Quote: "One of the big things seems to be recruiting in all the posts that I read, but I never read any thing about activating or nourishing the existing affiliate basis. It seems to me that too many are focussed on new (untested) affiliates and not on affiliates that chose to (previously) apply to their program."

Your needs were understood and a solution was delivered that hopefully solves your problem. This is a principle that was also mentioned in that post by the way .

Cheers!

Carsten

Jeff doesn't like to be challenged when he tries to push his service.

Brace yourself for Jeff 2.0 cuz now you're the enemy.

I partially agree with you:

Yes most of us are given clumsy tools, but with the targets (increasing revenue/sales/leads)comes responsibilities, with responsibilities comes expectations (from the upper management). In order to full fill the expectations I believe no body should be afraid to ask for tools (or budget for tools). It is our job to speak up if we are not able to manage a program as we want if we don't have the tools or resources. If targets are set too high it is our job to bring the target setters back to reality, set new expectations.

One of the big things seems to be recruiting in all the posts that I read, but I never read any thing about activating or nourishing the existing affiliate basis. It seems to me that too many are focussed on new (untested) affiliates and not on affiliates that chose to (previously) apply to their program.

Shawn recently had a post about a company he just joined because he liked their product as a user and use to recommend it any way to friends and family, well after a few days of not producing sales they expired him!!! as many of the comments on that post say: foolish…

Look at your current basis and find ways to help them sell for you. Grab the phone and review their website, meet them at Affiliate Summit or many other events around, don't simply expire to tell you boss you did something today (cleaning up your program)….

This reply is intended for any affiliate manager reading.

Cheers.

This conversation has nothing to do with the (tired) arguments of online or affiliate marketing's inability to scale in the traditional brick and mortar sense. The post nor Jesse's on-topic comment allude to that.

Again, the point of the post is about affiliate managers (and affiliates) doing due diligence to make sure they are doing the most (and best) for their programs, offers, sites, etc. There are incredible tools out there (available for free) in the social media space that help affiliate managers do the job of increasing sales/revenues/leads if they are savvy enough to realize the potential in using them and see past the Luddites who argue about their inefficiencies.

That has nothing to do with the network-centric affiliate industry's ability to scale.

Scale.

Affiliate managers are tasked with one goal: increasing revenue/sales/leads.

But they're given clumsy tools like Outlook or proprietary e-mail systems to get the word out about their offer. The result is 95% of affiliate managers using spammy, ultimately in-effective recruitment and communications techniques. Why? Because, IMO, affiliate marketing is work and AM's are often pulled in many different directions — have multiple responsibilities. They don't have time.

When it comes to getting a program up and running affiliate managers have, for years now, been hand-cuffed by this situation. At the end of the day they don't have a SYSTEM to help them get the job of:

- Locating / Targeting
- Courting
- Negotiating

done. They need to do these 3 things in a streamlined manner — one that helps them with their most precious resource. Time.

"Affiliate Managers Don't Get It: Communication Is Still Key"

Many times I read posts from affiliate marketers that are getting unsolicited emails from affiliate managers that "want" them to promote their product, not only the emails are not personal at all, but even worse, it is hard to not see that these "affiliate managers" did not do any kind of homework or are not interested at all in their jobs. As an in house affiliate manager after a trade show (and after giving my business card to too many people) I receive many emails from affiliate managers asking to promote their product promising me high pay outs with out even knowing if I have an affiliate website, or even without looking at the information on my business card (such as title, company…..)

Affiliate marketing (and affiliate management) is not a job but a life style..

Any body who is not interested in changing their lifestyle to suits the affiliate marketing's lifestyle, please leave it over to guys like Brook, Shawn, Sam, Stephanie and many others…

P.S.
I like the signature tag from Matt Ziaja:

Communications Solutions Integrated

Apparently he didn't have a good solution to contact Shawn when all this started a few days ago..

Cheers, see you in Vegas!!

CJ was brought up by somebody else in the comments for my post, but I wasn't talking about them.

> Brian Littleton wrote: Shawns spam folder has nothing to do with networks either. He chooses to use a spam filter and does so at his own risk of missing emails… Should I blame the post office because I regularly throw away my mail without looking at it?

I agree that the post office shouldn't be blamed in your example. The marketer trying to get your attention should test their mailing, so that it attains an optimal response rate.