7 Deadly Sins Of Performance Marketing

While the affiliate industry demonstrates the ability to deliver incremental value, advertisers must get the basics right in order to gain the greatest benefit from this channel. As such, this article describes 7 deadly sins of affiliate marketing to avoid.

1) Slow approval process of affiliate applications

It is important to establish a vetting process for accepting affiliates to the program. This should include evaluating if the site will provide relevant traffic and ensuring your brand is protected. However, if an affiliate’s application is left pending for a lengthy period of time (i.e. beyond 48-72 hours), they are likely to lose interest in your campaign.

2) Rejecting affiliates without a reason

There are instances when an application will be rejected – maybe the affiliate site does not fit in with your brand image or you do not feel they will add value to the campaign. However, it is important to inform them of the rejection reason. The affiliate may have another site that is more relevant and could be an alternative placement to feature your products.

3) Removing affiliates without an explanation

Understandably, advertisers require control of their campaign and prefer to identify where and how they’re being represented by affiliates. Occasionally, programs require affiliate audits which may result in removing inactive affiliates, and the best practice in this case is to provide a reason. Affiliates may be inactive as they are waiting to launch a new site to feature your campaign. Providing a reason allows them to contact you if they have plans to promote the campaign at a later date.

4) Out of date creative

Affiliates are most effective when they receive the most up to date creative and offers. Without these creative assets, visitors clicking through from the affiliate site will not be presented with the offer they expected and will potentially leave. Consistency between the creative and the advertisers landing page is a key part of facilitating conversion.

5) Lack of communication

Affiliates are essentially an extension of your marketing team. You should provide them with relevant information to promote your brand. Whether this includes the latest offers, top sellers or best converting products, all information is valuable to your affiliates – no matter how big or small.

6) Lengthy sales validation period

Sales validations should be carried out as regularly as possible. Longer validation processes are inevitable in certain situations, but it is important that affiliates are paid regularly. Certain publisher types, such as PPC and retargeting affiliates, need to invest in adwords/display inventory in order to drive traffic to a merchant. Regular validations allow them to budget properly for this expenditure and optimize their campaigns.

7) Ignoring conversion optimization

One of the most important aspects of affiliate marketing is to operate a site that converts. Affiliates will avoid sending their traffic to a site that doesn’t – regardless of how much commission they will earn on a sale. Improving conversion rates is a long term solution and one that is more valuable than increasing affiliate commission for a campaign that doesn’t convert. One way to increase conversion rates is to encourage visitors to purchase by offering a unique online discount. Removing any unnecessary steps in the transaction process will also simplify the route to sale – ultimately improving conversion rates.