This article covers the significance of having a hassle-free affiliate onboarding process. It guides you on how you can design or optimize one for your partners.
Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to create a buzz around your brand and generate traction online.
Your affiliates promote the solutions you offer on your behalf, which helps you cast a wide net and engage your target audience.
However, to drive the best results from your affiliate marketing program, it’s best that you establish a strong connection with your affiliates.
Having a well-thought-out affiliate onboarding process is a must. You help your affiliates promote your solutions the right way and bond with them better.
Making your affiliates feel at home and guiding them throughout the journey leads to a win-win situation. They feel encouraged and perform better. As a result, you get more eyes on your site and generate quality leads for your sales funnel.
However, onboarding your affiliates may not be as easy as it sounds, especially if you’re launching your first affiliate program.
So today, we have created a detailed guide to help you through the process.
Affiliate onboarding is a process that helps your affiliates get comfortable with your brand as well as your products and services. Here, you interact with people who recently joined your program and brief them on what you plan to achieve.
You can think of it as an icebreaker. Your affiliates get to know about your brand, and you get to know them. So, it may serve as a starting point for a successful and fruitful partnership.
At the start, you’ll want to brief your affiliates about your mission and communicate how they can help you reach your goals while making a profit for themselves.
You make sure that they know your products or services inside out, so they can promote your solutions the right way to the right people. Plus, they should know what to avoid if they become an affiliate of your business. Here’s an example:
It’s no different than hiring a new marketer in your team. You ensure that they are familiar with the solutions you offer and your target audience. You also discuss the standard operating procedures with your partners.
Affiliate onboarding is a process where you clearly communicate your expectations. So, it helps minimize the chance of potential conflicts and complications.
The key to having a successful affiliate program is to ensure that your affiliates are on the same page with you.
They must know what you expect from them, as it helps them set their goals and devise strategies accordingly.
An onboarding process ensures that you don’t get off on the wrong foot. It lays the groundwork for you to start a healthy relationship with your affiliates.
Despite their best efforts, conflicts between brands and their affiliates can happen. There may be disagreements between the parties, especially when it comes to payouts.
An effective onboarding process minimizes the likelihood of such issues and helps you to get the best results from your affiliate marketing program.
Furthermore, you help your affiliates devise effective promotional strategies for the solutions you offer to the intended audience. This way, your affiliates help you drive more traffic and score high commissions. So, both parties reap maximum benefits.
It’s a critical mistake to leave your affiliates on their own. You should guide them on how they should pitch your solutions to the right people.
Your affiliates represent your brand. So, you must ensure that they appropriately interact with your audience.
It’s your brand’s reputation at stake here. You would not want your affiliate program to cause more harm than good.
For example, suppose your affiliates overpromise just to get more traction, and you fail to live up to the expectations of your potential customers. It may have a devastating impact on your brand’s reputation, which is far from ideal.
Now that you know about affiliate onboarding and why it’s important, let’s go through the list of things you should consider when onboarding an affiliate partner.
The first thing you should do when someone joins your affiliate program is to send them a welcome email. It’s your responsibility to initiate a conversation with your affiliates and make them feel welcome.
Give your affiliates a brief introduction to the brand and tell them that you’re excited to have them onboard.
A common mistake brands make is treating their affiliates differently during the onboarding process. They often disregard small ventures and aspiring entrepreneurs, thinking they don’t have much to offer.
You can’t estimate their growth potential at the time of onboarding. You don’t have access to relevant data to decide. So, welcome them all with open arms. It’s often an underdog that ends up surprising you.
You can also consider sharing rewards with your affiliates for joining your affiliate program. It may serve as a great start to your relationship with them.
You should schedule an orientation session when onboarding new affiliates. Simply sending a welcome email isn’t enough for your affiliates to know about your brand and what it stands for.
An orientation session will help you educate them about your brand in detail. Here, you will share your brand’s story and the values you live by.
You will also communicate your goals, how your affiliates can help you reach them, and the rewards you offer in exchange for their services.
Aspiring entrepreneurs leveraging affiliate marketing to make money online don’t join a single affiliate program. On average, an affiliate promotes up to 10 products simultaneously.
They are working with different brands to increase their chances of generating revenue through different streams.
So, you should give them a reason why they should put in more effort to promote your solutions compared to other players in your respective industry.
For example, one way to attract new affiliates is to offer them higher commissions compared to your competitors.
An orientation session gives you the opportunity to bond with your affiliates and cultivate loyalty in the long run.
When affiliates join your program, they sign up for the responsibility to promote the solutions you offer on your behalf. They reach out to your target audience and convince them to try what you offer.
