JV Strategy – Get Affiliates To Send Direct Mail (Q&A with Andy)

This past week, I sent out an email with 7 questions to see how many of you would respond.

Let’s just say it was A LOT.

What I’ve decided to do is to occasionally share some of the questions I’ve received, along with my answers, because I thought it might help you if you have some of the same questions.

The following question, however, came to me from a top marketer who has been a student of Dan Kennedy for many years, Tom Orent, who had actually contacted me after we recently connected via a Yahoo Groups list we both belong to.

His question actually led me to responding with yet another powerful, advanced JV attraction strategy that you should consider implementing in your business…

Affiliates + Direct Mail = Big Potential Profits

Tom Orent’s Email To Me:

Who usually pays for postage and printing of outbound affiliate mailings?

e.g. Let’s say I find a company happy to e-blast to their list for me, and now I send them a word document which they can print out and mail (with their cover letter or opening paragraphs). What’s the norm?

Does the affiliate normally take charge and do their own printing, handling, postage and pay for those things?

Do product/service owners routinely offer to DO any of that FOR them… i.e. give me your letterhead and your list… you’ll get to approve or edit the document after which my guys will get it all printed and addressed and in the mail for us… (and if so who pays?) Thanks in advance for your sharing wisdom.

Andy’s Response:

That’s a FANTASTIC question!

Typically, your job as the merchant is to provide the affiliate with as many tools as possible to help them properly promote your products/services, and that can include sample direct mail copy to send out to their mailing list… with the onus being on the AFFILIATE to pay for any mailings they may decide to do, since it’s up to them whether or not to mail their house list.

HOWEVER…

You bring up a great strategy that I’ve only just begun to look into and that’s for the merchant to make the offer that you’ve just suggested… to offer to pay for a direct mail campaign to the affiliate’s list, which could also include doing all of the tedious work of stuffing envelopes, addressing envelopes, getting the mailing processed, etc.

The benefit to you, the merchant, is that you have direct access to a fresh list of (hopefully) responsive prospects to contact offline, which is something NO ONE is doing with their affiliate program, and could work really well.

The benefit to the affiliate is that they have absolutely NO work to do, accept send out the mailing and provide the list, but logistics would need to be figured out to protect the affiliate from the merchant gaining CONTROL over the names/addresses on that list… so it may be ideal for the affiliate to actually handle the processing of the mailing.

I’m not real versed on exactly how that would be set up in the direct mail world, personally, but I’m sure there are options to make this strategy as seamless as possible… maybe by using a 3rd party service to take the (1) AFFILIATE’S list and pair that up with the (2) MERCHANT’S pre-arranged mailing, and ships out the mailing on the affiliate’s behalf.

So in a nutshell… it’s the affiliate’s responsibility to pay for any mailings that are sent out to promote the merchant’s products, UNLESS the merchant offers to pay for it – and even process it – on the affiliate’s behalf as an awesome incentive to make it happen.

Finally, I’d just say that my recommendation would be to try and get an email blast done, initially, with the affiliate and if all goes well, then follow up with an offer to do the direct mail project that you mentioned.

I hope this has been helpful!

[I then asked Tom something that I would also like to propose to you, below.]

Do YOU Want 1-on-1 Guidance From Me?

BTW… it’s completely up to you, but I have various coaching options that might be up your alley, if you want some continued guidance from me.

Here’s where I recommend you start, and then if this works for you, we can apply your investment to any other coaching or product you may decide to invest in down the road…

JV Strategy Session & 30-Days Email Coaching With Andy

NOTE: I have a limited number of slots open for this each week, so act fast.

To Massive JV Profits,

Andy Hussong

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