Finding, recruiting and helping affiliates prosper is the foundation of building a successful affiliate program.

Identifying the right affiliates is an art developed with years of experience. It’s also a mix of diligent research, using defined processes, and often a bit of luck involved.

Expert affiliate managers understand that each merchant may have different objectives and require a unique combination of affiliate types. This may be based on program goals such as driving leads, gaining brand exposure, growing newsletter signups, driving website conversions, etc. Factors such as the brand's vertical and business model can also come into play.

However, one of the most important things in your recruiting efforts is looking for quality over quantity! That is also why you'll want to manually approve affiliates. You’re likely to get some great applications as affiliates discover your brand, but carefully vetting each one ensures you get only those that are a really good fit.

Relevance is Key

Regardless of affiliate type (coupon/deal, loyalty/rewards, content, influencers, niche vertical, paid search, review/comparison, etc.) it’s crucial to identify affiliates that have content or a target audience that is relevant to the merchant’s products. Obviously, an affiliate promoting auto parts isn’t a fit for a merchant with vegan meal kits. However, there are times when the synergy might not be immediately obvious, but could work. For example: an outerwear apparel brand that typically targets affiliates that focus on adventure, outdoor and active people might work for pet affiliates who create content about hiking with dogs or even city dog owners in search of the perfect rain gear for walking dogs. Get creative in your thinking.

Important Affiliate Criteria

Once you’ve found some possible fits, you’ll want to look at a number of important elements for bringing affiliates into your program

• Publishing cadence – the more often an affiliate writes or posts about topics related to the brand’s products, the better. Look for a regular schedule of postings – daily, weekly, multiple times a week. 
• Aligns with your brand ethics – make sure to dig deep into the affiliate’s postings – beyond the first 5 or 10. You don’t want to find out they have views (political or religious) or content (maybe adult) that may not be in sync with the values, mission, and ethics or your brand.
• Follower count vs engagement – most affiliates also use some social channels to promote their website, but reviewing engagement is especially important with influencers. Follower count can be misleading (fake followers or paying for followers). Engagement is a much more telling and accurate statistic as it shows how often and how many people interact with each posting – by commenting, liking or sharing.
• Network rankings – if you’re recruiting within a network platform, you can see the affiliates rank in the network. While this isn’t always a predictor of how they will do in your program, it is a clue as to their past performance, which can be helpful.

How to Find Affiliate Marketers

There are tens of thousands of people using an affiliate model to monetize, whether it’s a blog, website, social channel or using paid search. Now that you know what you are looking for in an affiliate, the next step is finding them.

Social media – Each of the social platforms has their own search tools. You can search for keywords you’ve identified as relevant. And if you find a one great possible target, you can also look at who they follow to get additional targets. This works really well on Twitter and Instagram.

Reach out to niche bloggers – Again, some simply searching can reveal the top bloggers in specific niches and verticals. Aggregating these to make a hit list is a great starting point.

Other similar or competitor’s programs – Often you can see which affiliates are in rival programs and reach out to those affiliates touting a better commission rate, an incentive, or that by not including your brand their audience is missing out.

Gap analysis – Comparing partners in two programs, can yield a lot of leads. This works for the same vertical as well as adjunct subjects. For example: your beachwear brand is likely to see a lot of affiliate potential with some publishers in an existing travel affiliate program. 

Tools – There are a myriad of tools that help identify influencers and bloggers. There are also search tools (beyond just googling) that let you look up keywords and phrases. Once you have those you can search for affiliates and content that uses those.

Reaching Out To Recruit Affiliates

Contacting potential affiliates can be tricky. Some hate emails. Some never check their messages in the network (even using a unique address for that network or program so as to avoid what they perceive as spam). Some prefer DMs (direct messages) on social media.

Get personal – Whatever method you use for reaching out, you want to get directly to the point, be authentic and engaging, and get personal to show you know them and have done your homework. There is nothing worse than making a mistake about what they do or who they target. That is an immediate turn off or way to be deleted.

A little praise goes a long way – Be sure to look at their postings and say something complimentary. Who doesn’t want to hear” XXX brand wants to partner with you because you provide such educational content on XX topic. I love the post about how to find the best XX.” Or “Your kids are adorable. I love how you take such fun family shots of them helping in the kitchen. I’m going to involve my little one in making your Keto blueberry coffee cake recipe. It looks so delicious!”

Address them from their perspective – Yes, you are reaching out on behalf of the merchant, but this is not about how this affiliate joining the program will help the brand. Rather, the focus should be on how it benefits the affiliate and their audience to work with your brand. For example: working with XX brand allows you to provide your audience with another valuable product that can help simplify their busy lives.”

Give them all the info – Be sure to include one sentence about the merchant and a link to their website. Let the potential affiliate know the important program details (commission rate, cookie duration, etc.) Give them ways to contact you (phone, email) as well as letting them know you are open to discussing this potentially lucrative opportunity.

Special sign up links – If possible, you can provide a special signup link or a direct signup. This is another way to make them feel special. These links are created in the network and given to selected targets so they can “join” the program in a few clicks. Essentially, they are pre-approved (often with a unique link or code) and don’t have to apply to the network and then apply to the program. This is especially helpful if you are dealing with an influencer or someone who may have less affiliate experience.

Follow up – We can’t say this enough…follow up, and then follow up again. Affiliates are busy people. They might have deleted your message, Or maybe it’s just buried in their inbox. Sending a second and third message just might prompt them to take action and join the program. 

Create an easy-to-find program landing page – 

It’s a lot of work to get the right affiliates but it’s crucial. It’s also very exciting when you see and help in individual affiliate growth and program success.