What constitutes a healthy programme?

[sweetpete]

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Hi,

I'm keen to get other's opinion on this. Often the old 80:20 rule is quoted about affiliates in terms of no. of affiliates driving sales - personally I don't find this applicable to our programmes, the figures are closer together.

What kind of percentages are you guys aiming for in terms of % of active affiliates (10+ clicks or impressions per week) and then % of active affiliates generating sales? Or is really just a case of the more the merrier?

Obviously let's keep the actual figures to ourselves but it would be interesting to do a limited degree of benchmarking.

Pete

[Gavinio]

It's hard to say really - on networks in particular, you get loads of people who sign up to programmes, but never promote it, you get some who simply couldn't get traffic to your site if you paid them (Oh... hang on!), and some who don't know how to. I really don't worry too much about people who don't promote the programme - I send them a newsletter to get them interested etc, but there's only so much you can do - you're better focussing your time on people who definately have the ability to deliver, or who genuinely want to.

There is a place for smaller affiliates, as they're likely to be on bottom tiers, and hence keep your costs down. AM is strange like that, as your volumes go up, so do your costs per unit! It's a diseconomy of scale. So a few affiliates doing 10 sales a month helps to eliminate volitility from a programme, whilst keeping costs down. The only time I can think where you wouldn't want more affiliates, is where you have to keep an eye on what they're selling/delivering (eg lead-based campaigns) or where brand control is important to you.

Anyone else got some thoughts?

[KevinEdwards]

In my experience financial clients can have their own concerns because of the nature of their products.

They tend to seek additional assurances and checks and balances.

Rather than be overly cautious when approving affiliates I tend to recommend that advertisers approve affiliates they are unsure of and monitor performance. If they have concerns at a later date (which is pretty rare) then there are obvious conversations that can be had and sanctions implemented.