How NOT to run an affiliate programme
Warning rant ahead.
So, you’ve launched an affiliate programme, here’s a couple of golden rules on what NOT to do.
1. Don’t bother approving affiliates
I applied to the Nike Store affiliate programme on TradeDoubler just after Christmas and today about 3 weeks later I’m still waiting to be approved. Now I know that a lot of people in full time employment have time off over Christmas and New Year. But wouldn’t you expect to be approved when everybody’s back to work in January? Its now January 17th for goodness sake and I’m still pending!
Honestly, I just don’t understand the mentality of some people. TradeDoubler is not a cheap affiliate network to join. So I would presume that any merchant who joins has to take affiliate marketing seriously enough to pay their network fees etc. But do you know what? With no bloomin’ affiliates, all the budget in the world won’t make your programme a success. BTW I’m not blaming TradeDoubler for this, its the merchants responsibility to approve affiliates, not the network.
In my opinion a week is the absolute maximum that an affiliate should have to wait for approval. I can’t see any reason whatsoever why you can’t put measures in place to ensure that no affiliates wait longer than a week.
UPDATE: Well, after weeks of waiting; within 2 hours of this blog post I’m happy to see that my application for UKOffer.com to join the Nike affiliate program has finally been reviewed! The result? Application denied 
I only got the standard templated email from TD so I don’t know why I was denied. I suppose its possible that UKOffer isn’t seemed “suitable” for Nike or maybe the affiliate manager reads this blog…?
2. Spam potential affiliates to death
First of all let me define spam. Spam is not a personalised email to a potential affiliate who has a website that you think your affiliate programme will work well on. Thats just making a business introduction and happens all the time.
Case in point, a few weeks ago I received an email from Nutspoker. It was generic, not personalised, it just contained some information and updates about the affiliate programme. Fine I thought, just an example of bad communication, no problem - I get loads of bad pitch emails every day. But then I started getting these so called “updates” from them every week or so, bear in mind that I’m not even one of their affiliates. Then today they send me through another email, this time with 4MB worth of attachments. Part of the email said this:
“and if this email was sent to you by mistake,Please accept my sincere apologies for that”
Well Mr. Keith Williamson from Affiliate Recruitment, the email was only sent in mistake as you or somebody in your organisation decided to add me to your list of people to spam!
Seriously, do merchants actually think that they will recruit affiliates by consistently spamming them? Do they have no sense? All it makes me do is never want to work with them in my life.
So there you go, you would think that those two points are basic common sense wouldn’t you? Apparently not though.
What I’m listening to right now: Jaheim - “The Voice Of R&B”
Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 11:51 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
January 17th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Having worked on the dark side, its an unfortunate truth that far too many large retail companies see the affiliate ‘assistants’ role as being a junior marketing assistant’s role. The retailers who understand affiliate marketing, understand the valid points you make. Unfortunately there aren’t enough of the good ones.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Hey Kieron, thought I would jump in on Point 1 as it didn’t seem quite right to me. I wouldn’t say that it’s the merchants responsibility to run approvals but actually the affiliate managers role. Of course the affiliate manager could be employed in house with the merchant, out sourced with an agency or even work for the network (in this case TD) as may networks sell in their own management services.
Maybe I’m just nit picking
Cheers
Paul
January 17th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Paul, yes you’re nit picking
My point was meant to be that people shouldn’t automatically lay the blame with the affiliate network.
As you say, the affiliate manager can be employed by the merchant or outsourced to either an agency or in some cases the affiliate network.
Anyway, somebody should be responsible for accepting affiliates on a regular basis.
January 17th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Keiron, I know the feeling. My applications to a few big high street brand names have been in “pending” for weeks on Affiliate Window. AWIN did very helpfully email them to get them to hurry up and some of them responded but I am still waiting for the others. It usually seems to be the big high street brands that do this. AWIN did say to me that it is because they receive a lot of applications. Really? They must have hundreds of people trying to sign up if that was the case.
I believe that in general big brands don’t seem to “need” or value affiliates as much as smaller Internet only companies.
Great blog BTW!
Tony
January 17th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Mate my heart is with you.
1. I drives me nuts when I apply for a programme specifically with the idea to push it during a seasonal promotion, only to hear nothing for weeks on end. And as in your example, the standard TD Denied email just makes me want to look at alternative programmes on other networks constantly.
2. I have noticed more and more spam heading my way courtesey of networks too. Infact earlier this week I received something through the POST that was addressed to my PO Box address! Thats it… now I am on a list somewhere I can expect lots of recycling to take place, or I start my old tricks again…. I put Tesco credit card details into the free reply envelope of Capital One Credit Card - and viceversa
4Mb attachment is a bit of a P take though! I’d go mental!
January 17th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Waiting on an application to go through from buy.at too. Now been 4 weeks! Likewise on TD too, had a decline for a site thats being using the same merchant through AW for years and gets a lot of traffic, no explanation, just the standard response. Disappointing!
January 17th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Hi,
ian-d and any other affiliate who has long term outstanding applications for the buy.at network please drop me a line on chris.mockford@buy.at and I will try and get these chased up
On a general level as Paul says earlier on some programs the responsibility will be with the merchant, sometimes it will be with the agency and some with us. So whilst we try and chase the approvals as quickly as possible delays can occur.
Cheers
Chris Mockford
Affiliate Development Manager
buy.at
January 17th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
I win - Tesco Mobile and Jamster on buy.at - been waiting since July 2007.
Tick, tock, tick, tock
January 17th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Thanks for the rant Kieron. I’m definitely not one of the big guys, but I am launching my first attempt at offering a CB product, so any education at all in what pisses off potential affiliates is useful to me.
January 18th, 2008 at 12:56 am
I agree whole heartedly with your post Kieron, it frustrates me too! Its a real shame because some affiliate managers bust their balls to keep us affiliates happy, I just wish they were all like that
January 19th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I have had similar problems with my site it took over 5 weeks to get approved for the hilton program! I think the longest wait i had was 3 months and then got declined. Both were with TD.
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Just weighing in from the merchant side. Previously I’ve been at companies where the person dealing with affiliate networks is the only one who understands them , so if Nike’s affiliate manager was on a long holiday that might explain it somewhat? Not a good excuse I know, just saying some companies think affiliates are approved by magic and all are big names like their own, and don’t know the way it actually works. If the network savvy person is busy or away affiliate approval can be slow - but in the case of Dave waiting since July maybe the application as been changed from new to pending/on hold and those in this staus are not being checked or have been forgotten about. I’ve inherited programs before with affiliates on hold for 2 years!
How long do affiliates expect it to take for approval from a big name brand?
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:11 pm
There’s a point i’d like to add to your list of how not to run an affiliate program.
Ann Summers is one of THE worst programs to push now. We already have trouble getting anyone to advertise our site but damn we still work hard at it.
Last year Ann Summers stopped updating their product feed, which just so happens to be the backbone for our site. Although users are able to search and find the products they want on a well optimised search engine, every link is now outdated and resolves at the Ann Summers homepage, instead of the product page.
The consequences? Well, we went from a conversion averaging around a very respectable 26% per month down to a measley 0.08%
We had one sale over the Christmas period and with Valentines day looming heavily (our busiest period) we’ll be lucky to pull in a tenner!
If a program starts supporting a product feed, they have to realise that those of us with the brains to use and optimise it properly are going to do just that. Don’t for God’s sake pull your feed (in this case with no warning or explanation) or we’re likely to send all your traffic to a competitor.
Ann Summers, you’ve got till the end of this week before it all goes to BeCheeky!!