Comments on: Affiliates are not an extended Sales Force

By: Carsten Cumbrowski

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 21:31:14 +0000

Hi Peter, Every larger and serious Affiliate does their own tracking in addition to what is provided by the Networks or IN-House Solutions.
CJ's "SID" and its counter-part in other solutions was created before there were incentive sites. The purpose of the parameter was to provide the option to affiliates to pass their own tracking parameter along the click and get it back with the commission transaction (if supported by the merchant). Using Web Analytics was already normal years ago, often supplemented by own tracking solutions with focus on the specific data that are more interesting for the affiliate. Eg. I could care less about Google Analytics conversion funnel. The conversion happens at the merchants site, not the affiliates. Other metrics are much more relevant and.

By: Peter Koning

Peter Koning — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 13:11:32 +0000

Thanks for this post Carsten. I have leaned towards the commissioned-sales rep. analogy but agree there is more marketing going on with affiliates. This is because they can track their results. Lately I've been reading about affiliates who are using their own affiliate tracking systems to measure ROI of their traffic sources.

By: Carsten Cumbrowski

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:14:33 +0000

Lets also not forget the the small AdWords Ad length matching Sales Copy provided by some Advertisers to their Affiliates, or the List of Keywords to bid on.

The Forum Example is a good example of the Internal Marketing Department supporting the external Affiliate Marketing "Department". Another good example would be the use of Affiliates to do Marketing that would not be appropriate or believable, if done directly by the Advertiser and not a seemingly 3rd party.

But affiliate support or use is not exclusive for the marketing department. The Sales department can and should support the channel as well.

Such as, the more appropriate Sales Tools/Means are being provided to Affiliates, the better..Also providing Sales Copy, where it fits into the Marketing Schema of the Affiliate will help.

This will certainly help the conversion, but not necessarily increase traffic. That is always true, Affiliate Marketing or not.

By: ReveNews - Carsten C

ReveNews - Carsten C — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:32:42 +0000

Imprudent Decisions Could Cost You Dearly

The issue is still primarily discussed (if discussed) behind closed doors. I decided for this reason to talk about it again, because I believe that it should be discussed openly. My last post was maybe also not clear enough. The…

By: Beth Kirsch

Beth Kirsch — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 01:27:41 +0000

Lets not forget lead gen where affiliates host the forum. In this case, affiliates get a powerful sale side for their marketing side.

By: Chuck Hamrick

Chuck Hamrick — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:15:39 +0000

After more than a decade in manufacturing I see many parallels to calling affiliates a sales force. Yes, affiliates can not influance the sale once it gets to the merchant site and they specifically excludes them from being true sales people. They do however need the same motivation as commissioned sales reps. Once companies lose sight of them as such they begin to treat them as employees which they are not. A true marketer gets paid to bring traffic and generally is on contract. Affiliates are a special breed and its the affiliate managers job to protect that when upper management start treating them like employees. I have seen many companies pushback on the affiliate channel but not one eliminate it.

By: Franklin Banker

Franklin Banker — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 10:07:08 +0000

I agree with the analogy. Affiliates do sell to a very limited degree, but the final sale is made at the merchant site. If the advertiser cannot close the targeted visitor the affiliate sends to the site, then there is no sale. I have seen cases of great affiliate leads, and terrible merchant (advertiser) website conversion, and that is the real defination of the sales we are talking about here. Affiliates truly are a marketing force, but I can assure you that this slight defination change will not catch on everywhere for awhile. We are evolving in our understand of affiliate marketing. Hey, there it is again, "marketing"!

By: Carsten Cumbrowski

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 04:00:59 +0000

In short, Affiliates are filling in, because the Advertiser can't be everywhere.

They convince people to visit the Advertisers Site instead of some place else. The Sale, Conversion of the Visitor is then up to the Merchant.

It has to be aligned to some extend to make sure that there is at least the chance to convert the traffic, because the best sales man in the world can not make a cat bark.

Shoot I am stealing phrases from a post I almost finished for next week

By: Beth Kirsch

Beth Kirsch — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 02:46:49 +0000

I wrote about a year ago…

Affiliate marketing really consists of small direct marketing companies that can leverage revenue from the affiliate networks, AdSense, or other pay for performance deals (Chitika, YPN etc) than they can with straight AdSense ads. These direct marketing companies are nimble, quick and fill in the holes in an advertiser's marketing and provide significant value when managed correctly. Also, these companies make more from affiliate marketing then they do from AdSense.

And that really is what affiliate marketing is today IMHO. The reason there are few offline comparisions is because it's easy to track online and it's hard offline.

The other reason that it's marketing, is it takes marketing communications to manage the affiliate force.

By: carsten cumbrowski

carsten cumbrowski — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 22:48:43 +0000

Sales is always an internal department and informed about internal details of the company strategy, because they play an important role in defining the strategy itself (assuming the company is driven by sales). Sales also has often the option to negotiate with the customer and give discounts based on promises made by the customer which might even make it part of the contract or deal. Sales also closes the business (finishes the checkout process).

Affiliates don't get involved into the customers business, can't negotiate deals (I don't count affiliate exclusive coupons) and certainly loose control over the process once the customer is off to the merchant site, that might or might not converts the visitor to a customer.

Marketing works together with sales to make sure that the customer does not get dropped out of the conversion funnel. If Marketing and Sales are not aligned, a lot of drop-out will happen.

Affiliates are in the same position. They must be aligned with the sales process on the Merchant Site. The better aligned, the better the conversion.

Direct Marketing might be the best comparison, the lag of ways to do correct tracking of the success of offline marketing campaigns is something that is slowly developing, something that Affiliate Marketing had already in place over 10 years ago.