Are You Thanking Your Affiliates?

Ok, so I’m checking out some of my buddies’ sites, and I ran across a blog post by my good friend, and marketing expert, Keith Baxter, who had a simple, but powerful tip that can be directly applied to motivating your affiliates to TAKE ACTION…

“The Power of Thank You Notes”

I highly recommend that you read his blog post right away (it’s brief), but whatever you do, come back here to see how you can take advantage of this to motivate your affiliates.

It often seems so difficult to keep affiliates motivated enough to continue promoting your products.

As a product owner or affiliate manager, I’m sure you’re always on the lookout for the latest “secret” or “trick” to getting affiliates to take action (or keep them taking action).

Well, here’s a SIMPLE action step you can take right away, anytime you notice that affiliates have made some sales for you, or even when you notice that someone just joined your affiliate program…

THANK THEM!

You may be asking… “That’s it? That’s your big tip for today?”

If there’s one thing that my mom and dad instilled in me from the very early years of my life, it’s how to say “please” and “thank you” whenever someone does something for you.

In business, by going out of your way to show that you appreciate someone for taking a particular action of any kind, whether it’s buying a product, making an affiliate sale, or even joining your affiliate program… you show that person that you care.

And as a bonus, it allows you to stand out from the pack because hardly anyone is doing this.

Sure, you probably get an autoresponder message that thanks you for your order or welcomes you to an affiliate program you just joined, but I’d bet you’re not getting anything as simple as a thank you note in the mail, are you?

I mean, how much extra effort or expense does it take to sit down and write out a thank you note and drop it in the mail, anyway?

Here’s what I recommend that you do to thank your NEW affiliates:

1) Buy a bunch of thank you cards.
2) Determine who registered as affiliates (weekly).
3) Send thank you cards out to each new affiliate.

For affiliates who made a sale (or sales) for you:

1) Buy a bunch of thank you notes.
2) Determine which affiliates made sales for you (weekly).
3) Send thank you cards AND gift cards/certificates to your affiliates.
4) For LARGE sales, send gift baskets or other pricier gifts.

Obviously, if you had an affiliate sell one $17 ebook, you don’t want to spend $50 on a gift basket, or whatever, but a simple thank you card letting them know how much you appreciate them could reasonably lead to hundreds or thousands of dollars in sales down the road for you.

One example of a thank you gesture that I recently received was a gift basket full of gourmet foods, bottles of wine, etc. from a client who I’ve been helping to attract JV partners. That really caught my attention, and made me that much more eager to do a good job for him.

Whatever you do, always remember what momma and pappa taught you… always say “thank you”!

Tagged as: Keith Baxter, motivate affiliates