I have already told you how to invite users to an affiliate program. Considered content marketing and various other options. But getting a thousand registrations is one thing, but accepting and retaining kilotons of traffic from hundreds of people is a completely different task.
What determines whether the affiliates start working and run away after the first test cap? From the obvious, there should be interesting offers and competitive conditions for payments, holds, and that’s it. But even from steep conditions, arbitrageurs can run away to less interesting affiliate programs. And even with low payouts, you can keep affs at home.
The final love or hatred for the affiliate network will depend on 90% of the support and affiliate managers who communicate with the aff almost daily. In this article, I will give a dozen practical tips that, I hope, will help you build a support department for a healthy person. Or fix the current one, if you already have an active affiliate program, but you notice that too many affiliates fall off for no reason.
Which departments is the support divided into
In total, there are three main functions that fall on the shoulders of support:
- Help with traffic, bans, conversion, offer selection, creatives and other arbitrage headaches.
- Solving technical problems. Postbacks, hosting, servers, domains, white sites, cloaks… Even more or less experienced arbitrators’ eyes twitch at these words, while beginners simply drop their paws and carry their feet back to the factory. To keep them, you need to help with the technical aspects of the launch. But only if you need affs and their traffic, if not, forget it.
- Solving small simple questions. Payout request, sharing ad cabinets for the application, opening of offers. Everything where complex skills are not needed, but simple responsibility is enough (which is already a rarity in an employee).
Large affiliates often make this division directly and add one specialist from each subdepartment to the chat with each aff. But, if you have a large affiliate program, you are unlikely to read this material. Most likely, you are wondering how simpler and cheaper, but so that it works as efficiently as the tops.
How to optimize the roles in the support department
If the affiliate network is at the start of its development, a full-time techie may not be needed yet. Then it is enough to hire a specialist for outsourcing. You can write to me in private, I will share my contacts. But a techie is needed for sure, otherwise a third of the affs will not start at all, and another third will send traffic to dev-null.
Affiliate managers and “assistants” can be combined in one person. These guys have high requirements:
- Personal experience of media buying. Preferably here and now. According to your vertical and at least one of the popular sources. Most real arbitrageurs on the market earn up to $500-1000 and work in an affiliate network is quite interesting for them.
- The ability to consult in an unlimited amount with an active media buyer. For this, the affiliate program needs internal buying. Why don’t you have it? Then look through your friends, chats and conferences for those who know how to pour and who are interested in helping with advice for an adequate reward.
- Maximum level of extraversion. A good manager becomes a pal for the aff or even a friend. They don’t want to leave you even in to affiliate network with more interesting conditions. Here I will add about taking care of the aff as the main priority of the employee. Does the boss ask you to sell affiliates an offer that is not profitable for them? Don’t be afraid to send this boss (you) fucking away.
Department organization
It is enough to understand a few theses:
- The communication channel is Telegram. Everything else, including tickets within the site, can be created for show, but no one will use it.
- Work 24/7. Without this, the competition will be very difficult to pull out. At least a “helper” with a salary of $400-500 should be in touch even at night to simply open an offer, issue domains, and what else besides a magic pendle your affiliates need to work well.
- The presence of both rates and KPI, that is, percent of the volume of traffic uploaded through the manager. Standard, 1-3%, depending on your commissions. You have no idea what employees cat even do to get another salary in the form of a KPI bonus. They will drag the affs themselves, and those that are there will be launched not only in the conditional Book-with-faces, but also into space.
- No penalties. Don’t like how a person works? Either fire or fire. But fines only cause demotivation and a desire to dump into an affiliate program, where they will pay more. Also can take your affs away with them. But I would be more afraid of demotivation, which will directly and very negatively affect the income of the affiliate program.
- A separate work account in Telegram. All communication should be where management can see the dialogue. After the dismissal, we immediately throw the employee out of the account. This does not reduce the risks of “dumped into the sunset along with the affs” to zero, but it significantly reduces them.
- Accounting for all more or less serious tasks in the task manager. A task has arrived – the first thing an employee does is transfer it to the task manager. Otherwise, even the most responsible person will forget, lose, get confused and spoil the mood of affiliates. Hints like “here’s a link to the documentation” do not count as a task.
Conclusion
The main thing to keep in mind when building a department is helping the affiliate and taking care of it. This is the main value of the affiliate network. The same technical work can be automated and delegated, but care … It cannot. So take care and cherish your affiliates, otherwise why do they need you?
Hire the right managers, build the right department structure, and treat the aff and your employees the right way. How will be correct? The entire text above was about this and I really hope that you agree with it, apply the recommendations and your affiliate program will be an example to follow.