9 Tips on How to Select an Affiliate Program Management Company

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Once you have made the decision that you need to hire an affiliate program management company, you will need to closely examine a few things outside of just the cost structure to ensure you partner with the right outsourced affiliate program management (OPM) company.

How to Select an Affiliate Program Management Company

1. Look for proven experience.
   It’s not critical that the affiliate program management company you work with has direct experience selling in your category. What’s more important is how experienced they are in recruitment, optimization, and activation and how they can leverage that experience for your brand.
2. Don’t be fooled by large numbers of affiliates.
   Many affiliate management companies boast about how many affiliates they work with. While that can imply they are well networked, affiliate programs routinely follow the 80/20 rule where 20% of the affiliates drive 80% or better of the revenue in the program. Therefore, having the top tier affiliates in your program is more important than the gross number you have.
3. Activity in the affiliate marketing community.
   This is a good indicator that they are abreast of any current affiliate issues or practices. Do they participate in affiliate discussion forums? Do they attend affiliate conferences? Do they speak at affiliate events? These can help you determine how engaged they are in the affiliate space which can give you a pulse on their operation. Are they visible?
4. Reputation.
   Is the OPM Company known for its ethical practices? Do they have a rock solid reputation or one that isn’t what you expected? Do a search online and see what people are saying about them. You may be very surprised by what you can find sometimes.
5. Procedures to enforce trademark policies.
   If brand or trademark is an issue, how will the outsourced affiliate program management company enforce your brand standards and trademark policies? Do they police your brand for you? Is it even on their radar? If an affiliate program management company talks about brand and trademark protection, it can be a very good sign.
6. What kind of screening process they employ.
   Some affiliate program management companies auto approve affiliates without manually screening affiliates while others carefully review the affiliates to make sure there is a good fit and that no pornography or gambling related sites sneak through.
7. Affiliate network selection process.
   What affiliate network your company recommends for your affiliate program can make a big difference when launching an affiliate program. Some will promote an inhouse solution while others will recommend a third party affiliate network or a hybrid of both.
   Ask how they determine which network you will go into and if they want to place your affiliate program in a traditional affiliate network or a CPA network. They are NOT the same thing and will be detailed in a future post. Suffice it to say, the methods used to promote your product are VERY different between the two types of networks.
   If you hear “because that’s what we always use” or “because we can generate high volume” you may want to reconsider.
8. First tier vs. second tier affiliates.
   If you care anything about your brand, you want to focus on first tier affiliate programs. Second tier affiliate programs are when an affiltiae manager approves one affiliate and that affiliate invites and approves others to promote your products and make additional commission on their sales. What can go wrong here is that you and the affiliate management company just lost control of who is promoting your product, and how they are promoting it.
9. Evaluate their recruiting prowess.
   Recruiting is the hardest job in affiliate management. So, you’ll want to ask a few questions. Do they just work within the established affiliate network or do they go outside of the network? Do they primarily focus on recruiting deal sites or do they go after niche based affiliates like datafeeders, review sites, video bloggers, etc? This can tell you a lot about what you can expect from the affiliate program management company.

To learn more about Net Media Group’s proven affiliate program management give us a call at (801) 365-0057 today!