In managing an affiliate program, the process of approving affiliates can be a very tedious and labor intensive work if you are doing it to a high standard. This article will cover
A) Affiliate approval methods & risk
B) Recommended approval method
AUTO AFFILIATE APPROVAL: It is not unheard off that some affiliate managers, or even outsource program managers will set an affiliate application to an auto approve process. That means any affiliate that applies to the program will automatically be admitted, and the affiliate manager does not have to actively approve affiliates every few days. The downside is the fact that the floodgates are wide open and the affiliate program is susceptible to questionable affiliates joining.
BUSINESS RULE APPROVAL: In some cases, the affiliate manager can set up some high-level business rules done on by the software such as rejecting affiliates, or publishers from a certain country, and in some cases specific types of affiliates. An example of a country specific affiliate rejection is based on the affiliate’s country of origin in the application such as Iran, or if the IP address originates from that country. In some cases, some affiliate program might tend to not work with cashback affiliates, or coupons sites and the affiliate manager can technically setup a business rule to automatically reject those affiliates.
HUMAN MANUAL APPROVAL: It is more laborious, however you are can assure that the affiliates promoting your products have been vetted by a human. The affiliate team can take 30-90 seconds to review the validity of the affiliate application and ensure that it meets the requirements set by forth; from the application form, Domain ownership / Domain WHOis, reverse look of phone/address of affiliate and if the need would to arise, e-mail the affiliate to ask for more details.
The affiliate approval is just a stepping stone to creating a solid affiliate program and free from fraud, however with the human approval – I believe that these next steps will help differentiate the affiliate program from other affiliate programs.
1) Segmentation: Once an affiliate is approved into the affiliate program, categorize the affiliate so that the program is structured to support Reporting, Analytics, Targeted Promotion, and using different affiliates for different offers. This would make a difference in the event that the SEM team is looking for additional support to support the SEM campaign, or there is a budget cut and the decisions is to scale back on coupon affiliates.
2) Tiered Offers: Some affiliate networks will allow advertisers (merchants) to have different Offers, or Commission to different affiliates. In some cases, the Offer can be valid for new affiliates, or assigned to super affiliates that is not available to the general affiliate pool.
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