Planning a Private Affiliate Programme
There are some excellent affiliate marketing management applications around allowing you to run your own private affiliate programmes without the need to use affiliate networks. Whilst the networks have ready access to a pool of publishers who can promote your campaign, they often have significant set-up costs and ongoing commissions on top of your affiliate commissions making them initially out of the reach of smaller organisations. But it should also be noted that the task of managing such campaigns is significantly more time consuming than when using a network.
Before implementing a private affiliate programme for a client, we ask a number of questions that help to guide us to selecting a particular affiliate management application that meets the client’s specific requirements. Some provide multiple currencies, some provide email broadcasting capabilities, some provide tracking code free affiliate URLs. If you are a business looking to start a private affiliate programme or a supplier looking to implement a programme for a client, we recommend asking yourself/your client the following questions:
- Budget – what is the budget for set-up of a private affiliate programme? Whilst you might know your cost-per-acquisition threshold for generating a sale, you also need to factor in purchase of a management application, artwork development, campaign promotional spend etc. on top of the per-sale commission
- Location – where does the affiliate system need to physically live? Would you host it off the back of your corporate website or a specific product related website? If separate then you need to factor in additional hosting space and a URL
- Registration – do you want affiliates to be automatically accepted onto your programme or do you need to assess each application before granting/denying access? And do you want the management system to provide email communications with the prospective affiliate to let then know their registration status at each stage? (e.g. application received, application granted etc.). Would they also need to have agreed to the programme’s terms & conditions at the registration stage?
- Campaigns – how many individual affiliate programmes do you want to run? One covering all products? Separate campaigns for each product group? Should visibility of programmes be selective according to each affiliate? Can you select remuneration models other than cost-per-sale? This would cover lead generation, enquiries or downloads
- Banners – what type of promotional collateral are you able to provide to affiliates, is there a limit on the type of banners, buttons? Can you control changes in artwork through Javascript code rather than having to request to each affiliate to update a banner? What reporting information would be available to both the administrator and affiliate as to the performance of each banner type for sales, impressions, clicks etc.
- Tracking – what tracking options do you want to use? Are URLs with visible affiliate data acceptable or do you need some way of providing clean URLs without affiliate code?
- Incentivising – do you want to provide a joining bonus to encourage affiliates to reach the first payout threshold quicker? Could commission levels vary according to productivity of individual affiliates?
- Support – would affiliates know who the affiliate manager was and have methods of contacting the affiliate manager to ask questions, report problems or request changes to their status?
- Monitoring – what information would you want to know about the performance of your affiliates and the promotional collateral provided to those affiliates? And would the affiliate also need to see this information for their own management? This could include impressions, clicks, sales, commission data as well as banner performance, CTR
- Commission – do you need to validate the affiliate sale prior to accepting the commission as genuine for your affiliate? Do your products have a returns policy that could render a sale invalid within a given number of days? Do you need to provide payment in multiple currencies (e.g. USD, GBP, Euro etc.). Can you set payout thresholds that must be reached before the commission payout is valid (e.g. £50 minimum commission earning before payout)
- Payout – how would you want to handle the physical payout of commission to the affiliate community? Do you want to write individual cheques or pay via on online method such as Paypal?
With that information you can assess the wide variety of applications on offer to manage your/your client’s private affiliate programme. We recommend http://www.affiliate-software-review.com/ as a great way to review functionality and compare one system against another to find the provider that best matches you/your client’s requirements. When you have identified a system there are often websites and blogs providing further recommendations or warnings to help guide your decision.
If that sounds too daunting or time consuming, Enpiem Internet Marketing have experience of scoping and implementing private affiliate marketing programmes and provide a full affiliate marketing service from programme development to ongoing affiliate management. Contact us to discuss your affiliate marketing requirements.
Tags: Affiliate Marketing