How NOT to Ask an Affiliate to Participate in Your Program

Written by Rosalind Gardner on January 9, 2008 · Comments (9)
Filed Under Program Managers ·

Here’s a tip for affiliate program managers.

Every couple of months, I receive the following email from a program manager in the dating niche with the subject line “Affiliated with ProgramName.com”.

I’ve changed the real name to ProgramName.com in each case so as not to give unwarranted publicity to this affiliate program.

“To Whom It May Concern,

We have visited your web site and have found it to be of a very high standard. I would like to enquire as to whether you would like to buid a partnership with us?

Is it possible to place our banner or text link on your site? We will pay you $30 commission on each sale you drive to us and link back to you.

For more details, please email me at ProgramName[at]gmail.com or go to the below information link:
ProgramName.com

Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely,

First Name
Affiliate Manager
ProgramName.com”

OK, let’s look at this request point-by-point.

  1. What the heck kind of grammar is ‘Affiliated with ProgramName.com’? Reading this subject line gives a really good indication of the author’s lack of professionalism, and a really bad first impression.
  2. My name is not ‘To Whom it May Concern’, it’s Rosalind - a fact that is easily discovered if indeed this affiliate program manager had ‘visited your (my) web site’ and gone to the ‘About Us’ page which is linked from every page on the site.
  3. Speaking of having ‘visited your (my) web site’ — which site exactly did you visit? She should have the courtesy to include the appropriate domain name just in case I am one of those affiliates with hundreds of sites (which I’m not, but they don’t know that).
  4. “We will pay you $30 commission on each sale you drive to us and link back to you“. Huh? Some more weird English… but I got the jist that in addition to paying a set fee per sale, she was also offering to link back to my site. That set off the affiliate alarm bells, so I looked at the site and sure enough, she has a links page. Ugh. (More about that later).
  5. She includes only her first name in the message which is only a step above signing off with ‘Affiliate Manager” but still appears unprofessional.

What I’ve found particularly frustrating is that I wrote back to the affiliate manager the first time I received one of her emails, and explained that I would consider their dating service a valuable option for my site visitors, except for the fact that they were linking to other affiliate sites as well as their own merchants directly from the homepage.

I explained why such linking was a deal killer for any super affiliate and mentioned my affiliate marketing credentials (author, speaker and consultant) and offered to help her (at no charge) to make her affiliate program more attractive to all affiliates — and therefore more lucrative.

Not only did she not extend the courtesy of a reply, but despite several requests she has failed to remove my email address from her mailing list which makes her a spammer, which of course is the biggest deal breaker of them all.

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    • Comments

    9 Responses to “How NOT to Ask an Affiliate to Participate in Your Program”

    Clint Lenard on January 10th, 2008 22:29 pm

    That has to be the most frustrating part of it all… the fact that she ignores your ‘help’ emails, yet continues to send messages to a list?

    Obvious spam. Possibly a spam bot of some sort?

    Was it a legit company or what? That’s odd.

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    John on January 11th, 2008 10:02 am

    It sounds to me like some kind of automated harvester email that is being sent automatically to any site they can find in the dating market. Do you use a generic email like support@, feedback@ or something that could be easily guessed?

    I suspect they might be outsourcing the search for affiliate prospects to an offshore company who is automating the process, judging by the poor English.

    If you really want the emails to stop, why not either contact someone at a higher level in the company or even their web host and lodge a spam complaint? I’ll bet that would get some faster results.

    Frankly, I think it’s great when companies do this kind of thing. It makes it easier for me to know who I should avoid dealing with entirely. If they can’t manage their search for affiliate partners any better than this, chances are good that they can’t manage paying them on the other end.

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    Kris on January 11th, 2008 10:53 am

    Ros, great post. I’ve found that one of the best ways to weed out “bad” affiliate programs is to simply contact them. I get so few responses that the pool of choices is a lot smaller, and makes researcing good programs a lot easier. Strange industry we work in?!?!

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    Rhonda on January 11th, 2008 21:34 pm

    LOL….. I’m pretty sure this is a company I’ve worked with before. I totally agree with you about their emails. Very unprofessional approach. I did actually write them back to ask which website they were referring to (I have 20+)- and to my surprise they actually answered!

    I can vouch for the fact that they are a legit company - I reluctantly signed on a few years ago because they offered a very niche program that had a lot of appeal to the audience of one of my sites. Have actually been fairly happy with them ever since, although I definitely get the impression that English is a second language for the affiliate managers.

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    David Trujillo on January 12th, 2008 1:02 am

    Ros,

    I really don’t have a lot to say today. Love ya, keep up the good work. When are you going to write a new book. I just woke up from a coma this year.

    Dave Trujillo
    Omaha,Nebraska
    Stop by and see me

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    Kathryn Perry on January 14th, 2008 0:50 am

    Thanks for the post Rosalind,
    I’m getting ready to start inviting affiliates to join our pages and even GULP! go after joint ventures.
    I’m so glad to have this blog to peek in on and learn from.
    I am so excited about our program but since I’m a newbie I have to admit that in the past I would have done everything you HATE to see an affiliate manager do or not do.
    Thanks for sharing the valuable information.

    Regards
    Kathryn Perry

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    Rosalind Gardner on January 14th, 2008 9:20 am

    John, Clint.. I don’t believe it’s spam and Rhonda (see her comment above) picked up on which company it was that is sending out the ‘invitations’.

    Rhonda… I’m glad to hear that you’re doing well with them… but you should ask them to get rid of the leaky links. Maybe then, I’ll be able to join too! :-)

    David, Kathryn… thank you kindly and my pleasure.

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    Jim on January 21st, 2008 22:10 pm

    Rosaling,

    Please explain a leaky link.

    Jim

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    Rosalind Gardner on January 22nd, 2008 7:20 am

    Hi Jim,

    A ‘leaky link’ is one that leaves the merchant site (in this case) without the opprortunity for you to get paid. In some cases, the merchant may be posting their own affiliate links to other merchants.

    So… in other words, don’t send them your traffic, especially not if you’ve paid for it.

    Cheers,
    Ros

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