The 10 most common affiliate management mistakes you'll make this Q4

The 10 most common affiliate management mistakes you'll make this Q4I’ve made them.  You’ve probably made them, and to be honest, I’ll be probably make them again.  I asked my amazing staff what they feel are the most common mistakes affiliate managers make, ie, they made, before and during Q4.  Their answers were honest and really drove home the importance and value of processes in your affiliate management.

It is even more important for a vast majority of advertisers that you don’t make these mistakes in Q4.  Any mistake is magnified by the amount of shopping going on and the importance of this period.  So, don’t get caught making one of these simple mistakes this year.

These are ranked in no order of importance, frankly, they are all important :).

  1. Last Ship Dates, Planning for and Notifying Affiliates.  Do you already have your schedule outlined, communication to your affiliates set up and your creative in the que to take advantage of these dates?  Make sure you don’t push out a promotion that requires shipping of a certain kind after that guaranteed date has passed.  That happens all the time and it only serves to aggravate your customers and affiliate partners.
  2. Forget to Plan.  This really is a mistake you make in May, June and July, not in October.  Sometimes you can’t plan, but those sometimes need to be as infrequent as possible.  Even if you feel you can’t plan, I’ll call BS on that.  You can plan many things now, or in June, and then adjust plans when circumstances change.
  3. Gift Certificates.  Do you offer commission on gift certificate sales?  Redemptions?  Either way, it’s time to let your affiliates know.  If you do, make sure you have creative for them and make sure you let them know as your last ship dates approach that if you can’t guarantee arrival any longer, they can purchase gift cards.
  4. Waiting to Long to Test.  Q4 is not the time to test things.  Test January through August so that you can have the best plan possible in Q4.
  5. Securing Paid Placements Too Late.  Are you trying to secure all your paid placements in October?  Noticing that there are not many things available?  Yeah, we do too.  Start in June.
  6. Link Accuracy.  Forgetting to check your links daily will lead to bad days.  Check these all the time.
  7. Landing Pages.  How often are you following your links through to the landing pages and experiencing what customers experience?  Problems always happen here and you need to develop and execute a process to check these daily.
  8. Auditing Affiliates.  How often are you visiting your affiliates’ sites to ensure offers are up and up correctly?  Many affiliate managers assume that affiliates put up all the offers on time, early in the day every single time.  Many don’t, they simply have os much to do.  So check, every. single. day.
  9. Late Recruiting.  Expecting affiliates who are not in your program to join in November is short sighted at best.  Do your recruiting prior to Q4.
  10. Expectations. Expecting affiliates to give you premo placement at a low cost in Q4 when you have turned them down for advanced opportunities all year long.  Affiliate marketing is about relationships, and you need to cultivate those all year long, not just in Q4.
  11. Coasting.  Black Friday isn’t the end of your work, innovation, negotiation or optimization.  Don’t move on to next years’ planning too quickly.  Check your metrics daily and measure against your goals and make as many adjustments as you can.

I’m sure this isn’t a comprehensive list, so what mistakes have you made in Q4?  We could all learn a bit!