10 Reasons to hire an Outsourced Affiliate Management Company

Many advertisers/merchants that come to us are in the midst of determining whether they want to hire someone internally to manage their program, or find an outsourced affiliate management (http://jebcommerce NULL.com/affiliate-program-management/) agency like JEBCommerce.  It’s a very common question, so if you are reading this post and in the throws of this discovery, you are not alone.

There are advantages to both and honest drawbacks.  But today, allow me to elaborate on ten reasons why using an outsourced affiliate management agency could be beneficial for you.  JEBCommerce has been managing affiliate programs since 2004 and our team has over 30 years of online marketing experience with over 30 programs.  That breadth and depth adds a lot to a program and it’s where our 10 reasons begins.

Instance Experience Managing Your Program:

Affiliate management agencies provide an experienced team to manage and grow your program right away.  Immediately you acquire a team, with combined experiences, skills and proven track records that go far beyond what one single manager can provide.  This breadth of knowledge and exposure to an increasingly wide range of circumstances proves itself to be very valuable in launching and growing affiliate programs.

No training costs: Often times, an affiliate manager is still going to need training time.  But because an affiliate management agency should have it’s own training program, you don’t have to pay for this part of affiliate program management (JEBCommerce has an extensive training program we call MyAffiliateCoach).  Agencies are also exposed to many different circumstances, experience that only comes from working on multiple accounts across industries that allows us to act more quickly to circumstances because, in all likelihood, we have experienced something similar with a different client.

Lower overall costs: A good affiliate manager can cost upwards of $100,000 to  $150,000 plus bonuses a year.  An affiliate manager with 7-10 years of experience, successes over multiple programs and demonstrated success is priceless and worth every penny.    But many firms aren’t able to add that much to their budget.  Affiliate management agencies, like JEBCommerce, allow you to get industry leading experts working on your program, but also a team.  Where you could only afford one person, an outsourced affiliate management firm provides 2-5 people on your account.  When you compare the resources put to your account by working with someone like us and what you could get internally, the cost/benefit analysis falls heavily to the outsourced agency.

Exposure: When you become a client of JEBCommerce, you join a stable of clients, across industries, sectors and business models.  Simply by being in this “club”, you’re program reaches the affiliates in all these programs.  Agencies typically make a big splash at industry events.  At last year’s Affiliate Summit West, we brought four individuals and 6 people from our clients.  That was quite a force, 10 people meeting with affiliates and all of us promoting all of the JEBCommerce programs.  We also operate as a team on all the social networks, major affiliate forums and are constantly communicating with affiliates, as a team, reaching more affiliates every week.

Less internal resources needed: Because many affiliate management agencies can provide technical, creative and recruiting and activation resources, typically you only need to be available for a short meeting each week and a few emails.  Agencies operate differently, at JEBCommerce we manage everything from approvals and affiliate inquiries, to top level strategy development and execution to profitability and goal setting.

Lower risk involved in finding “the right fit”: With every employee hire you run the risk of hiring incorrectly.  And although you run this same risk with any type of agency, the risk is lower.  It is much easier to plug in an agency today, hold the course for a time, and replace them with another or an in-house affiliate manager than replacing employees.  Adding headcount is difficult and there is a value in not having to hire and fire an employee.  With an agency, you can keep that relationship and request a different account lead if one isn’t working out for you.  Because we work as a team on our clients’ accounts, if one account manager does not meet your needs, we can swap out another one with no downtime and no learning curve.  Every affiliate manager at JEBCommerce is brought up to speed on each account during our daily morning meetings.

Results Orientated: “We eat what we kill” is often the mentality of a performance marketing agency.  It can be an unsavory analogy, but one that fits quite well. Our industry is commission/performance/results based.  Because of this, agencies can often times deliver more results from this environment.

Economies of scale: There are certain functions in affiliate management that can be done quicker and more efficiently when done across many programs.  We often speak to one affiliate about all our programs at one time.  In this case, instead of say 10 individual 30 minute conversations, we can discuss each client at once on one conversation.  There are many different examples of this type of efficiencies available to an outsourced affiliate marketing agency that an in-house affiliate manager is not able to take advantage of.

Network Access Discounts: This is pretty self explanatory, but most agencies are able to offer discounts from the major affiliate networks.

The Juice: “you like-a da-juice?” (how could I not include this outstanding Saturday Night Live reference?).   I hope you get a chance to visit us at our offices and experience the vibe, the daily rundowns and the buzz and speed of how we work.  There is a certain undefined characteristic of an agency that is hard to measure or quantify, we call it the juice. It’s a culmination of our team’s diversity, our clients’ industry segments, our passion and experience lead to innovation, efficiencies, and full throttle performance.

Those are our ten top reasons to work with an affiliate management agency.  There are many more, if you’d like to hear them, and chat about your affiliate needs, feel free to call us at 800-208-6215 or  Chat With JEBCommerce Now! (http://chat NULL.livechime NULL.com/65T2V65S/jebcommerce)

Each situation has benefits and disadvantages, my hope is that after reading our article above, you can see more clearly why your program could grow faster, generate more sales, contribute more profit to your bottom line and attract more new customers.