Effective affiliate program management is the secret key to creating and nurturing successful networks—and as an affiliate manager, you play a critical role.
What Does An Affiliate Manager Do?
An affiliate manager is responsible for overseeing and managing a company’s affiliate marketing program, working closely with affiliates to make sure they have what they need to promote products and drive revenue.
This often involves:
- recruiting new affiliates
- providing support and resources
- monitoring affiliate performance
- optimizing and growing the program
But make no mistake: It’s not just about getting the most out of affiliates and maximizing revenue. The truth is, affiliate marketing can change lives, including those of affiliate managers and affiliates themselves.
Who wants to be treated like a number anyway?
So, let’s rethink the approach. There are some important ways to build the right relationships and empower your affiliates, benefiting the company and yourself as an affiliate manager in the process. In this post, we’ll cover six pro tips that will help you excel as an affiliate manager, enabling both you and your affiliates to achieve ongoing success.
They Use a Partnership Approach Instead of a Sales Channel Mentality
One of the most significant shifts you can make as an affiliate manager is viewing your affiliates as partners rather than mere sales channels. This creates a more collaborative and supportive environment, ultimately leading to better outcomes for everyone.
“Think of your affiliates as a team of people eager to learn how to duplicate your success.”
Your affiliates want to do well, and it’s a win-win for everyone when they do. So, focus on how you can help your affiliates succeed. That often means nurturing existing relationships, not just recruiting new affiliates. Invest in building trust over time and you’ll foster long-term affiliate loyalty and commitment.
Adopting the partnership approach helps you naturally create a network of dedicated affiliates who feel valued and motivated. This kind of trust-based relationship is a two-way street: as you support your affiliates, they will be more driven to promote your products.
Over time, this approach will help you and your affiliates grow together, creating a robust and resilient affiliate program.
They Experiment and Learn with Their Affiliates
Being an affiliate manager involves leadership, and that means being the one willing to experiment and learn first before passing your knowledge on to others. Don’t be afraid to embrace the “mad scientist” approach to testing and innovation within your affiliate program.
This centers around two main things:
- Personally discovering what makes your prospective customers buy
- Figuring out how to replicate that success with your affiliates
Thinking creatively and avoiding managing your affiliates on autopilot can lead to discovering new and effective methods for driving sales. This creative and dynamic approach also helps to keep your affiliate program fresh, adaptable, and attractive to other potential affiliates.
“The best affiliate programs tend to be run by companies who are “in the trenches” with their affiliates.”
Once you have a handle on sharing the strategies that you’ve personally found to be successful in order to empower your affiliates and foster a collaborative learning environment.
Provide Personalized Support and Guidance
Investing time and effort into understanding and addressing the individual needs of your affiliates can help them overcome obstacles and optimize their performance. This personalized approach not only enhances their success but also strengthens their loyalty to your program. Affiliates who feel supported are more likely to stay committed and motivated over the long haul.
Remember: Your affiliates can’t necessarily afford to invest their time and efforts into things that won’t bring returns.
So, as an affiliate manager, it’s crucial to be “in the trenches” with your affiliates. By assuming this kind of leadership role and working closely with them, you’re better able to empower them, leading to greater overall success for your program.
They Set Competitive Affiliate Rates
As an affiliate manager, you’ll need to be competitive with affiliate commissions if you want to attract and retain the best affiliates. Doing a bit of research can go a long way here.
Evaluate Industry Standards
You can start to get an idea of what many affiliate programs are offering by looking a few different places:
- Directly on the company website
- Sites like Shareasale or Commission Junction
Try to specifically analyze affiliate programs that compete with yours. Be sure that your rates at least match, if not surpass, the rates of these competitors.
Think About the Product Type and Profit Margin
Because different types of products result in different profit margins, your affiliate rates may vary a lot depending on the type of product being promoted.
Digital products tend to have higher profit margins than physical products, allowing for more generous commissions. Often, digital product affiliate commissions can be as high as 30% or more, while physical products often fall between 5% and 20%.
If you are promoting higher-end products, be sure to check out our post How To Sell Expensive Things Using Siren. Whether the product is a planned purchase or an impulse buy will have a big impact on how you approach your affiliate commission structure. (Tip: have your affiliates sell something less-expensive and convert that into something more expensive later!)
However, in general, your affiliate program should be able to support a minimum of 5% in affiliate commissions, but 15% or higher is ideal if you want to be truly competitive.
