Managing an Affiliate Programme: Important Account Tasks
From Wiki
| Action | Notes | Frequency |
| Check the level of sales | • View the Monthly Performance graph along with the Performance Over Time report and if you see a significant drop in sales then this may indicate an issue which will require further investigation | Daily |
| Process all affiliates applications (applicable for merchants using manual approval only) |
• Check pending affiliates and approve or decline their applications. If their primary URL appears irrelevant, they may intend to promote you through other sites. You can send an email through News Manager using their affiliate ID to clarify this. • If you do not wish to approve an affiliate, please explain in the rejection reason box within your account | Daily/weekly |
| Validate affiliate commissions
as often as possible |
• Frequent validation enables faster return on investment for affiliates, encouraging them to work more closely with you. To manually validate commissions click here • Default auto-validation is set to occur every 28 days so please contact AW if you require this to be amended • If you have a high volume of sales, batch validation is recommended | Daily/Weekly |
| Maintain an updated product datafeed (applicable for merchants that have a product feed) |
• Check that you are always passing correct prices in your feed • Always check and resolve unapproved products • Ensure that new products are correctly mapped • If your product information changes frequently then an automated datafeed upload method should be implemented with the network | Weekly |
| Engage in regular affiliate
communication |
• Inform affiliates about your best selling products • Keep affiliates up to date with any changes to your programme and offer incentives where possible • Discounts and commission increases can help to increase exposure and should be communicated • The best methods of communication are: News Manager, Offers blog, and the A4U Forum • Affiliate promotions should also be submitted in the Affiliate Newsletter section of your account and may be selected for inclusion • Speak with your top 5-10 affiliates regularly | Weekly/Monthly |
| Develop your affiliate relationships |
• Speak with your affiliates regarding targets, bonuses or private commissions (if applicable) • For your top performing affiliates we advise adopting a direct line of communication via email, telephone and MSN | Ongoing |
| Manage and upload any new creative |
• Ensure that any new banner creative is available for affiliates within the Banners & Links section of your account • Never delete banners, always overlay them with new ones | As required |
| Alert AW of any website changes |
• Please advise us if there are any technical changes to your site so that we can ensure this does not affect tracking | As required |
| Respond to open tickets |
• Please respond in a timely fashion and close tickets once the issue has been resolved | As required |
| Feedback on affiliate opportunities |
• Please provide AW with feedback on the effectiveness and suitability of the affiliate opportunities we supply -Though all offers submitted will be considered by affiliates, prospective features are not guaranteed | As required |
| Discount Codes |
• Update generic discount codes as often as necessary in your account • Supply bespoke codes for specific affiliates directly or via AW | As required |