Affiliates are themselves businesses and as your suppliers they need to be managed, motivated and rewarded as such. As a company you need to decide whether they are a sales channel, or a marketing channel. Generally the best users of affiliates view them as a sales channel. This is appropriate as the CPA reward means there is not the uncertainty experienced with many other marketing disciplines.

Metrics

Most businesses use metrics in sales that are applicable to affiliates, such as the overall target marketing cost per sale and the contribution to profit of each incremental sale. If you consider affiliates as advertising or as part of the marketing channel, they are more likely to be appraised as part of the media buying schedule within your business.

As a sales force, affiliates can deliver a significant volume compared to other sales channels. This can’t be done with an uncompetitive CPA however. The highest sales levels come from setting competitive CPAs. Excessive CPAs are not needed.

Good affiliates stay in business because they are good at connecting with consumers, providing the offers consumers want and managing their business so that it is profitable. This means that low CPAs won’t deliver volume as they won’t encourage the more successful affiliates to work with you making affiliates peripheral to your business, rather than at the heart of it.

Be selective

Some networks specialise in different areas to serve large companies with significant sales. Others are better at delivering to small to medium enterprises (SME’s); some work better with specific verticals while others work well using particular disciplines such as email marketing, SEO or paid search. Choose one that fits.

Also, choose an agency that considers all aspects of the sales and marketing mix. Affiliates need to be placed at the heart of the direct response and media schedule, to get the best out of all channels.

Affiliates: members of staff?

Affiliates only stay at the heart of your business if affiliates become ambassadors for your brand. To do this you usually need to meet them regularly and ensure they have the right information about your brand, product, offers and so on. They need to be respected as though they are a team within your company.

Like staff they need the tools to do the job, such as a good company website, optimised to convert customers online (or complemented by an offline reward mechanism), good stock levels if appropriate and good quality creative.

Summary

To have affiliates at the heart of your business, you need to choose a network and, if appropriate, an agency, that can work with affiliates to make them your brand ambassadors. Then have the internal processes set up so that when they want to deliver high volumes of profitable business you are able to provide the support efficiently and promptly.