to do whatever I can to:
- Make them excited about promoting my product
- Provide them with quality materials
- Encourage their loyalty in anyway I can.
Punishing them with suspensions just seems to work against this goal.
Anyway, here's what the guy wrote:
Hi Alice,
First, I have reactivated your account.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful response. You make many valid points and I want to address a few of those.
You asked how suspending affiliates streamlines anything. Here's one example. We measure our marketing investments, of which the affiliate program is just one of many. It is an investment--we have invested in the software, pay for the clicks and impressions generated by affiliates, and pay commissions. If we simply include 100 affiliates who are non-performing, or in many cases, affiliates who simply signed up and never followed through on creating their website (and thus will never contribute to the program), the measurements we track and report will not be accurately represented. That makes it difficult to determine the true value of our marketing investment, and xxxxxxx's owners prefer to make decisions based on the most accurate information available. So, when we eliminate the need to use manual processes to reduce bias or skews to our measurement data because of underperforming/inactive/never active affiliates, it increases our efficiency. Streamling is also important to xxxxxx because we do not have a full-time person who manages the affiliate program.
I agree that many affiliates may sign up for a program today but will not start promoting the product/company immediately. Many of the affiliates who signed up to be a xxxxxxx affiliate did so as far back as April, 2005. A year later these affiliates still have not completed their website or have not put a xxxxxxx text or banner ads on their site, and have no intention to do so anytime soon. Several affiliates who signed up more recently, including you, were included in our review.
I agree that banner ads do not provide the best sales conversions. We strongly emphasize that our affiliates use text links as they produce a much higher click through rate and conversion rate. You have a clearly defined method of the best way to convert sales as an affiliate. Sadly, many affiliates do not participate with such a strategy in mind.
Congratulations on your successful endeavor as an affiliate with other programs. The latest information I reviewed regarding affiliate programs was that a large percentage (90%+) of affiliates never make money at it (generate commissionable sales). Historical data for xxxxxxx affiliate program can validate such information. xxxxxxx certainly wants to provide the best to its affiliates who "actively" use customized web pages, text links, banner ads, or other means to generate awareness, interest and sales of our product.
Thanks.
XXXXX
I still don't get it. Yes, I understand data would be "skewed" if they counted activity of non-active affiliates in their calculations of their active affiliate effectiveness. But from all the affiliate programs software systems I've used from the backend (not a huge number, but there's been a few), you can always separate the stats of your performers from your non-performers, but it seems that clicking a few buttons might be too much for some affiliate program managers. Instead, it's more effective to alienate people from promoting their products. :-( This particular program uses MyAffiliateProgram.com, so if you know anything about that software, do enlighten me.
Outside of that, does it make sense to dispose of your potential business partners, just to have your stats look at little better to nobody but yourself? Also, as an affiliate manager myself, it is my constant goal to move more of my affiliates into action. The statistic of how many of your affiliates are active vs. how many are inactive is very telling of the quality of a program. Simply removing people who are inactive doesn't make your program more effective - it means you're messing with the stats to make it look better...and that's not going to mean anything to anyone, but yourself.
This gentleman told me they don't have a full-time staff person to work on the affiliate program, yet he probably took several hours to manually search affiliate sites so he could suspend anyone without the company's link on them. Seems those hours could have been spent on more positive affiliate program building activities.
Yes, inactive affiliates don't help me for my own affiliate programs, but they don't hinder me either. I know most affiliates produce nothing, but that's because they're aren't really sure how to be productive. As a business owner looking for sales people who work for FREE unless they make a sales, I need to do whatever I can to:
- Make them excited about promoting my product
- Provide them with quality materials
- Encourage their loyalty in anyway I can.
Punishing them with suspensions just seems to work against this goal.
7 Comments:
Not only that, it's just plain annoying to have to remove links or repy with "proof" you had links up. :(
Actually, it only "skews" their data if they don't generate the proper reports. In any report, they should do an overall and then do another that doesn't include inactive affiliates.
Doing both reports would give them even more feedback to use.
Example: With the inactive affiliates they would know it's X% and could then determine if they should find ways to get the inactive affiliates working.
Whomever that company is, they need a new affiliate manager.
Personally, I wont join a program that requires links on my site.
I'm also with you on this, Alice.
I just had a coaching client's CJ affiliate manager refuse to approve my client's affiliate website, because he had totally optimized it to promote the firm's product -- rather than merely run an ineffective copycat banner on a (potentially unrelated) site.
THEY said his site was "competing" with the product he was promoting...
HOW could that be: all that was there was endorsements, product promoting sales copy...AND his text link to their program.
IMHO, my client is being punished for creating a website totally oriented toward promoting a product the thoroughly believes in...
I think it's clear some sort of marketing training program for affiliate managers is a product whose time has come. Are you up to it?
Even if they had some compelling reason to 'fix' their stats, there are so many better ways to approach the affiliates that not only would take LESS time on their side, but be LESS negative.
For instance, check the stats for any affiliate with any activity. Remove them from the mailing list, then WITHOUT wasting time "looking" for banners and such (who really believes they did this?), just send a letter saying you are in the process of updating your affiliate system and want to make sure that those with active plans on promoting their products are included in the 'new' system. Nicely request a reply from those interested in continuing in the program.
This seems obviously nicer than just dropping someone and might actually spur someone into action by reminding them that you and your product exist!
Of course, this company just doesn't seem to Get It- acting like some exclusive club that is doing you a favor by allowing you in.
Silliness.
The latest information I reviewed regarding affiliate programs was that a large percentage (90%+) of affiliates never make money at it (generate commissionable sales). Historical data for xxxxxxx affiliate program can validate such information.
This quote from the company makes sense - no wonder their company HISTORICALLY has affiliates who are not making money - because of the way they treat them, and the lack of training or communication they provide.
Diana
To be fair, I think before we fully understand how he runs the report, it is difficult to totally blame the manager. The way how to filter the result is pre-programmed by the affiliate application provider. The affiliate manager is just a normal user. We need to find out whether 1. he doesn't know how to run the report, or 2. he is not able to have such selection before drawing the conclusion.
It is similar to Adsense. The report filter is set by Google. You can only select what they provide. I believe you may want to run some reports with filters that are not available. But then what can you do?
Also, talking about inactive or underperform account is easy. But what is the definition of "inactive" account or underperform account? No link? Or has link but no traffic for specified months? Or has link but no sales conversion within specified months? Each company, or each industry may have different criterias to define different kinds of performance. Then who is going to program such filters for different users?
I believe you and the affiliate manager use different point of views to see the matter. The way you see is once you see underperform links, then you try to make them to promote. So the stats doesn't bother you so much. But for him, may be different, he MAY want to see the perfomance for those who is actively promoting currently.
It's quite amazing how often I talk to Merchants who are quite insistent on sabotaging their own program with idiotic decisions like this.
I am not surprised by Alice's experience at all... unfortunately.
Luckliy, there are a lot of good affiliate managers out there too. :)
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