In addition to helping product sellers create affiliate programs here at Create Your Affiliate Program, I also am an affiliate manager for four nationwide eCommerce brands.
What’s awesome about my affiliate program management work is that the same strategies that are working well for my bigger eCommerce clients, are the same strategies that I teach and share with my clients here at Create Your Affiliate Program so that you can also experience more sales every single week through your affiliate partners.
In January, one of my management clients (they sell women’s clothing on their Shopify website) brought in $33,000+ in revenue just from affiliates. In this post I’m sharing what I do every month for this client to make sure we hit and exceed our monthly affiliate revenue targets.
We did these things in January, and will continue to do them every single month because they work. They might seem simple, but I encourage you to read through this post and implement these into your own affiliate program if you aren’t doing so already.
📰 1. We send a weekly affiliate newsletter.
Without fail, every single month we send the client’s affiliates a newsletter. We share new items we’d love for them to promote that month, as well as remind them where to find their affiliate link and how much commission they earn on each sale. I use the templates inside the 12 months of Affiliate Newsletters Template Pack to make writing the client’s newsletters easy-peasy. These are short and simple newsletters, but they keep our affiliates in the loop about ways they can earn commissions by referring us sales. Sending a monthly affiliate newsletter is one of the most impactful things you can do for your affiliate program.
🤓 2. We pitch new potential affiliate partners.
In addition to engaging the client’s existing affiliate partners, we research and pitch potential new affiliate partners who are aligned with the client’s brand. We aim to onboard 10 new affiliates per month at a minimum, but obviously the more affiliate partners we pitch, the more we can onboard and the more opportunity there is to get in front of new audiences! I use this exact template when crafting every single pitch. Bonus tip: One of my favorite places to search for ideal affiliate partners is on Pinterest using keywords that align with the client’s brand.
💌 3. We re-engage inactive affiliate partners
If you already have an affiliate program in place, chances are you have some affiliates who haven’t promoted for you recently (or maybe even ever). I encourage you to brainstorm on ways you can re-engage them and empower them to actually promote for you. Could you increase their commission? Run an affiliate contest?
For my client, we send a personal reach out email to our top 40 affiliates from the same month the previous year to see how we can support them and to personally encourage them to promote. A little personal reach out can go a long way in encouraging someone to promote your products.
If you have an affiliate program, I highly encourage you to implement the three to do’s I listed above into your own monthly management. I know it will help you increase your own affiliate-generated revenue.
👉 If you do not have an affiliate program, a great place to start would be by signing up for the 3 Must-Haves for Starting an Affiliate Program for Your Product Business.
Questions? Comments? I love hearing from you – let me know! 😊