We run the Profitistic affiliate network, and come into contact with many merchants/advertisers who are looking to start an affiliate marketing campaign, or who are looking to expand an existing one.

They want to further their marketing reach, generate additional sales/leads, and make their brand as popular as possible, so one of the first questions we are often asked as a network is ‘how many affiliates will be promoting our website’? The answer of course, is that it very much depends on the merchant and the details of the campaign.

So, we decided to have a little office chinwag and discuss the Top 15 factors that we think dissuade affiliatese from running any particular merchants affiliate campaign.

Here are the 15 Reasons Why Your Affiliate Campaign Isn’t Attracting Affiliates:

1. Low Commission: An obvious one this, and fundamentaly the most important. If you offer a lower level of commission than that of your competitors, who do you think the affiliates are more likely to promote?

2. Poor Or Lack Of Creative Material: Affiliates are fully aware of the power of good creative. Poor creative generates low click through rates, and wastes potential earning opportunities. Also, a full suite of creative should be made available, including html (email creative) a wide range of banner sizes, text links, and any other supporting material.

3. Restrictive Terms: Affiliates use a wide range of traffic sources to drive sales/leads to merchants campaigns. Restricting promotional choice (e.g, no pay per click affiliates, no email affiliates) can severely reduce the amount of traffic being sent to a merchants website

4. Leakage: Prominent telephone numbers with strong call to actions (e.g call us now!) will serve to divert a proportion of affiliate referrals towards calling the merchant in question, rather than completing the online checkout process. This will result in lost commissions for affiliates. Experienced affiliates know this and will avoid such merchants.

5. Merchants Website Design/Usability: With affiliate marketing, conversion of traffic referrals is everything. The merchant’s website should be professional looking, and usable to maximise conversions. Poorly designed websites will see high bounce rates, and affiliate traffic will be wasted.

6. High Merchant Pricing (sales campaigns): This ties in with conversion rates. If a merchants pricing is higher than its competitors pricing, conversion rates will be low. Experienced affiliates know to compare prices and promote the merchant with the lowest pricing.

7. Low Stock Availibility: Similar to above. Conversion rates will be low if stock levels prevent referred traffic from converting into sales.

8. Brand Reputation: Affiliates know that well known brands are often trusted by potential customers compared to lesser well known brands and so, all other things being equal, convert better. Lesser known brands have to offer ‘more’ in order to attract affiliates to them.

9. Poor Localisation: Campaigns should be localised to the target market. For example, a UK landing page should show currencies in GBP, and address details should ask for Postal Codes (not ZIP codes). Don’t mention CNN or ABC News to UK visitors because they will see that it isn’t UK-specific which can drain trust.

10. Payment History: Some merchants are more reliable on the payments front than others. Savvy affiliates will know who pays (and who doesn’t) and prioritise merchants accordingly.

11.Payment Terms: Affiliates want to be paid as quickly as possible, using the most convenient, and lowest cost payment methods. If you are offering net-90 terms, and insisting on paying using Postal Orders, it willl effect affiliate take-up.

12. Trust Of Longevity: Does your campaign have monthly sales/lead caps? Have you suspended the campaign and restared it umpteen times? If so, you may have lost the trust of potential affiliates who require campaign consistency and longevity.

13. Pre-Approval Requirements: Many merchants (especially on the larger networks) pre-approve affiliates. The problem is that some merchants take weeks (or even months) to approve affiliates and so affiliates prefer to promote instant-approval merchants who enable immediate promotion. Merchants need to ‘strike while the iron is hot’.

14. Poor Campaign Descriptions: When describing their affiliate campaign, merchants should go into details about why affiliates should be running their campaign. Campaign descriptions should include all of the merchants unique selling points, and anything else that sets them aside from the competition.

15. Lack Of Niche Marketing Materials: Many affiliates require specific marketing resources to enable promotion. These may include data feeds, voucher codes, content units, and anything else a merchant can think of to increase accessibility.

We think this is a decent list of the main factors, but please feel free to add anything we have missed!

The voucher code debate – are genuine voucher codes simply a cheap and effective marketing tool or do they harm your brand?

Having a ‘voucher redeem’ area on your site could be looked at as eating away at your profit margin and allowing all customers the opportunity to get a discount. The customer may have purchased from your site even without a code, so why do it?

The Positives

Being listed on voucher code directories with as many as 5 million potential cusomers seeking voucher codes on a monthly basis will naturally generate sales and increase your brand awareness. As a retailer, factoring in a voucher code into your marketing plan will reduce your profit margin but in return could significantly increase sales volume – and getting a sale must be better than nothing.

