Affiliate Marketing Dead Ends -- Sales Contests and Activation Campaigns

Affiliate Marketing is possibly one of the easiest channels to succeed in if you are strong in the fundamentals. Those are as follows:

1. Have offers that are competitive in your vertical and updated monthly.
2. Make sure your cash back is on par with your competition - especially if your offers frequently stink.
3. Talk to your top 10 publishers on a monthly basis or bi-monthly basis.

Do these 3 simple things and you are well on the way to having a successful and very likely profitable program.  Lose sight of just how important those 3 principles are and the chances of your program driving the metrics key to your overall online performance will fade. 

For whatever reason advertisers love to sabotage their programs - especially when they are going strong. It is almost like they cannot believe how profitable this channel can be so they have to cause a disruption. Then, when it comes time to meet with their network and review performance they will want to know why sales are slow, why traffic from loyalty partners has dropped and why their content sites are no longer writing about their promotions.  Chances are they will want these answers with their Director, VP and CMO all in the same meeting.


Just Don't Go There

This creates panic within the network team. They'll be forced to come up with solutions and new ideas.  The network will try to avoid having the tough love conversation because what if they upset the advertiser and they look to another network?  The thought process is "We can't tell them their promotions suck and the publishers don't like them" even if that is the truth because some network will offer lower rates.  And let's be honest, unless the advertiser tech team is inept, a migration to a new network is a very simple process.

So, what will those new awesome ideas from the network be?  Chances are one or both of these:

1. Sales Contest
2. Activation Campaign

My feelings on both of these couldn't be more clear - they produce zero long term benefit and are the sure sign your affiliate team is out of ideas. If you seriously have to wave the prospect of a commission increase or bounty reward to get your publishers "active" you have bigger issues than you realize. If you think your partners are not active enough try upgrading the promotions you can offer, email them directly to set up a call about increasing sales/traffic or face the reality that they might just not be a fit for your program.


Waste Management

An activation campaign is a waste of your network team's time.  Best case scenario is you wake up a publisher that uses that time frame of getting active to violate your terms and conditions or does just enough to meet your threshold and receive their bonus before dropping off your reports until the next super awesome activation event takes place.

If you want feedback on a Sales Contest don't just take it from me. Go to an industry event and after a few drinks with your publishers ask what they think. They'll probably share with you they don't pay sales contests much attention because they aren't worth the trouble.  Or if they do pay attention it will take some ridiculous bonus amount - think upwards of $15K - to get them engaged. These publishers are making a fortune right now. They are being taken over by large companies.  And those that are not get commission checks each month so large that they won't walk down their driveway for a 2% rev share bump from a sales contest.

Again, think of the man hours invested in developing these contests.  You'll need to determine how long the contest runs, which partners to target, what the incentive should be and what the metrics are that must be hit in order to reap the rewards.



The advertiser will want weekly updates and if things are not going to plan the team will have to send program updates to encourage the partners or individual emails.  This will create additional stress and distract everyone from focusing on what fundamental tactics could be done better to improve the program.

I run several affiliate programs for large advertisers.  And I get that it hard as hell to come up with things to talk about on a weekly basis. Value adding new publishers are tough to come by. Innovative ideas that will set the program on fire and keep the advertiser believing their team is the best around are difficult to dream up.  But that does not mean you have to resort to gimmicky bullshit like Activation Campaigns or Sales Contests.

Dig into your reports and find out what publishers are under performing based on network data or year over year results. Dig into your reports to find out what SKUs are driving profitable sales. Revamp your text links. Get on a call with your partners. Figure out if there are ways the advertiser could invest in upgrading their product feed.

These ideas are miles beyond contests.  Don't worry about losing an advertiser if you suggest that. Because if they jump networks after you have an honest conversation they were not worth your time to begin with and were wasting your skills.