Selecting the Best Affiliate Management Agency
Developing and maintaining an affiliate program can be a joy and a curse. Joy because you are only compensating for qualified transactions (online purchase referred by an affiliate, or leads generated by an affiliate) and the barrier to entry for a typical affiliate program is relatively low.
However, it can be an curse and it is a daunting process with recruitment, activation, segmentation, and then you find out that your affiliate program is beyond your expertise. Identifying the right Affiliate Management Agency can be a lifesaver to help continue with the growth of the program.
One might be struggle to shortlist qualified Affiliate Management Agencies where to start as there are many qualified Affiliate Management Companies and Outsourced Program Managers (OPM) to less qualified, and shady companies. We came up with these 4 key characteristics to look for in an Affiliate Management Agency:
1. Experience
There are lots of digital marketing agencies and affiliate program management agencies that provides services in managing an affiliate program, but not all management services are built equally. At e2 ideas, we have managed program in the e-commerce retail industry, and managed lead generation affiliate program with marketing spend of over $200,000 per month.
2. Relevance
Affiliate marketing requires the affiliate manager to think outside of the box as the industry from ensuring that affiliates are not milking the affiliate program that involves the FBI stepping in to keeping abreast with the latest regulations by the FTC are some of the things that you don’t want to let it fall on the wayside as the industry is every evolving.
3. Value
Identify some of the things that the affiliate agency will be helping you manage, or offset, and also what are some of the additional add-value services that they will bring to the table. Here are some of the duties of an outsource affiliate program management company can provide.
4. Principles
An affiliate program is one of the lowest marketing channel with positive ROI for both the advertiser and also the affiliate. An outsource program management (OPM) agency will have transparency into the traffic and estimated profitability of all affiliate’s and their marketing tactic. However we have seen some OPM agencies use this information and hijack the existing affiliate’s marketing tactic by being an OPM while being an affiliate too. This diminishes the trust that an affiliate will have for the OPM as the OPM will cherry pick marketing tactics that an successful affiliate is utilizing and be a competitor to the affiliate.
Conducting your research to shortlist an Affiliate Management Agency that best fits your needs, followed by utilizing these four rules to help guide your decision.
If you are in need of professional affiliate management, please request for a free consultation by contacting us.