Eight Considerations For Hiring An Affiliate Manager / Affiliate Management Team
How to select the best agency partner / affiliate manager to manage your affiliate program.
Merchants are often pitched by so many companies for management. We are fortunate because most of our clients come to us by word of mouth or agency referrals. ?While most of our competitors are wonderful, some of them use pushy tactics, ?hard sells, and unethical methods to find new clients.
In order to help you navigate, I?have compiled a list of points to consider when trying to find the best affiliate management team for your program.
1. ?Was the company referred to you, or did you find their paid ads in search engines or social media?
Many larger companies pay big bucks to reel you in, beware of using top level ads to find your provider. Some of the folks that monopolize the top results in the search engines are well known within the industry for high turnover and overloaded managers. ?
If you are searching for a specific agency by name and find competitor results as paid ads above that their name , those competitors are usually bidding on the name of the company you are looking for, and actually paying to divert your attention to their brand instead. Be sure you scan carefully to ensure you go to the site you intended to visit, and remember, you were looking for them for a reason.
If a network or individual refers an agency to you, ?it is because the network or individual has seen a track record for success and they know this company can help you grow your program, so that referral should be weighted heavily.
2. Did someone pitch you just after you signed up for a network and/or while you clearly had another management team on board?
Steer clear of unethical companies that pitch you hard, even though they know you are already being managed by another agency. Most agencies will indicate a merchant is being managed on the sign up form for the program.
The folks who have been in affiliate management for a while are known as “friendly competitors” and do not push heavy sales tactics on companies they know have management.
It is one thing for someone to accidentally reach out not knowing you already have management, but another if they apply for your program to find out your email address and/or go around your existing manager to communicate with you about selling their services.
If your response to them indicates that you already have a management team you are happy with, and they keep pestering you, ask them to put you on their do not contact list. ?If someone ignores the fact that you are happy with your current provider, and continues in their quest to get you to talk with them anyway, you really need to think about if you want them to manage your program.
3. Did you get a heavy sales pitch, promising the sun, moon and stars? Did you actually talk to the person who will manage your program on the sales call, or someone who would be passing your program off to someone else to manage?
If you have been promised X, Y, and Z, please make sure it is spelled out in the contract. Most contracts simply will not include over the top promises made on sales calls. Most sales calls are done by business developers who are incentivized by their ability to get you signed up. In some cases they have retention bonuses to keep you on board once you have signed. Their motivation is commission when you sign, and often, commission when you stay, and rightly so, it is how they earn their living.
Most of the sales people I know are truly awesome individuals, and a joy to talk to, but it is very important to talk directly to someone who will be be in the trenches managing your program , so ask to have a conversation with this person before you sign up. This way you can ask specific questions that are important to your management needs, that a business developer may not be able to answer for you. Often, affiliate managers never know what is discussed in the sales call, they are just told they have a new client, so having that person on the call will ensure that everything discussed will be fluid.
4. How many merchants does the company manage and how many affiliate managers work with those clients?
This should be an easy way to determine if there are enough affiliate managers on board to adequately manage your program.
Bigger is not always better. More clients and more staff mean more meetings, more noise, ?and more places for stuff to drop through the cracks. ?If an agency has a high number of clients, they should have the needed staff to cover those clients.
We have worked in companies, and are aware of others, that have each manager primarily responsible for 15+ merchants each. In one case we were are of, one manager had 21 clients on his/her roster.
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Most companies agree that an experienced affiliate manager can not effectively manage more than 6 clients, and do a reasonable job. With more than 6, a manager’s time will be monopolized by under performers and needing to put out fires, so the client that is floating with no problems, basically will get ignored.
5. Can you read reviews and references from actual clients who identify themselves?
Companies can say they are number one, everyone uses them, they are the best on the planet, but can you read actual reviews or references anywhere ( other than their website)?
6. ?How long have they been working in the affiliate industry?
Are they new in the last year, or few years? Remember affiliate marketing is a completely different job than an online marketing manager, social media manager, etc.. Make sure the years of experience are specifically with affiliate marketing. There is a lot of history in the space that is important to know, and a lot of hidden details in the networks that seasoned people know like the back of their hands.
7. Is their contract long term, are the renewals long term ?
Most companies have an initial contract of 4 – 6 months ( the average being about six), and then month to month after, rather than renewal periods.
It is important to be able to get out of a contract if you need to, for any reason. You should have a contract that keeps you on board because you want to stay, not because you are trapped into a contract. Contracts should allow for 30 days’ notice after the initial term.
8. Less is really not more. Sometimes you can really lose money with lower priced management:
If you are quoted a lowball rate for your affiliate management, you may very well get what you pay for. Here is an actual review from one of our clients that decided to leave us for a company which is pretty well known for unethical tactics in the industry :
“We've worked with Anne and her team at Affiliate Management Solutions for over 5 years total now. They consistently over perform in terms of management of our affiliates. A few years back, we did switch to another company (because of the incredible promises they were making). We ended up switching back to Affiliate Management Solutions after about 12 months. When we did, they uncovered the fact that the affiliates managed by the previous company had defrauded our business of over $50,000! We're grateful they found this as we were able to fix it quickly. We all appreciate working with them and give them our highest recommendation.”
In Conclusion:
Make sure you feel comfortable with the agency you hire, that is the bottom line. If you feel pushed or manipulated into signing on, you may regret hiring too hastily. If a company is concerned about your best interest, they will be patient as you make your decision.
Take your time and explore what you need for your program, and hire the Team that you feel can best align you with your goals. Always remember, if you hire someone for an initial 6 month term, you can always change companies down the line if you still aren't feeling warm fuzzies after that six months passes.
We hope you’ll consider our team to manage your affiliate program, but if choose to go with another company, we do have many we can recommend. Although we cannot tell you who to avoid , hopefully this article will help you weed some out. Our company is awesome ( of course we are biased), but we do know many other wonderful companies as well, and ?we can provide a few suggestions of other ethical affiliate management teams, should you choose to go elsewhere.
The most important thing is that you have a team you feel comfortable with that you know is giving your affiliate program, the time and attention it deserves.