Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways of boosting the performance of your Magento ecommerce store. It allows other sites the opportunity to promote your site and awards them on a commission basis. Like any ongoing web promotion, there is much to be managed and remembered, and there are many ways of increasing your chances of success. Below you’ll find a few helpful Affiliate Marketing tips that should help make your campaign run a little smoother.
Keep in contact
If you don’t keep in contact with your Affiliates on a regular basis they could well forget you in what may well be a sea of other Affiliates.
The best way to do this is by utilising blogs and forums. If your Affiliate Marketing program provides the use of an Affiliate blog (often accessed via login) then make use of it once a day if you can. There may also be dedicated forums (third party or official) for your Affiliate program, that Affiliates will be monitoring – another great way of grabbing their attention.
Email is perhaps the best way to reach your already established Affiliates. The main advantage of a direct mailout is that it will be going to people who have already expressed an interest in selling your products or are already doing so, therefore anything you send is more likely to be acted upon.
Choose the right words
The best information to post is product offers or promotions that will be appealing to your customers and therefore also to your Affiliates. If you have a weekly/daily special offer then make sure to let everyone know about it. Always remember to post a link to your Affiliate company page to make it easy for new Affiliates to join your campaign.
Remember who you are selling to. It’s a simple mistake to make but your correspondence with Affiliates is not the same as selling to customers. They are not buying your products, they are selling them.
So instead of writing a lengthy sales piece about why ‘they’ might wish to purchase, write instead about why customers will be purchasing and the opportunities for the Affiliate to make money. Talking about seasonal offers/special promotions and suggesting how they may be able to sell them is often the best way.
Offer exclusive incentives
Why not make your Affiliate Marketing campaign an exclusive one by offering voucher codes and competitions that are only available to Affiliates. Voucher codes are an excellent way for Affiliates to promote your site, and once created tend to filter down to voucher based sites generating excellent publicity.
Competitions are a great way to inspire your Affiliates to perform. You can either offer prizes for them to sign up to your campaign (a great way to start a newly formed campaign) or offer incentives to those that make you (and themselves) the most money.
This can also be done using a sliding scale commission. The more sales per month an Affiliate achieves the more commission they are entitled to – a service most Affiliate Marketing programs offer.
For information on how to use Affiliate Marketing with Magento and to learn how The Pixel can manage your Affiliate Marketing campaign, please call for free on 0800 043 104.
