Affiliate Program Tips for Merchants

by Amy Harrin

I am loving ShareASale’s new “Recruitment Tool”.  It launched in January 2017, and for the first time ever allows us as merchants to reach out and e-mail top prospective publishers in ShareASale for free. I have personally been using it for 6 months and it is a winner!

ShareASale does not make the contact info and e-mail of their affiliates visible, and so that has been a major challenge for me using them in the past, especially if I do not have an existing contact in my personal database for the site. With these new “Affiliate Invitations”, I can target and reach out to publishers that I would like to join my program based on my set criteria, and ShareASale provides me with a snapshot view of their earning potential fit, audience overview, and feedback score.

You are allotted 30 new invitations a month for free which makes them like little recruitment jewels. For every invitation that is accepted by an affiliate, you get 2 free. I love how the e-mail is delivered to the prospective affiliate and is co-branded with ShareASale’s name, which I truly believe helps with the open rate and ultimately the sign-up conversion rate being higher than if I were to just reach out on my own. So far I have successfully signed up several mega publishers that I would not have had direct access to without this tool!

HERE IS HOW IT WORKS:

Step 1:  Create baskets with niche names in order to segment and organize future prospects as you browse through the network directory. These baskets will hold the targeted prospects until you are ready to send your invitation.

ShareASale Affiliate Recruitment “Affiliate Invitations”

Step 2:   Build an incentive that you will later include in your invitations. An incentive can be a sign-up bonus, a % increase in commission or whatever you want to do to entice the affiliate to sign-up to your program. A popular incentive that has been successful is doubling the new affiliate’s commission for the first 30-days.

Step 3:  Create an e-mail template that will encourage the targeted affiliates to sign up and join your program. This should include details about your company, the affiliate opportunity with regards to commission, cookie duration etc, and don’t forget to mention the incentive or bonus you should have set up to entice them to act now and sign-up to get starting making $.

Step 4:  Search and curate ShareASale’s listed categories for your ideal target prospects. Each affiliate in the network is organized into a category. Click on the category tag to browse, and select the appropriate recruitment basket for each targeted prospect you want to invite to your program.

Step 5: When you are ready to start sending invites, click on a basket that you have already curated and choose from the list the publishers you want to invite.

Here is what it looks like to the affiliate when it is delivered from ShareASale:

If you need help with anything, ShareASale has a very responsive tech team that can be easily accessed by clicking on the “Help” tab at the top of your merchant dashboard, they usually reply within 24-hours, and also actually answer the phone too if you prefer to talk to someone, love that!

Do you have any tips that you would like to share? Feel free to comment.