The affiliate channel is a relationship-based channel and it is very important to develop relationships with your publishers. Most affiliate managers explain that you must communicate with your publishers, but they do not explain how to do that. Here is the process you can take to communicate with your publishers:
1. Understand your competitive advantage – The affiliate space is competitive and you must be able to clearly articulate why publishers would want to promote your brand. Do you have brand recognition, a cool product, and/or higher commission than competitors? Make sure you are able to sum up why publishers should spend their time promoting your brand in a few sentences.
2. Find the best contact for the publishers – Utilize the Publisher Recruitment tool to find the right publishers and communicate with publishers through the Message Center. Also, it is highly recommended to find publisher contacts through the publisher’s website and business social media sites. If you cannot reach the right person at the publisher company, you may not be able to work together.
3. Contact the publishers – After you find the proper contacts for the publisher, you can send a message that has the following main parts:
- Introduction of your brand – Assume the publisher does not know your brand and explain what your brand sells.
- Competitive advantage – Tell the publisher why your brand would do well on their site. You can mention:
- Your monthly website visit count
- Your average order value
- Your social media follower counts
- Your top selling products and why they are unique
- Your high commission rate
- Specifically ask the publisher to take certain actions – If the publisher sets up store pages for each brand that works with them, ask them to set up a store page for your brand and use your links from the PublisherPro platform. If they write content, ask them to draft a review for your brand. You can also tell them which products sell more than others and ask them to focus on your top-selling products.
- Ask them what they need – Publishers may need text links, banners, written content, or other collateral to promote your brand well. They may also need a higher commission rate, exclusive coupon codes, a flat fee, or some other sort of extra incentive. Most publishers will be able to use what you have set up in your platform, but it is important to be prepared if they need more than the standard offering.
- Give them your FlexOffers ID number – This is the “call-to-action” that makes the relationship real. You must tell publishers how to find you in the PublisherPro platform, so they can pull your affiliate links and put you on their site. Give them your name and ID in the FlexOffers PublisherPro platform and ask them to pull your links from your PublisherPro page.
4. Keep track of responses and add them to your affiliate newsletter mailing list – This is the most important part of developing an ongoing, profitable relationship with publishers. Once you have sent your initial email to publishers, it is important to stay in contact with them and respond to their inquiries. Let publishers know about the following information on an ongoing basis:
- New products
- Commission changes
- Affiliate-exclusive promotions and your company promotional schedule
- News about your company
- Directions for promoting your affiliate program
- Contests/bonuses to reward affiliates.
Most publishers need to receive frequent communication from your brand to remain focused on your brand. It is recommended that you develop a system to send a message at least twice per month to stay top of mind with your publishers. Be sure to respond to publisher inquiries in 24-48 hours to show that you are engaged with your program and ready to help publishers when needed.
It takes time for publishers to introduce your brand to their audience and to get their audience comfortable with your product. If you consistently communicate with your publishers, they can promote your brand to their audience and the audience will become more familiar with your brand. The most important part of communicating with publishers is to start doing it, so please begin reaching out to publishers right away!