pushy afiliate managers

[Spreader]

The good AMs out there know how to communicate effectively

Wise words Mr Quax.

I always try and take the following view:

1) Speak to people how I would like to be spoken to.
2) Only say something when it's worth saying.
3) From tiny acorns (affiliates) mighty oak trees (super-dooper affiliates) grow.

It's always seemed to work OK for me!!

Zak.

[renegade]

Originally Posted by rachae1 As an affiliate I dont like to be told how to run the site but I do like to receive emails on the following: News on recent winners Any events happening Finance reports without the pushiness Promotions Any changes on the site I need to know incase my site needs to be updated Informed when a banner is going to be changed so I don't have broken banners All these things would help me promote the sites

Spot on Rachel, useful information which highlights anything newsworthy or anything which stops our existing links working is what we need to know for ANY merchant.

[rachae1]

I personally don't care very much for too many banners on my site they wont do very well in the search engines. I like to be given helpful useful information from companies that know their own business. Reviews, news etc... Content is king.

[kcheung]

Hi Rachel1 and everyone,

I really appreciate what you say Rachel, as I totally understand how frustrating it can be for affiliate managers to be contact you day and night about driving more traffic to such and such a client...personally, I find that if you give some information about your business as an affiliate an affiliate manager can pretty much determine how best to work with you, if you ignore an email, thats when you start to get the pestering, but if you say, not interested, or give some sort of feed back, then an affiliate manager has more to go on.

One thing I totally agree on is how affiliate managers approach affiliates, some can be so pushy, and really if I've got 60 blog sites, each needing daily updates, I'll get to your program when I get to it, so yes, I can see your frustrations...but I guess its a communication thing as well, for an affiliate manager not to respect the way you work and try and pressure you, I personally don't think is the way to do it, it shows a clear lack of understanding of who is really work for whom.

I see that my job as an affiliate manager, whilst working for the client is also to work WITH affiliates and HELP affiliates to get results, not give them targets and tell them off when they haven't generated a sale, I assume that if i can make my affiliates life easier, they'll be more willing to work with me, and give better results as a natural matter of course, fulfilling the second part of my job..keeping the merchant happy, if i were to threaten to close an affiliates account (just because they haven't generated any sales) or do other equally ridiculous affiliate management 'tactics', I'd just be alienating affiliates not supporting them.

[benfriedman]

We are looking to gain any feedback about how affiliates like to be contacted.

Have a look at our most recent post on our Updates blog. Please let us know any ideas that you have to improve what we do!

Cheers

[Luke]

Originally Posted by rachae1 As an affiliate I dont like to be told how to run the site but I do like to receive emails on the following: News on recent winners Any events happening Finance reports without the pushiness Promotions Any changes on the site I need to know incase my site needs to be updated Informed when a banner is going to be changed so I don't have broken banners All these things would help me promote the sites

Good points I will save and use this

I think some affiliate managers do not understand the realities of being an affiliate and think they can raise their exposure by being "super friendly", "super persuasive" or "super pushy". I was a full time affiliate for over 3 years and I quite simply went where the money was, exposure was allocated in accordance with profitability.

Having said that if anyone doesn't have our links up I will be sending a lengthy email in capital letters and calling you 6 times a day until you have a nervous breakdown and redirect your entire site to ours without an affiliate link just to get me off your back. mm I might try that!

cheers

Luke

[rachae1]

I think you already provide some of those points Luke.

You are not on my pushy list

[MVi-Sean]

Originally Posted by rachae1 I think what annoyed me was the email made me feel like I was a naughty worker with the capitalizing of some words and telling me to move their ads to places that where already filled with another company and to do it ASAP

Haha - I'm not surprised you're a little upset. Please excuse the laughter, but I've never understood what kind of response someone expects to this type of rude email?!

At the end of the day, you guys have your own website(s) and your own time schedules and no boss!....so no amount of demands and petulance is going to make you do what you're told

I see the affiliate manager's role as the classic "middle-man" situation in a way. Sometimes we'll have a particularly demanding client who does not necessarily understand the affiliates, and can have expectations way above where they should be in terms of sales/feedback/timescales etc. sometimes we're put in a position where we have to be more of "a pain" just to keep the client happy... but you've got to try keeping everyone happy....its always about balance. (at the end of the day...a difficult client on our side is not necessarily your problem!)

Thats another major part of our job as I see it, managing the clients expectations so that they don't make demands that can't be met, and don't push their affiliate managers to the brink insanity trying to flog a dead horse!

....my approach to affiliates normally involves me doing an impression of the spanish inquisition....ask a million questions so that i can get a feel for how you like to do business, what your time constraints are, how best to contact you, what your customers want from your site ... etc etc.

Sometimes the emails get ignored or missed - thats ok....I figure you guys are busy, so I try again further down the line... getting a relationship in place takes time, the same way that getting a brand to take off takes time to gain some traction. Thats why affiliate marketing is a long term form of marketing...and not sold in as a "quick win"

You're right Luke....many clients or affiliate managers can't understand what being an affiliate is like - it should be obvious that its about the profitablity ...but I guess some people don't get that.... but on the other hand, some affiliates don't necessarilly understand the pressures affiliate managers have as well (hence the essay).... if someone is pushy or annoying, it may simply be a case of that person having a boss or client stood behind them with a gun!! hahah - looks like its all about balance again

I think the best way to get rid of an affiliate manager or client you don't want bugging you is to be straight with them...tell them you've got a better deal or something that converts at x% ...or a program that earns you £x per day - that way at least they can feed that back and either negotiate on commission, improve the website or get off your case.

