How to Seduce Your Affiliate Manager

How many of you would like to be seduced by your affiliate manager? How many have seduced your affiliate manager already?

Now get your naughty affiliate minds out of the gutter! What I mean is that you need to learn how to communicate with your affiliate manager and not get screwed. See, contrary to popular belief, affiliate managers don't always have your best interest at heart.

How many times has an affiliate manager told you affiliates were just killing it on an offer? How many times has an affiliate manager convinced you to run a campaign? Now, I'm not saying that affiliate managers never give good advice on campaigns to run…I'm just saying that sometimes an affiliate manager needs to get a lot of traffic/leads for a particular offer regardless of how well it is performing.

A lot of it has to do with the AM you get assigned. Like in any business there are competent and incompetent people working in the industry. A lot of it has to do with how well you get along with your AM. Some people click, and some don't. If you don't feel like you're getting what you want from your AM, it's reasonable to ask for another.

I want to compare what my best affiliate managers are like vs. the worst I have dealt with.

The best AM's I have

• Stay in touch regularly without hounding me about offers/traffic, etc.
• Raise my payout on an offer before asking me to run it
• Get back to me promptly when I ask about something, even if its just to tell me they don't have any news yet but they are looking into it.
• Share tips and strategies of what they have seen working (not giving away individual campaigns or anything like that)
• Fight to get leads credited for advertiser downtime, etc.

The worst AM's I have dealt with;

• Call, email, or IM non stop about running offers or sending traffic.
• Don't respond rapidly to issues. This is a huge deal if we are talking about getting a payment or something.
• Fight tooth and nail to not give me any kind of payout increase
• Send emails that look like they have hand picked an offer just for me when really, it's just a blast to all their affiliates.
• Don't tell me when an offer is going to be paused or taken down (I know sometimes they don't always know)

Obviously, those are some of the best and worst examples, and many AM's will fall somewhere in between. So the question is;  How do you get what you want from your affiliate manager without the BS?

Here are some tips for making the most of the relationship with your AM:

• Make friends with your AM. Don't bug them all the time, but do try to make things a little more personal. Asking how their weekend was, something about their kids, etc. can go a long way to making it easier to share information in the relationship.
• Don't be afraid to share your expectations with them. Say they didn't let you know an offer was going down…a simple email saying ‘Hey, in the future I really need you to call me asap when that happens, because I am spending money sending traffic to this offer'. You might get a professional response that is acceptable or one that is defensive or antagonistic. In case of the latter, I would look for a new AM. There are some really good CPA networks and great affiliate managers out there. There isn't much reason to do business with someone who doesn't take your business as seriously as you do.

The relationship with your affiliate manager is very important. Try to keep a friendly, open line of communication, and you can build a relationship that will be very profitable for both of you!