Kicking Affiliates off the campaign is NOT the answer to your problems
26 Jul
Every couple of months we seem the same issue reoccurring in the affiliate industry – a bright spark somewhere decides to €œreview€ their affiliate base and kick off affiliates who may not be sending a high volume of clicks or sales. Here is a copy of an email received from the latest culprit:
Merchant X is currently under going a review of their affiliate activities. We are looking to ensure Merchant X partners with Affiliates driving high volume traffic and sales to merchantx.com.
As part of this process we are looking to remove affiliates who are not delivering the desired threshold on these metrics from the program.
After reviewing the clicks and sales delivered from your website in the last 3 months, you have not met our minimum threshold. Thus, it is with regret that we will be suspending you from the Merchant X program. This will take effect 7 days from receipt of this email.
Please ensure that all Merchant X advertising material including banners, text copy, XML information and logos are removed from your website.
If you are looking to increase your marketing activities for Merchant X over the coming months and feel the clicks and sales measured are not reflective of your potential performance – please get in contact with one of the Merchant X affiliate marketing team to discuss your potential options.
Please don’t hesitate to contact a member of our Affiliate team regarding any queries or questions. However if wish to do so please ensure you quote your Affiliate ID.
So what possible reasons are there for doing this? As an affiliate manager I struggle to find the answer to that question; it has been suggested in the past that kicking off the low performing affiliates will help increase the EPC (Earnings per 100 clicks), but in doing so you can be losing valuable sales.
Officially the reason for the cull is because it will make it easier for the agency handling the campaign to manage, but surely it’s better to ENCOURAGE these affiliates rather than suspend / kick them off the program?
Why does this keep happening? Unfortunately it is giving agencies a bad name – a shame considering some of them (including the one I work for, obviously) are really trying to help improve the industry and get more merchants involved.
If anyone can think of a good reason to cull affiliates please do comment and let us all know.
James I couldn’t agree more, and there are 1000’s of affiliates who will back you up on this.
Merchants should be asking me “How can you improve sales?”, rather than telling me “You’re not performing… byebye”. The way I look at it is, if a merchant doesn’t think I am worth the time or effort in investment, then I won’t spend the time or effort in re-applying for that program. Understandably from a merchants perspective, there are plenty of affiliates which a merchant can choose from. However nowadays us affiliates are in the fortunate position of there being plenty of merchants to choose from also.
The recent “cull” has simply made me want to work with one of their competitors and push them a little harder.
HOWEVER…
I think that 9 times out of 10, the merchant isn’t actually to blame. Sometimes, as we all know, agencies and networks don’t always offer the best advice to the merchant which could have detrimental consequences on their business going forward.
I for one tend to work with merchants where I have a good rapport with either the merchant themselves, the NAM (Network Account Manager) or the Agency Rep. If there is no communication between me and the NAM/Agency then I am not driven enough to do anything with a program. Merchants are therefore relying on others to build that rapport with affiliates, something I am not sure they are fully aware of.
I just think that all networks, agencies and affiliates should stop working with this bloomin Merchant X – seems to be the root of all problems!
I’ll get me coat….
I agree mate – It’s the main reason that I called it “Merchant X” rather than who the actual merchant is – it’s a shame that some agencies have this kind of attitude and it’s clearly a lack of understanding that the Network should have picked up on.
This getting kicked problem is something I run into a lot. Espescially on certain networks. I only use SEO led methods of driving traffic and hence sales to merchant sites. Unfortunately this takes time. I need to be accepted onto a program befoer I can build content, pages, links and even whole new sites depending on the needs of the site. there have been two or three times where by the time I’ve developed the site, wrote some nice content, got the blog going and bang email telling me I’m no longer on campaign. Pais in the A**
How about because it kicks up a fuss, reminds affiliates that they’re on the programme and makes quite a substantial amount of them wake up and actually do something with their links?
I can’t say I’d ever do it, or recommend it, but neither can I say that I can’t see that there are some advantages. Particularly on programmes where clients are keen to protect and monitor their brand.
Can’t agree more James. Only reason to kick affiliates off is if they are breaking the rules or doing anything detrimental to the brand.
A lot of sites are slow burners or just create a steady, but very small stream of sales. The EPC argument is rubbish anyway, some of the smallest affiliates get excellent EPC’s just not enough of the ‘C’s!
If I were you I’d get hold of the merchant’s contact details and ask them directly, I’m sure that’ll stir a few people into action, and you might pick up some tips to get you onto a higher tier.
A more proactive approach might be to hold an open day for inactive affiliates to try to get a bit more action, rather than slinging them out of the programme, but I guess that’s just too much like hard work for some people.
