Affiliate Program Management

August 30, 2017 By adamriemer Leave a Comment

How to Work With Apps As Affiliates.

Apps make amazing affiliate marketers because they “can” have a captive user base and they “can” build their own audience using app store marketing and website traffic for downloads. So if you’re wondering if apps make good affiliates or how to work with them, this post will walk you through the process. This post is not how to set up in-app sale tracking for a stores affiliate program, that is a different topic.

How to work with app affiliates in three sections:

What apps need to be successful affiliates
What to be cautious of
How to recruit app affiliate marketers

June 19, 2017 By adamriemer Leave a Comment

How to Work With Influencers to Drive Sales

Influencer marketing is not a new concept, it just started becoming trendy and a buzzword a couple years ago. Now that companies have bigger budgets and more tracking technology is available, they’re specifically looking for measurable results which is why you need to start educating your influencers on how to drive sales. Below you’ll find a few of the techniques we use by channel through our affiliate programs and influencer marketing campaigns.

You can use these as a base for your own agencies or companies and you’re always welcome to contact me to bounce ideas around. I love learning new things from you guys as well. =0) As a quick heads up, these are the basics, everything is done custom for the client and by influencer’s capabilities, but they normally all start with this.

Bloggers
Instagrammers
Facebook Fan Pages
Twitter
YouTubers

October 31, 2016 By adamriemer 2 Comments

Coupon Affiliate Sites – A Complete Q&A

Are coupon affiliates good or bad? Below is a list of opinions, facts and myths about coupon sites as well as tests to measure their value in a very detailed Q&A format.

Questions & Answers to Working With Coupon Affiliates:

Coupon sites DO NOT add value
70%+ of referrals are new, they are a customer acquisition channel (myth bust inside)
They will do “SEO” for you as a promotional method (solution in this section)
Because I work with coupon sites, high-value adding partners won’t work with me
- I have attribution tracking set up so I’m good to go
They have a high EPC, so they’re good
High conversion rates mean they’re a good partner
Will setting commissions lower or to zero solve the problem
How can I tell if they’re poaching my shopping cart
Coupon sites increase AOV (some good tips here)
How can I test if coupon sites are adding value (this is the section you want to read most)
How do I remove them from my program

If there is one that I missed or you would like to add to the list, please send me a message through the contact form or include it in the comments section below. However, I ask that you backup and provide a reliable reference or reasoning for anything that you claim or I will not publish the comment.

May 26, 2015 By adamriemer 1 Comment

Why Affiliate Management Companies CANNOT Guarantee Results

Affiliate management companies are very similar to SEO companies. Our channel is 100% out of our control, we can only do our best based on experience to drive results, and you need to be very cautious of who you choose to manage your program. When talking to potential clients, something that has been coming up a lot more than normal is “but XYZ company guaranteed XXX% growth or results” or “XYZ company said it will be XY% of our total sales”.

If someone said one of the above things to you, you’re probably talking to a scammer since nobody can guarantee results or predict performance with an affiliate program.

The short answer is that you do not own the affiliates’ websites, you do not own the search engines, you cannot control what social media channels share, etc… Because you cannot control any of the traffic sources, you cannot guarantee exposure, traffic or sales. Since since are 100% out of your control, no one can actually promise you will have sales or forecast the performance of an affiliate program, with one exception.

This post is meant to help you explain this to your boss, your clients and to future clients that hire our company. It will help to explain why any affiliate manager or management company that actually knows the channel will never make guarantees on an affiliate program’s performance and why you may want to look elsewhere for management if someone does.

With that said, there is one scenario where you CAN absolutely guarantee, forecast and predict results from an affiliate program. However, if this is happening with your program, you may want to consider buying a proper attribution system and learning about what adds value and what doesn’t. I listed the exception first so that if you don’t want to read the rest of the post, you can at least gain something from it.

How to launch an affiliate program — By @MaxKabakov / purchased from DepositPhotos.com

May 5, 2015 By adamriemer Leave a Comment

Why Affiliate Program Audits Costs So Much & How to do One.

A common questions I get when I say my affiliate program audits cost $X,XXX is “Well XYZ firm did it for free so why won’t you?”. My response to that is always “Well, you get what you pay for”. When I sent that to one company in particular, they sent me the audit/evaluation from a competitor (which was not cool of them to do) and it was exactly what I expected.

It ended up being a series of three power point slides or about 1 page worth of content. It proved my point as to why real affiliate audits cost thousands of dollars and is why I’m writing this post.

It is broken out into two main parts.

Why it costs so much (me rambling a bit)
What you should expect to see from basic affiliate program audits as far as deliverables (this is the good stuff)

create a resource page — By @arrow123 / purchased from DepositPhotos.com

April 27, 2015 By adamriemer 6 Comments

5 Lies Affiliate Managers Tell Their Bosses & Clients

I’ve talk to a lot of companies each week about their affiliate programs and 5 of the same questions always come up. They include “you don’t have enough traffic, sites ranking for your URL + coupons close the sale and even you’re not where the best affiliates are so launch on other networks”.

Whether it’s an in house manager hearing it from a network rep, an affiliate management company telling it to a client or even a consultant who doesn’t know better, here are 5 lies you’re being told that are probably costing you and your company money. I also include explanations and solutions for each.

(Note: This post is just my opinion and how I manage programs.)

5 Signs Your Affiliate Manager is Lying to You

Here are five of the most common things you will hear from an affiliate manager or outsourced program manager (OPM) about your program. All of them can cost you money, all of them can cause damage to your company and if an Affiliate Manager says any of them to you, it may be time to hire someone to educate them if they’re in house or simply move on to a new affiliate management company if you outsource.

Affiliate Program Management

Questions & Answers to Working With Coupon Affiliates:

5 Signs Your Affiliate Manager is Lying to You

1. You Don’t Have Enough Traffic Which Is Why You Don’t Have Sales

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