ShareASale Blog

Affiliate Recruitment Strategies

by 14 Comments

Over the years, one of the most common questions I receive from merchants is, “How do I recruit more affiliates into my program?”. Size and age of one’s program has no bearing on the importance of affiliate recruitment. It’s an ongoing and essential task of affiliate program management.At ShareASale’s recent Think Tank event, there was a workshop panel dedicated to this very discussion. The panel consisted of a mix of both merchants and affiliates – all experts in their field. We posed a series of recruitment focused questions to the panel the responses of which are summarized for you below.
1. How much time, on average, do you spend recruiting new affiliates?
A: It all depends on the size and scale of the program. For larger merchants who may have a dedicated program manager, it may be 1-2 hours or day. For others, the number could be 1-2 hours a week. It all depends on the manpower available.
2. Is there seasonality with affiliate recruitment?
A: Fourth quarter is definitely a slow time. Not to say that new affiliates can NOT be recruited at this time, but it’s a slower time overall. Merchants should put the recruitment muscle in from January thru September. Once September hits, affiliates are putting their focus on fourth quarter marketing. So start heavy recruitment efforts up again after the New Year.

3. Are there resources outside of ShareASale that can be used to gain exposure for an affiliate program?
A: Take advantage of industry events such as conferences whenever possible. When attending live events like a conference or meet up, be active! Don’t just passively attend an event, but really submerse yourself in all that is available. Also, seek out affiliate industry communities such as forums, blogs, podcasts, etc. and give yourself a voice.

4. If I’m shy, what are some tips for striking up a conversation with an affiliate at a conference?
A: No matter where you are, if you are attending an event, you will have some level of commonality with everyone else in the room. Everyone had to get to the event right? At the very least you have travel in common. Weather, local events, conference sessions, current events are all other threads of conversation that you have in common as well. Look for someone in the room that looks even more uncomfortable than you and start there. At the very least, you know they are feeling just as awkward as you are.

5. What are some ways to attract affiliates when an email address not be available?
A: Merchants should have a recruitment page on their website. This way, an affiliate may find your program from an internet search. Or, if they are on your company page, they can easily find program information and sign up. Create other communication channels as well, such as a blog dedicated to the affiliate program, Facebook Fan Page, Twitter, etc. These are all ways to expand your social network reach as well as keep prospective and current affiliates informed.


6. What is an example of jargon that turns potential affiliates away as overly “sales pitchy” rather than a genuine program invitation?
A: Avoid generalities and over promises. Stay away from phrases such as “Highest Affiliate Payout” or “Super Affiliate ”. Affiliates are real people and they love a personal touch just us much as the rest of us. So before emailing a potential affiliate, take the time to first review their website and discuss specific ways that your product would make a good fit with their marketing efforts. Include specific numbers and stats while keeping the overall message direct, short and sweet. In regards to your email subject line, give the affiliate indication of what is in the email. Don’t just make it a general blanket subject that could easily get lost in the shuffle as some affiliates may receive hundreds sometimes thousands of emails a day.

7. What kinds of incentives have you found work best when trying to bring in a prospective affiliate?
A: The idea is to try to “wow” your prospect. So this could mean offering them the highest possible payout or providing exclusives with coupons or creatives. But overall, you want to be sure that you are offering targeted recruits with your best. Some programs offer product samples and freebies. Our panel had a lengthy discussion on the effectiveness of this practice. For some, it can be a great way to set your program above the rest with a tangible product. While for other affiliates it can be a burden trying to figure out who in the office gets the great product that came. It can create office tension if a freebie came addressed to no one in particular. So the best advice here was, if you’re going to do a freebie, be sure to know your audience. Make sure your product is a good fit for the affiliate and also, be sure to address it to an individual – know your contact.

8. If you could only offer one tip to a merchant regarding recruitment, what would it be?
A: Don’t become obsessed with the numbers. Instead focus on and be attentive to the number of active affiliates in your program. It’s not about the quantity of affiliates you have, but rather the quality.

Comments

  1. As a new Merchant with a very sensitive and personal professional online service, I found this VERY useful. Many thaks. I need to get inside Affiliate’s heads and this was a great help.