Maybe seeing a ‘voucher code redeem’ area encourages potential customers away from your site to seek a promotional code from one of the many code sites which could be perceived to be a bad thing but if you were buying an identical or similar product and multiple sites sold it, would you purchase from the one that offered a 10% voucher code? Price is not always paramount as I’m personally a a great believer in product support and customer service but in today’s price conscious climate, customers enjoy feeling like they’ve got a great deal and a voucher code does just this as well as giving you the edge over your competitor. You may already have an extensive list of previous customers lying dormant who have opted in to receive marketing that could be emailed with a ’10% off code during December’ which would encourage previous customers back onto your site. In addition to being listed on voucher code directories it brings additional exposure to your brand and don’t forget there is an increased likelyhood that these customers will return and buy again.

A voucher code does not always have to be generic for example like ‘Save 10% off all products’, if your average basket order value was around £80 you could state spend £100 and save10% and this would be a nice a way of icentivising customers into spending a little more and increasing your profit. There are different types of strategic codes that can be used and our research shows that a high percentage of UK shoppers in search of a specific product take the reverse psychology route and opt to trawl the endless list of voucher code sites looking for a appropriate retailer and offer a voucher code before turning to Google to seek out their product through search.

The Down Side

Offering a voucher code opens up a new channel for sales as your code could be listed on freebie sites, voucher code sites, blogs, forums and many other sites but the viral spread of a code from site to site can be difficult to manage so this needs to be considered. You may notice voucher code sites offering exclusive codes and the reason for this is that they receive additional commission and an exclusive code from a retailer in return providing sites with increased exposure. Exclusive codes such as MVCBATHSHOP for example also help minimise the viral spread of codes as the code is created personally for My Voucher Codes in this case.

In all honesty we live in world of bargain hunters and savvy shoppers but you may not wish to be portrayed as a bargain/promotion retailer due to the fact that customers may perceive your products to be of lower quality and if this is the case you must ensure that voucher code directories fully understand and respect this as they may still list your site, with or without a voucher code.

Also, a retailer offering codes on a consistent basis makes it quite clear that you have enough margin to play around with and if you suddenly remove all active voucher codes then this can lead potential shoppers to seek alternative sites offering a voucher code. It’s also important to consider that there are shoppers who don’t even browse voucher voucher code directories and base their decision purely on price taken from Google search so it’s important not to increase your advertised price to cover your voucher code as you could be cutting out the shoppers who make their purchasing descions purely on displayed price. Admitedly it’s a fine balance between giving enough away to incentivise shoppers and remaining price competitive to non-voucher code users.

My Opinion

Before ruling out the use of offering codes it’s really worth taking some time to understand how they can be used as part of your marketing plan as there are a multitude of options available to incentivise people to your site using strategic codes.

Finally, please don’t just think that voucher codes are successful with purely high end well known merchants. Voucher code directories are prepared to add retailers large and small which helps to provide additional exposure regardless of business size, and should be considered by any retailer looking to increase online sales volume.

For anybody involved in affiliate marketing in the UK, the A4U Expo is the event to be at. It’s staged over 2 days (18/10 and 19/10) in London and will this year be held at the Hilton Metropole, a new, improved venue following last years venue which comprised of an endless tube journey (from St Pancras) that was the Excel Exhibition Centre.

This year probably sees the strongest speaker line-up yet, and includes an ‘affiliate health clinic‘ appearance from my good self on the subject of CPA Marketing and making money from affiliate marketing with different, non-traditional traffic sources.

So, I thought I would give a few good reasons why anybody looking to learn more about the affiliate side of internet marketing should attend. I actually decided on a ‘final 11′ but trust me, this list could go on. So, without further ado, here are 11 Great Reasons Why You Can’t Miss The A4U Expo (in no order, apart from the last one…):

1. Google’s very own Kaspar Szymanski will be hosting a ‘health clinic‘ on all things Google including the recent Panda update
2. Dr Karl Banks (who actually is a rocket scientist) will be speaking on ‘Copywriting For Conversion’ – a hugely important factor, that is often overlooked.
3. Kevin Edwards  will be discussing the advent of mobile in affiliate marketing. Nobody can be ignoring mobile right now.
4. The IAB will be providing clarification on the upcoming privacy directive – a subject that could affect us all.
5. Speed Networking should provide a great opportunity to meet potential clients/partners.
6. Great parties! Oh, I mean ‘networking opportunities’…
7. The Street – a new area for start-ups to display their groundbreaking wares.
8. A wide range of exhibitors  offering yet more potential for business opportunities.
9. You can win lots of cool stuff from exhibitors (always) and try and grab as many freebies as our own James Anderson who is a self-proclaimed expert.
10. A great-looking speaker session on Facebook advertising, the pitfalls, and the potential ROI opportunities.
11. You can meet me, and if I like you, I will buy you beer.