10 tips to nurture your relationships with your affiliate partners for best results

The key to any affiliate campaign is strong relationships with your affiliate partners. With strong affiliate partner relationships, you can make a strong affiliate marketing campaign. It is a give-and-take relationship on both sides, where one isn’t strong without the other.

And like any relationship, communication is the key to success. Keeping good communication with your affiliate marketing partners can be more than throwing them a “catch up call” once in a while though, although that can be helpful.

Take a look at the tips we have that will help you keep your affiliate marketing relationships strong.

1. Nail your landing

The first step to keeping new partners is to gain new affiliate partners. You will want to make it as easy as possible for new partners to sign up for your program, so have your landing page nailed down. The landing page is your potential affiliate partners’ first impression of you and acts as marketing for your program.

You will want an easy-to-use signup forum so that potential partners can approach you and you are not alienating anyone, but be sure to add an email verification process to avoid spam accounts. Optimize your sign-in pages for SEO and make your affiliate sign-in pages easy to access to attract as many partners as possible.

2. Keep track of affiliate payouts

As the process goes on, you will need a system to help you keep track of affiliate payouts. They will need to be reflected in your business’ accounting and it is important not to miss any payments to develop and keep trust in your affiliate partners. You could have a lot to keep track of, so it would make sense to use affiliate marketing management software to help you.

3. Keep an email list

You will need an email list to not only keep track of all your affiliate marketing partners but to communicate effectively with them.

You can separate partners from everything else with a customer segmentation rule so that they aren’t getting any unnecessary emails and updates and are receiving announcements relevant to them.

4. Adopt fluid commission prices

Again, like any other relationship, a strong affiliate partnership requires some compromise. Learn to be fluid with your prices or tiers in order to keep affiliates engaged with your program for long periods of time.

You can offer deals like your best affiliate partners earning more if they refer more sales in a matter of weeks or offer limited-time deals with higher commission rates.

5. Provide pre-made content or material

To make things easier for your partners, and to avoid any negative results, you can provide your affiliate partners with material for them to use in their advertising of your products or services. This can be anything like images, banners, scripts, or bullet points to hit, or footage of your product to be spliced in with a shoutout.

The faster your affiliate gets started, the better, so you can make it a lot easier for them by taking out the hard work. If you want to go the extra mile you can create a few options of designs so that your product more appeals to the affiliate’s demographic.

6. Offer guidance

Keep communication open as a means of encouraging your partners to reach out if they need help or offer advice as you see appropriate. One way to do this is by adding helpful tips, perhaps concerning performance, what trends get results, or keyword research in the marketing material you’re offering.

7. Pay affiliates on time

As mentioned, keeping your affiliate paid promptly on time is very important. It establishes trust and is a recurring way of keeping that trust. The fastest way to lose that trust is to not pay them on time.

On top of the financial instability that this can cause, it also communicates to your affiliate partners that your business is unprofessional, and that might be enough to make them rethink working with you.

8. Keep them updated

There is no such thing as over-communication with this program. Every update that pertains to your affiliate partner must be communicated to them, be that a change in commissions, new marketing materials, updates in trends to tap into, etc.

You don’t have to call up every affiliate partner individually but create regular newsletters that will update your partners in one go.

9. Feature success stories

Engage your affiliates by featuring their success stories, either on the site itself, social media, or newsletters. Not only will this encourage good work down the line, but it will give other affiliates advice on how to succeed in the affiliate program.

In an industry where exposure is almost, almost, as important as money, your affiliates will appreciate being featured as an example of a great marketing option and partner. Let them know they can be featured in regular newsletters.

10. Offer perks

If you really want to nurture your relationships, you should reward your affiliate partners when they offer results. Consider sending them freebies or offering them exclusive access to a new product.

It’s important to show your appreciation for your partners so that they are more inclined to work with you in the future.

If you’re looking for more affiliate marketing advice, take a look at our blog, or for more personalized advice, book a free call with a member of our team.