Here are a few more tips to remember when setting affiliate rates:
- Use incentives and bonuses to motivate affiliates beyond a competitive base rate
- Factor in payment processing fees when deciding on affiliate commissions
- Remember that offering higher percentages than your competitors can make or break a customer purchase
They Utilize Multiple Affiliate Programs for Strategic Advantage
If you want to excel as an affiliate manager, there’s a certain magic in distinguishing your affiliate program from the crowd, while optimizing for maximum impact at the same time. Creating multiple affiliate programs is one of the best ways to do this.
Utilizing multiple affiliate programs is a great strategy because it allows you to incentivize different types of affiliates and cater to diverse promotional strategies. For instance, some affiliates may focus on lead generation, while others concentrate on conversions. By offering different programs, you can tailor your incentives to match these varying approaches.
Think about it: Affiliates who work best in lead generation might not otherwise look at an affiliate program that rewards conversions alone. But if you offer both options, then you attract those very affiliates, as well as the conversion-oriented affiliates you might already have been attracting.
Siren makes it possible to create a lead generating affiliate program as well as a conversion-focused program, maximizing your impact. With Siren, you can also experiment with different expiration periods for cookies, balancing longer durations to encourage prolonged promotions with shorter ones for more immediate results.
This strategic diversification ensures you can attract a broader range of affiliates, each motivated by incentives that align with their strengths and promotional methods. The more tailored and flexible your affiliate programs, the more effective and wide-reaching your network will be.
They Recruit Within Their Immediate Network, And Beyond
Building an affiliate program from scratch can be a big task for an affiliate manager, but you can make it easier for yourself by starting within your immediate network. Focus on individuals and companies operating in niches closely related to your product, as they are more likely to have a relevant audience.
A relevant audience is just a part of the equation, though; An engaged audience is crucial.
Remember: The level of engagement that potential affiliates have with their audience matters more than the size of their following.
In general, high engagement levels indicate a loyal and responsive audience, which is more valuable than a large but disengaged following. When you target affiliates with engaged audiences, it’s much more likely that your promotional efforts will reach the right people and generate better results.
How to Evaluate Potential Affiliates
In our recent podcast episode How To Find Affiliates For Your Product, we talked about why it’s so important to find the right affiliates, instead of just more affiliates.
First, you’ll need to define your ideal affiliate. But once you’ve done that, how should you go about evaluating potential affiliates?
Here are a few questions to ask:
- Does the potential affiliate align with your brand’s values and target audience?
- Does the person seem genuinely interested and enthusiastic about your products or services?
- How engaged is the affiliate’s audience? Do they interact positively and frequently with the content?
- Does the content produced by the affiliate resonate with your brand’s messaging and feel like a natural fit?
- Are the affiliate’s promotional strategies ethical, effective, and in line with your marketing objectives?
- Does the potential affiliate have a history of transparent and positive collaborations?
- Can the affiliate drive meaningful conversions while maintaining the integrity of your affiliate program?
Don’t forget that the right affiliates for your program are going to feel like a natural fit, and it’ll probably be somewhat obvious. As such, they’ll likely be able to promote your products without having to force anything.
“The best affiliate marketers are recommending great products that they actually like, and weave those affiliate links inside their content seamlessly, and authentically.”
They Offer Promotional Commission Rates
The final thing that I see the best managers do is offer “promotional commission rates”. These promotional rates are special limited time incentives for your affiliates. These promotional rates help you accomplish short-term goals and work through various unique challenges that can happen seasonally.
A common example of this is to give a slightly higher commission rate over a certain period of time, such as a launch window where you are going to be making a big marketing push, or maybe even during a special holiday such as Black Friday. This incentivizes your affiliates to make a push to sell along with you, without necessarily committing a long-term commission that you can’t sustain forever.
Another example of this is for companies who are selling product with a physical stock. If you have an overstock of a product, Siren can actually help you create a program to sell that specific overstock quickly. By creating a special program that pays out a bonus for each of the overstocked items sold. This is a great use-case for the fixed-per-product calculation method, and it allows you to work through an overstock using a combination of discounts and increased commissions.
Conclusion
To put it simply: Helping your affiliates succeed will help you succeed as an affiliate manager. Adopting a partnership approach, embracing experimentation, setting competitive rates, utilizing multiple affiliate programs, and focusing your recruitment efforts on your immediate network will help you to build a strong, loyal, and effective affiliate network that drives long-term success.
Always choose relevant affiliates who are a natural match for your brand and products, and remember that the more authentic the recommendation, the better your affiliates will perform.
Remember: As an affiliate manager, your affiliates are partners, not just numbers. Nurture authentic relationships, focus on mutual growth, and continuously seek ways to optimize and enhance your program if you want to foster a collaborative and dynamic environment.
Want to build a diverse network of affiliates with different needs and audiences? Download Siren today to start creating a robust and flexible affiliate program designed for long-term success.
Swim fast, dream big!
