by Amy Harrin
HOW TO GET NEW AFFILIATES… FAST
Now that you have launched your new program on CJ, the real challenge ahead is getting quality affiliates to find you, sign up, and perform for you. Every new affiliate program that launches appears on the home page of the CJ publisher dashboard for 30-days. As time progresses, your brand falls further and further down the list, and eventually drops off after the 30-days are up.
CJ’s Mention of New Advertisers
While this is a nice benefit that CJ provides to it’s new Advertisers upon launch, many publishers don’t actively search for new programs to join because they are busy simply managing the existing merchant relationships they already have. So, they may not ever see your brand, or know that you have an affiliate program. With that said you must be assertive and employ multiple tactics to attract new affiliates to your program. I always perform a combination of recruitment methods simultaneously.
Here are a couple of tried and true ways to “get found” and attract new affiliates to your program using what CJ provides to you.
FREE TOOL:
CJ’s “Beta Recruitment Tool” is a service that is built into your merchant dashboard, and allows you to search for new partners, as well as extend an invitation/offer to them to join your program. You can find publishers with a website that either matches your ideal keywords, or that is proven to perform for a particular category.
Search results can be refined even further by a publisher’s network earnings and location. As an example, if I am looking for partners that have content related to “shoes” this tool will pull up publishers that meet that criteria based on the URL name and or other points of data in their publisher account that mention the word “shoes”.
You can get to the Beta Recruitment Tool” by going to “Publishers” tab in your dashboard at the top and then the “Recruit” sub-tab.
Here is a screen shot of the Beta Recruitment screen in CJ:
CJ Beta Recruitment Tool
PAID E-MAIL CAMPAIGNS:
CJ provides an e-mail tool built into the platform whereby you can target affiliates that are not yet joined to your program. The cost is 15 cents per e-mail address, and you have the ability to target publishers in different categories and countries. The tool gives you an estimate before your proceed so if you have a budget you can stick to that by micro-targeting and therefore eliminating affiliates that may not be a perfect fit.
You can find it by going to “Mail” tab at the top of your dashboard and then the“E-mail Campaigns” sub-tab.
Below is an example of how to get started with a campaign:
CJ E-mail Campaigns Screen 1
CJ E-mail Campaigns Screen 2
CJ E-mail Campaigns Screen 3
Recruitment E-mail Sample
I would recommend engaging in these 2 tactics immediately to bring in new quality affiliates to your program, they are built into the CJ platform and easy to use.
Commission Junction (CJ) just published this helpful white paper below on what we can expect for holidays 2016.
Affiliate Program Tips for Merchants 