Inactive Affiliates
Every In-house individual affiliate program or an affiliate networks, regardless of their size, face a common problem: Inactive affiliates. Affiliate Manager spend more than 40% of their total time just on recruiting quality affiliates for their in-house affiliate program on affiliate network.
Once affiliate join the program/network and then never come back to see. Why it happenes? How can a manager activate them and encourage them to generate sales?
Few suggestions which I found. If you have any idea then please add to this list.
1) Segment them out. You should be dealing with different affiliates differently. Each of these groups should get different newsletters: high potential inactive affiliates (ones that you know have a lot of traffic or are top affiliates elsewhere), new inactive affiliates (signed up recently), long-term inactive affiliates (signed up ages ago), formerly active affiliates (was active but isn’t any more). The different inactive groups can get different activation campaigns, too.
2) Send activation campaigns to your inactive affiliates. You know what the lifetime value of an active affiliate is. Put some money into activation bonuses. There’s no reason you can’t get 25% or more of your affiliates active. Vary your activation campaigns. Different things appeal to different affiliates. Some ideas: $5 bonus for putting links up. $20 bonus for first sale. $100 bonus for first $1000 in sales. Higher commissions for life if they generate a sale this month. Free sample of your products.
3) Activate them as quickly as possible. Use auto-approval if possible, and include a time-sensitive activation campaign (for instance, a $20 bonus if they generate their first sale within a month) in the welcome email. The quicker you can approve and activate them, the better.
4) Make sure you build out your tool sets. Make sure your datafeeds are detailed, complete, and accurate. Enable deep links. Add phone tracking. Follow best practices for coupons.
5) Continue to make your program more and more appealing. Participate here on ABestWeb, learn what affiliates like, and implement those things into your program.
6) Make sure to let your inactive affiliates know how to contact you, and ask them to let you know what they need that you’re not offering.
7) Never, never, never terminate inactive affiliates or even threaten to.