Surely it’s a question of time and resource for the affiliate networks. The financial and account management overhead of keeping say 1000 affiliates that are driving low volumes on their books is very high.
OK, sure tracking is an automated process, but dealing with the reality of tech support, day to day admin and payments involves a cost. If 1000 low performing affiliates cost more to administer than they make in profit for the networks, then surely it’s a fair game for the networks to carry out a cull.
IMHO, unless you can see all the numbers in front of you it’s hard to tell whether the networks are being fair or just plain greedy.
Valid point Tom, but this is not a network decision, it is an agency / merchant one.
Networks are setup so that the account management can handle thousands of affiliates no matter on the volume – this is the reason they exist after all.
The point here is that the agency feel that having too many affiliates on their program is hard to manage, but having managed programs with thousands of programs previously I would not say that this is such a big chore – it’s important to try and get non-performing affiliates to react to an offer or program but kicking them off the program is not the right way to do it.
I agree with you James.
I can in some small instances see how or why this may happen as there are situations where a merchant does contact the affiliates (either in bulk or individually) and asks what can be changed to help them get better results or to contact the merchant with suggestions, but they aren’t interested.
I know of merchants that have noticed that there is something wrong or could be tweaked on affiliate’s sites and suggested that if they looked into it, it would help convert and make more sales and many of them still aren’t interested.
I guess it’s a case of leave the non performing affiliates alone and concentrate on those that are interested. Is it worth having loads of affiliates onboard that won’t do anything but send a couple of clicks through and have no interest in trying to improve when you offer them the extra help?
I also agree with James. I really don’t understand what good comes from kicking people off their program. Even if the affiliate isn’t driving a huge quantity of sales they may well be giving the merchant X’s brand a lot of exposure.
The great thing about affiliate marketing is that the merchant doesn’t have to pay anything unless a sale is generated. So if for example an affiliate is displaying a banner which for one reason or another doesn’t directly generate sales, but puts Merchant X’s logo in front of a large number of users. Merchant X is infact getting something for nothing. If Merchant X has a well known brand the user may well automatically think of Merchant x and visit them directly when they actually do want to make a purchase. In a kind of subliminal… ‘Why did I think of that’, Derren Brown sort of way!
Any merchants out there who have done this please enlighten me… Are networks started to charge per affiliate on the program? If this was the case I could understand the cull, but to the best of my knowledge they don’t… IMHO it’s just a lack of awareness of affiliate marketing and a rather heavy handed approach to try and kick start a program which might not be doing so well. A little more carrot and less stick is needed here perhaps!
the reason for all these moves is incorrect stats and performance indicators. A lot of merchants use an outdated KPI to measure their agency/affiliate program by: ratio of active/inactive affiliates. So the agency, wanting to improve this (useless) metric have 2 choices: work with the inactive affiliates and activate them (hard work) or kick them out (eliminate the problem from its root!). The fact that the KPI is greatly improved without an impact in affiliate revenue and the program’s profitability is a different question altogether…
However, to say “you’re underperforming, so we’re kicking you out”, that’s a new one, haven’t come across this before. Agencies need to understand the importance of small affiliates and their potential: the long tail of affiliates is equally important to the “super affiliates”. They’re costing you less, they are more consistent, they respect you more, why treat them like dirt?
Was there a term when joining the merchant “I shall only join if I pledge to provide 100 sales per month”?
I know for me that I have adopted an affiliate program where all applicants were accepted, regardless of their relevance to the product. So now the challenge I face is maintaining the perceived value and quality of the product, even when it is featured on less than desirable sites.
It begs the age old question of quantity vs. quality. Yes, exposure is great, but why do I need affiliates who don’t do anything at all to promote the product? I would rather give the commission to those hardworking webmasters who keep current with campaigns and banners.
Hi Dylan,
You’re in quite a good possition then.
You can quite clearly see what affiliates are promoting the program and getting sales and introduce yourself & talk about how you can improve the figures further.
As well as that, you can speak to all the affiliates who may be promoting the program but not getting clicks / sales or may have signed up but still don’t promote the campaign. You can encourage them, incentivise them and do anything else that might help both your program and their income.
At the end of your comment you then say something very interesting (well, interesting to me!).
> Exposure is great but why do I need affiliates who don’t do anything
> I would rather give commission to those hardworking webmasters who keep current with campaigns and banners
At the end of the day – you WILL be giving commission to these affiliates, even if the others are still on the program.
It can take a long time to activate an affiliate but you can bet your bottom dollar (is that the right term?) that after kicking an affiliate off a program for no good reason they won’t be back.
Thanks for visiting the blog and taking part in the discussions!
James