The best way to make affiliate marketers aware of – and then to join – your affiliate program is for you to include your program in an affiliate directory, according to research by AffStat.

AffStat’s recent 2010 survey of 1,150 affiliate marketers indicates that the largest contingent of affiliates find out about, and join, affiliate programs that are featured in an affiliate directory (cited by 18.3 percent of affiliates), whilst another significant group are enticed to join an affiliate program when an affiliate marketer contacts them directly (16.2 percent of affiliates).

Here is the breakdown of how affiliates most often find out about, and then join, an affiliate program:

• Word of mouth: 1.3 percent of affiliates
• Affiliate directory: 18.3 percent
• Google: 18 percent
• Affiliate manager contacts you: 16.2 percent
• Conferences: 11.3 percent
• Affiliate manager is active on message boards: 6.4 percent
• Networking offerings: 6.2 percent
• Personal research: 5.7 percent
• Affiliate manager blogs: 5.7 percent
• Advertising in print publications: 4.6 percent
• Affiliate manager is on Twitter: 3.9 percent
• Affiliate forums: 1.3 percent
• Word of mouth: 1.3 percent
• Other: 1 percent

Once recruited to an affiliate program, most affiliates want to hear from their affiliate manager on a monthly basis (cited by 49 percent of affiliates) whilst 36.1 percent want to hear from them weekly, 11.1 percent want communication on a quarterly basis, and 3.8 percent don’t want their affiliate manager to contact them.

How do affiliates want to be contacted on an individual basis? Email is by far the most preferred method of one-to-one communication among affiliate marketers, followed by phone as a distant second:

• Email: 64.4 percent of affiliates
• Phone: 12.6 percent
• Phone, IM and email: 11.9 percent
• IM: 9.5 percent
• Network interface: 0.8 percent
• Social network: 0.8 percent

Most affiliate marketers – 62.4 percent – want to get information from an affiliate manager via email. This includes 41 percent who want a merchant to email them and 21.4 percent who want to be contacted via affiliate network internal email.

Here is the list of ways in which affiliates prefer to find out information from their affiliate manager:

• Merchant email: 41 percent of affiliates
• Network internal email: 21.4 percent
• Company website: 13.8 percent
• Network area for merchant: 6.2 percent
• Blog: 8.1 percent
• Twitter: 2.4 percent
• Instant Messenger: 2.4 percent
• Video: 1.9 percent
• Phone: 1.4 percent
• Social network site: 1 percent
• Affiliate forum: 0.5 percent

Source: Missy Ward and Shawn Collins, “2010 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report,” AffStat

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 7:42 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Kikabink Lab, Market Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.