Thoughts about getting your voice heard in the crowd

See how Avangate communicates with its affiliates

Once you have a number of affiliates in your portfolio, keeping in touch with them and helping them make sales become paramount. Some software companies invest in creating a special position for this – the affiliate manager -, some deal with the affiliates through the already existing employees, but let’s say you have an affiliate manager.

Talking about communication with the affiliates, beside the personal contacts the affiliate manager should have with his Super Affiliates, email marketing is the best way to reach your affiliates.

Recently I was doing a market research on eCommerce trends in 2009. One of the things we should expect is that customers are more cost-aware and every minor thing they get for free or with a discount is often worth more than a brand they’ve used for a certain time or even a popular and reliable brand worldwide (we’re talking, of course, about similar features of the products being compared).

Of course, discount coupons are not a new technique for affiliate marketers, but in the near future we could easily foresee an abundance of promotions, discounts – let’s call them “deals”.

Download free white paper: "Best Practices in Software Affiliate Marketing"

At any time, but especially during recession periods, a software vendor needs the most cost-effective tools that can bring him extra revenue or at least keep the sales volumes constant. He needs to have a good exposure of his brand and his product(s) on the Internet.

Affiliate marketing is one of the ways to go in the software business. The costs for doing such a campaign are low and the results can make the difference.

But how can a vendor attract affiliates that sell software?

Here are a few simple things to do in order to get the most out of an affiliate marketing campaign:

• Having an affiliate sign-up page on the vendor’s website
• Communicating through a dedicated e-mail address for affiliate matters
• Creating customized landing pages on the vendor’s website
• Sending marketing materials to the affiliates
• Being present on affiliate forums and blogs
• Keeping in touch with your affiliates

This is only the beginning. To be truly “affiliate efficient”, a software vendor must continuously monitor the activity of the affiliates and to pay them commissions according to their performance.

We’ve prepared a white paper: “Best Practices in Software Affiliate Marketing” (yes, it is free!) which will help you find out more about attracting affiliates, solving the channel problem and preventing affiliate fraud. We hope you’ll enjoy it and don’t forget to leave us some feedback on it.

Are you as “affiliate efficient” as you would like to be?