Affiliate program management is the process of managing the entire affiliate campaign.
The guys who do the affiliate management are called “affiliate managers.” Affiliate Management is the core part of an advertiser-focused affiliate campaign. To understand better, you need to know affiliate marketing a bit.
Affiliate marketing is selling other people’s products/services for a commission.
Affiliate marketing has two major parts –
1) The others, AKA the business that owns the product/service and is willing to pay a commission if any is willing to sell the product.
2) The seller, AKA the affiliate – who will sell the product/service for a commission.
Now, it may sound very normal, and you might wonder – what is there to “manage” in terms of affiliate program management? Let me tell you, as It’s not that simple.
What is an affiliate program?
An affiliate program is a setup via in-house affiliate software or via an affiliate network to track overall affiliates and sales under the affiliate policies the business has set. It is the “whole” setup through which you can run affiliate campaigns for your business.
What is affiliate program management?
The affiliate program has a lot of things going on, so it simply needs to be managed. In order to keep an advertiser’s affiliate program active, keep the affiliates engaged, and grow the overall affiliate program – a bunch of management tasks has to be done around the affiliate program, which we can call affiliate program management.
Affiliate program management is the full process of launching and growing an entire affiliate campaign.
Core Responsibility of Affiliate Program Management
The management starts when the technical setup is done, and the affiliate campaign has been launched and live.
Affiliate Program Management can include several things, but as an affiliate manager myself, I can tell you these are the core responsibility of affiliate program management.
- Technical Setup
The manager has to work with the IT team and ensure the technical setup has been done perfectly and the software/network has been configured properly. It’s very important to monitor the technical setup and frequency check to ensure that the affiliate program’s technical parts are working correctly and the tracking is fine. - Email Automation
The manager has to check for automated email reporting and see which emails are performing and which are not. A good affiliate manager will always ensure that the affiliate program’s email automation is always high converting and up to date. - Affiliate Assets
Affiliate assets like banners, landing pages, links, videos, guides, etc have to stay updated and latest all the time. Some of the affiliates will invest in creating their own assets, and most will use the ones given inside the affiliate program. It’s important for the affiliate program management to keep these assets updated. - Affiliate Recruitment
Affiliate recruitment rules & policies have to be defined and followed in order to approve affiliates. There will be several affiliate applications that have to be carefully reviewed before recruiting the affiliate in the affiliate program. Also, it’s important to set the right commission structure for the affiliate based on its type.
P.S. Several companies prefer to hire an affiliate recruiter as a part of the program management to accelerate the recruitment process. - Affiliate Activation
Once the affiliates have been boarded in the affiliate program, the system should automatically email them different informations. Sometimes the affiliate manager also gets in touch with the affiliates personally and encourages them to start promoting. This is called Affiliate Activation, which is a vital part. - Monitoring & Support
Once the affiliates start promoting, it’s important to monitor what kind of traffic they are sending, if the traffic source is good if they are maintaining the brand guidelines, and everything else to protect your brand. It is important to resolve all support queries of the affiliate and monitor all affiliate’s traffic campaigns in real-time to identify and suspend any fraud affiliates. - Payroll
Most of the affiliate program calculates the total revenue and commission and disburses the payments automatically, but sometimes you may have to check and issue the payment manually. The payroll responsibility may vary depending on the affiliate program type and technical setup. - Legal & Compliance
It’s important to monitor how the affiliates perform across brand guidelines and keep them compliant to avoid regulatory issues. Also, it’s important to have terms and conditions, affiliate policy, and other legal policies signed with the affiliates and keep them in check to ensure they are compliant.
Summary:
So overall, taking care of those core responsibilities and other additional things (as needed) to manage and grow the overall affiliate program is affiliate program management. One affiliate manager or business owner can often take care of a small-scale affiliate campaign themselves, whereas a big and powerful affiliate management team like MonsterClaw is often hired to manage large affiliate campaigns. If you want to discuss about your affiliate program, you can book a free call with our affiliate consultant.