Spreader was right in his post - you just have to treat people how you'd like to be treated really... seems like common sense to a lot of us I think.... shame about the others I guess

Hope this helps.... sorry for the essay. I did try to keep it short if you can believe it!

[JasperB]

I've never understood this myself. Why send out an email that you know (and if you don't it is a bit sad) is going to have a negative effect on the affiliate?

Just think how you would react if you got a mail demanding more work, drop everything else and do it now?
For me the key is to find out how someone wants to be contacted and then use that method. Don't contact affiliates for the sake of contact, it also helps if you have something to say!

Cheers,

[loquax]

if someone is pushy or annoying, it may simply be a case of that person having a boss or client stood behind them with a gun

You see if that was the case I'd rather you were straight with me and said "look guys we need an extra push" but combined it with "we've got this, this, this etc etc offers/promos which you don't seem to be covering - can you help?"

Now, if I can I will - especially if you're a decent award nominated affiliate manager ;-)

But it's not you guys who are the problem... the problem ones don't understand writing content doesn't always equate to instant traffic, that banners plastered over a site don't equate to wonderful stats, and that sometimes - just sometimes - the program just isn't good enough.

I think in bingo there's also a two-tier system - there's your bingo portals who get the easy pickings (first port of call for all new programs, paid for banners, paid for sign ups, get in early and tie up every bingo player to revshare etc) - and them getting players is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Some AMs then take that model - and think it works on other bingo sites who perhaps have less traffic, haven't bought the world's entire bingo playing email lists (regardless of whether the list is quality), or perhaps have loyalty to other merchants and won't be as accommodating as bigger players (who perhaps can afford or are paid a lot to take a few risks and which won't impact their income).

Big sites = little work, everyone else = effort, but few good managers will make the effort (i.e getting to know the affiliate, working with them, understanding how sites work, size of mailing lists etc). It's often a case of "well if it works for Billy Bingo Big Pants it should work for everyone else".

Jason

[DioBach]

I've got a good idea who this might be, I've had a couple of emails recently complaining about my performance with XXX programme. Here we go, a quick quote from the latest:

David, the performances this month are not good at all. We have 6 players so far comparing to 16 players we had in April. I think there are 2 major reasons for that: playingbingo – we are not at the H.P. at all and not on the rest of the site. bingocodes – we appear only in the inner pages you mentioned the weather as a main reason but I think removing us from these sites have also contributed to the decrease….I’d like you to push XXX a bit more….could you do it please?

That's the second email in the space of a week. Not only that, it's factually inaccurate as well, I've not removed them from my sites and in the case of Playing Bingo, if they'd just take a look they would see they are featured. Guess what extra effort these guys are getting? None.

[hpops]

Originally Posted by DioBach I've got a good idea who this might be, I've had a couple of emails recently complaining about my performance with XXX programme. Here we go, a quick quote from the latest: David, the performances this month are not good at all. We have 6 players so far comparing to 16 players we had in April. I think there are 2 major reasons for that: playingbingo – we are not at the H.P. at all and not on the rest of the site. bingocodes – we appear only in the inner pages you mentioned the weather as a main reason but I think removing us from these sites have also contributed to the decrease….I’d like you to push XXX a bit more….could you do it please?

Thought I'd rewrite this in a way that makes commercial sense:

Hi David, hope you’re well, I wanted to send you a quick mail as your performance on our program over the last month hasn’t been quite up to your usual exellent standard.

Hopefully we’ll be able to help you increase your commissions from our program by having a quick look at how you’re promoting us.

We’ve been through two of your sites and it would appear to us that we’re not on the home page of either – if this is the case (which I hope you can confirm) could you let us know why you came to this decision, hopefully we can offer you and your users something that will help you put us back where we want to be!

I agree that the weather has been a bit of a problem lately but we’re finding that conversions are increasing rapidly and want to make sure you don’t miss out.

We’ve got stacks of content available for you, all of which we’d be happy to share (particularly if we can get back on that home page!!) and we really want to work with you to grow both our businesses in the right way.

As always I can be contacted on XXXXX and I really look forward to hearing from you.

I can absolutely guarantee that the 3 minutes it took me to write that will result in better relationships, more traffic, more sales and a warmer feeling inside

[rachae1]

the performances this month are not good at all. We have 6 players so far comparing to 16 players we had in April.

That looks like a template ... I had a similar email from xxx

[DioBach]

Originally Posted by hpops I can absolutely guarantee that the 3 minutes it took me to write that will result in better relationships, more traffic, more sales and a warmer feeling inside

Good try, but you and the person who sent me that have assumed a couple of things about how my sites work and how I promote that aren't correct. I actually emailed them back early to explain my frustration at getting messages like the one I had a near instant reply apologising and agreeing to back off. It's not something I like doing but hey, my stress levels go up when I get mail like that so if I can avoid that, all the better.

[hpops]

Originally Posted by DioBach Good try, but you and the person who sent me that have assumed a couple of things about how my sites work and how I promote that aren't correct.

Course mate, I was working on the assumption that they knew how you sent traffic, operated, wanted to operate etc.