Wednesday, January 24, 2007

How NOT to Recruit Affiliates

So I got an email today from an affiliate manager, or an account executive, whatever you want to call him. The subject line read: "Randy will you promote our new widget".

Now that's not too bad. It at least got me to open the email. (I delete a lot of emails, especially the ones that say "You link to be removed".)

Then I read the first line of the email: "Dear sir, Widget.com has a brand new widget variation that is taking the world by storm. We would like to partner with www.genericwidgetdomain.com (place any website here) in promoting widgets."

This part, "(place any website here)" was literally actually in the email, word for word.

What's wrong with this email?

1- I'm already an affiliate, so there's no need to "recruit" me into their affiliate program. (If their affiliate managers were really on top of their game, they would know what all of my related wesites are already.)

2- Not changing the generic wording in the email is just a really bad, amateurish mistake. When I did affiliate recruitment, I hand-typed at the very least the first paragraph of every email I sent out, period. There is 0 excuse for sending out an email that isn't at least slightly customized. Hell, they obviously knew my name because they used it in the subject line, but in the salutation of the email, they referred to me as "Dear Sir".

3- The rest of the email wasn't bad, but it was short, and it didn't spell out the features and benefits of the affiliate program. Here's a hint for all you aspiring affiliate managers: if you're going to contact me about becoming an affiliate for your company, please include information about how much commission you pay, and what kind of earning potential that translates into.

Don't try to "tease" me into wanting to find out more. I'm busy, I work hard, and I don't have time for you to be coy, and the kind of affiliates you want to recruit are a lot like me.

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