Amount of Under Performing Affiliates?

[Rob_TID]

For those of you who run merchant programs, I was wondering how many of your affiliates actually perform?

We are getting between 5 and 10% of our to make regular sales.

How about you?

[Lisa76]

Hi Rob,

We are at about 10-15%. Anywhere between 5 and 15% is pretty normal.

[Linda Buquet]

Yep in our biz its not the 80/20 rule but more like the 90/10 or 95/5 rule.
I think like Lisa said most programs run in the 5 - 20% range.

[Rob_TID]

That means we have room for improvement! (ie from 10 to 20%)

Any tips?

I have been contacting affiliates individually and asking if they need help. I have also been putting up the occassional tutorial for them.

I am also building a whole affiliate site off our free XML feeds and plan to write up exact instructions of how I did it and distribute it to our affliates.

What do you guys do?

[Lisa76]

Hi Rob,

Treat them to SiteSell's free Affiliate Masters Course at
http://aff-masters.sitesell.com and that will get them off in the right direction. It definitely jump-started me!

[kenacts238]

I agree with Rob. It is hard to beat that personal touch.

Ken

[Stephanie Harris]

I'm not so sure about this whole personal touch thing. We're debating this right now with our current programs, and to get some perspective I asked some "average" (read: does not know a cookie from an oreo) folks what they thought and it seems like the whole idea of an email is impersonal. If you're not actually talking the affiliate, isn't an individual email just as impersonal as more of a mass? We're testing this right now - doing some mass vs. individual just to see the response. To tell the truth, it's not like the affiliates write back when they see you've sent them a personal email with a promise to perform and then they do. Usually, its a low response rate either way. Unless its just me and the emails I send stink - but I've decided to be in denial about that so i'm sticking with the theory :-)

[Michael_Goldman]

As an affiliate I can tell you the only thing I'm interested in is high comissions

I hate it when the program spams me with new offer and I don't see the point of aff managers emailing me asking if I need any help. If I need help I'll ask

Well also if there's a female account manager in that program, who has a sexy voice I'd love to talk of course

imo if you want to turn inactive affiliates to active, email them about the best compaign you currently offer, just as simple as that

[Lisa76]

Stephanie, I've found that the more "established" or "higher earning" affiliates don't respond as much when I contact them but the $100-$200 check affiliates who are just getting their feet wet, seem to be a bit more responsive. I contacted one lady who had made her first $200 check and congratulated her. She was quite enthused and said no other program had done that before.

So I think it really depends on the affiliate and where they are in their affiliate career (and other factors as well) I'm definitely still experimenting in this arena, though.

lol Michael!

[Stephanie Harris]

Michael you'll have to tell me if you actually pick up the phone for a merchant - male, female, ostrich (random animal I know) or otherwise. I feel like calling an affiliate is like walking through a drive-through - you're all web savvy and accessible and then we try to pull up with a telephone :-)

Was that not the weirdest analogy? Don't give up on me yet - I'm bound to get more creative with them :-)