However, it doesn’t mean that you leave your affiliates on their own and don’t help them engage the intended audience.
Some of your affiliates may be veteran marketers and know how things work. Many of them are likely getting started. So, it’s your responsibility to be their guide.
It’s a no-brainer that you should share detailed information about your products or services. Without knowing the capabilities that your solutions pack, your affiliates may likely fail when promoting them.
Furthermore, you may have a variety of products or services. You can help your affiliates pick the right ones to pitch to the intended audience.
Affiliates promote products or services through different channels, such as a website, email, social media, and online communities.
You can recommend platforms that they may consider leveraging to engage the right people and get the best results from their efforts.
Your affiliates may require your assistance at every step of their journey. So, make sure that you share your contact details with them so they can easily reach out to you.
As said earlier, it’s your responsibility to help your affiliates get started. So, you should facilitate their access to useful tools and resources.
For example, content plays a major role in helping you generate traction online and engage the intended audience. You can help your affiliates create a stellar content strategy by leveraging your research.
You already know about your customers and their interests. Your research can help your affiliates explore relevant topics and create content that offers value.
You must also consider sharing your brand style guide with your affiliates. It ensures uniformity across multiple platforms and helps affiliates promote your solutions the right way.
Your affiliates are your brand’s representatives. So, sharing useful information with them helps mitigate potential risks to your company’s reputation.
If you’re a SaaS company, you must give a free copy of your product to your affiliates. It will help your affiliates know about the capabilities of your solutions and promote them well.
To ensure lasting relationships with your affiliates, you should set clear expectations from the get-go. There are a number of reasons that lead to conflict between brands and their respective affiliates.
You can minimize the occurrence of such unpleasant incidents by discussing your terms and conditions clearly.
Verbal communication won’t suffice. You should document these terms and make them easily accessible.
Try not to make the document overly complex. You should avoid the use of any technical terms or jargon.
Complex terms and conditions may end up doing more harm than good, so it’s a good idea to make your terms as concise as possible. You should cover all necessary details so there’s no room for confusion. Do your best to be straightforward, and affiliates will be more likely to sign up for your program.
Payout-related confusion causes the majority of the conflicts between brands and their respective partners.
So, you should discuss all the necessary details concerning the payout during your onboarding process. The details may include the commission amount or percentage, sales tracking procedure, payout date, and so on.
Aspiring entrepreneurs sign up for affiliate programs to generate revenue. So, it’s best to offer full disclosure on how you will be paying them.
You must have a reliable payout system in place. You should brief your affiliates about it during their onboarding and tell them how they can track their payments.
Inform your affiliates that you can make changes to the payout process to optimize it. However, you will communicate the changes prior to making them.
Unexpected changes to the payout process may have a negative impact on your relationship with your partners. So, you should always consider avoiding it.
The key to designing a successful affiliate program is to ensure effective communication among concerned stakeholders.
Your affiliates may require your help throughout the journey. So, it’s best to educate them on how they can reach out to you.
Affiliates may have diverse preferences when it comes to reaching out to the respective brands. So, having an omnichannel presence helps.
You should give your affiliates an option to contact you through a communication channel of their choice, such as phone, email, chat, social media, and so on.
You should share all the necessary details your affiliates may need to reach out to you during the onboarding process.
Ensure your affiliates that it will not be a one-sided interaction. Tell them that you will respond to their messages and cater to their concerns on priority.
You should also ask for their consent to receive messages from you. These messages may contain important announcements, product updates, performance reports, and so on.
Encourage your affiliates to participate during the onboarding process and ask questions they have on their minds.
Even though you think that you have a flawless onboarding process, you may miss out on a few important things. So, always welcome questions from your affiliates and cater to their concerns on a priority basis.
You should also consider collecting feedback from your affiliates about your onboarding process. Ask for their recommendations and look for ways to make the necessary improvements.
Continuous improvement enables you to acknowledge success here. Optimizing your processes helps you make affiliate onboarding a hassle-free experience for your partners.
You can consider leveraging surveys or gathering useful information from your affiliates through interviews.
A seamless onboarding process sets you off to a great start and helps you establish lasting relationships with your affiliates.
You clearly communicate your expectations with your partners and learn about their aspirations. It minimizes the likelihood of conflicts and strengthens your bond with affiliates.
If you’ve been struggling with affiliate onboarding, the recommendations in this article may help.
The suggestions we provided enable you to design an effective onboarding process for your partners or optimize the existing one you have.
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Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social media networks.
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