It may feel as if the festivities have only just been and gone but with the warmer months fast approaching, there is no time like the present to ensure your affiliate marketing program is thoroughly prepared for the onset of a brand-new season. It can be tempting to just go with the flow and wait and see what season-specific trends infiltrate the affiliate marketing world but by doing your homework and cleaning up your affiliate marketing program a number of months in advance, you can save yourself a considerable amount of time and stress. To find out how to spring clean your affiliate marketing program, continue reading.
Send a seasonal newsletter
If you are clued-up on everything you could ever want or need to know about the upcoming affiliate marketing season, it is time to inform your affiliates with a seasonal newsletter. It can provide your affiliates with everything they need to be successful and can prevent them from making decisions they are only likely to regret down the line. This can include information relating to the most successful promotions, blog post ideas, topic recommendations, deep-linking how-to articles, and, perhaps most importantly, where, and how to pull banners. It can also strengthen communication between yourself and your affiliates and improve affiliate relations by encouraging feedback that is helpful, practical, and usable.
Audit your merchant pages
If your affiliate marketing program consistently runs seasonal promotions, your merchant walls can quickly become cluttered with coupons, vouchers, and copy that are inaccurate, out-of-date, and incorrect. This can mislead consumers and occupy valuable online space that could potentially be used to promote brand-new, upcoming, or time-sensitive promotions. It can seem like a daunting or time-consuming task but with the upcoming season only likely to become busier, you will be glad that you took the time to audit your merchant pages when you did. It may also benefit you to ensure your landing page is updated on a regular basis, coupon and voucher codes are up-to-date and functional, merchandising is correct, and expired or incorrect copy and links are promptly removed.
Review your terms and conditions
It should be done on a periodical basis nonetheless but with one of the year’s busiest seasons just around the corner, your terms and conditions must be thoroughly reviewed. It can ensure they include only the most recent industry guidelines that affiliate marketing programs must adhere to as well as individual guidelines that can protect your affiliate marketing program as it continues to grow and develop over time. This can include information relating to tax legislation, disclosures, toolbar usage, commissions, termination, and liability. It may sound like a task for another day, or even another time of the year, but with a lack of terms and conditions potentially interpreted as an encouragement of bad or poor affiliate behaviour, your terms and conditions must be established and reviewed sooner rather than later.
Check for fraud
In the affiliate marketing world, fraud is everywhere. It can, however, be hard to manage and even harder to identify unless you know exactly what you are looking for and remember to complete checks on a regular basis with an absence of a suitable tracking and monitoring process potentially detrimental to the ongoing success of your entire affiliate marketing program. To ensure your affiliate marketing program is healthy and fraud-free, you must complete a full fraud audit a minimum of once every quarter and more frequently during busy seasons. It may also benefit you to familiarise yourself with some of the most commonly reported fraud tactics, such as malware, bots, click and conversion farms, typo squatting, cookie stuffing, and advertisement injections and hijacking with speed of checkout, referring URLs, and multiple orders from a single IP address fundamental warning signs to be on the lookout for. If you stumble upon a particularly complex case of fraud within your affiliate marketing program, it may need to be managed and dealt with by a third party.
Update your welcome message
If your welcome message has remained largely unchanged since you first established your affiliate marketing program, it may be time for a much-needed update. It is, after all, a common mistake to publish a welcome message during the initial launch of an affiliate marketing program but fail to revisit it as time goes on despite your affiliate marketing program undergoing extensive growth, development, and evolution in the time since. It can welcome brand-new partners and affiliates to your affiliate marketing program and educate and inform them of everything they need to know about your brand. This can be done by including exciting information relating to any upcoming changes that are set to revolutionise your brand and even providing single-use coupons, vouchers, or incentives for their first month.
If you are wondering how to leverage the upcoming season, treating your affiliate marketing program to a spring clean should top your list of priorities. This can be done by sending a seasonal newsletter, auditing your merchant pages, reviewing your terms and conditions, checking for fraud, and updating your welcome message.