    Reply

  2. Merchants should not forget that they need to keep an eye on their affiliates after they’ve put in all the hard work to recruit them.

    One major pain we find is that a lot of merchants do not respond to requests for datafeed FTP access (Not smart on the merchant’s part as they stand to lose massive exposure that way).

    Affiliates easily get frustrated and they have a choice to walk away and never look back (You are competing with thousands of co-merchants, what sets you apart ?).
    A lot of merchants that did approve FTP access to feed-monster saw their hits/sales jump overnight.

    Reply

  3. Me too a new merchant!

    Excellent post almost covers very aspects that currently bothers me. I am always to trying my best to think in the affiliate’s shoes, I would like to learn where do they find new programs? how do they search new programs on affiliate networks? What kind of program attract to them most? why do they choose to join certain program? what do they expect from merchants besides commsission?

    Reply

  4. I am a new merchant. I am always looking for products that can best serve my organizing clients. Anything that will make their life easier and mine also. We all help each other getting the products out there to the public. I am rather new to Affiliate Marketing but I love the concept.

    Reply

  6. I didn’t find this helpful at all. I am shocked that SAS didn’t disclose the level to which they are a closed program before I joined. What on earth is the purpose of the program as a merchant? I want to be very selective in the publishers who are allowed to promote my service. I am sick of going through the junk applications because lets face it, those are the only publishers who actively seek merchants out. And I don’t think most people have time to network through recruiting events and conferences. For once it certainly would be nice if an affiliate network worked for merchants, not just the publishers. ESPECIALLY since any old person with any old blog can become a publisher.

    Reply

      • But those things are paid, right? My opinion is the same as Kim’s. My disapointment is huge. We paid for joining and have to pay more after, because only coupon sites are joining and there are no usable tools how to approach affiliates. I did not pay to join to do all affiliate recruitment out of the network. My trust is gone and the only answer is to pay more…

        Reply

        • Not necessarily (paid) – I was referring to 2 different things…

          1. Best practices and Tools to weed out/remove the onslaught of coupon related sites that tend to apply to programs right away. This is something that happens to a lot of programs and quite simply it is just due to the volume of coupon sites that are out there and the number of consumers who are looking for a deal. You can weed them out using tools if that is what you would like to do and only work with those applications that fit your goals.

          2. There are paid options as well for more exposure on the network.

          In general – this is a long term type of channel (recruiting Affiliates) that will benefit greatly from having Affiliates find you on the network, as well as your individual recruiting efforts. It takes time… Affiliates have thousands of choices, etc…

          It’s not uncommon to get those applications right off the bat (I believe your program is very new) but I would not let it discourage you.

          Reply

  7. A few days ago, we launched our affiliate program. So far pretty much all the affiliates who applied for our program have coupons or freebies sites. I am kind of disappointed. I have no problem with quality coupon sites. But if all my affiliates are only promoting coupons, affiliate program does not add much value to my bottom line.

    Reply

    • Hi KCEDIT,
      First and foremost, welcome to the Network!

      What you are experiencing with your applications is not an uncommon situation when new programs launch. I speak a bit about why this is happening, some options merchants have to attract a variety of affiliates to the program, and include a few tips on maintaining quality control here: http://blog.shareasale.com/2013/03/05/the-coupon-application-tidal-wave/

      I’ll shoot you an email as well to go over any questions you may have about the tools mentioned in the post.

      Thanks!

      Reply

  8. I just joined the SaS and I am quite confused. In merchant checklist you have a task called “Ongoing recruitment of affiliates and niche analysis” with link to this post, but I do not see any relevant info here. Where is the description how to approach affiliates on SaS platform? Or strategies? Where is any hint how to perform niche analysis in SaS?

    Sadly, the only tool in I found is the Search in Affiliate Aquarium, but the results… oh my god, have you tried this tool? There is no chance to sort affiliates by any reasonable criteria (even not by name). I would expect sorting based on feedback, performance(OK, I found this is paid feature), activity, etc. The results are based on what? Most of search results are people with dead websites. I feel like using search engines back in early 90’s.

    Maybe I missed something and will appreciate any advice.

    Reply

Trackbacks

Leave A Comment

Contact Us

SHAREASALE@SHAREASALE.COM
(312) 321-0487