I’ve been an affiliate manager for over a decade. When I started in 2004, trying to explain to people what I did or what affiliate or online marketing was, it felt like explaining string theory to my son. Their eyes would get glossy, and a confused expression would blanket their face. It’s ok; Google wasn’t even a household name then, so what did I expect?
Fast forward to 2023, where affiliate marketing is a buzzword, and you can’t spend more than a few minutes on social media without seeing a post from a coach, expert, or guru trying to sell you a course on how to make money through affiliate marketing. Yet, even with the popularity explosion of affiliate marketing, I still find that many people, even in the marketing world, don’t understand what an affiliate manager is or what we do, so I thought this would be a great time to try and explain it again.
What is an Affiliate Manager?
An affiliate manager manages the affiliate publishers, i.e., bloggers, influencers, creators, and other online marketers, on behalf of an advertiser, i.e., a brand. We are responsible for finding, onboarding, managing new affiliate partnerships, and optimizing existing relationships to drive customer acquisition, revenue, and growth. While this is a good surface-level description, let’s dig deeper into some of what affiliate managers do daily.
Strategy
Tasked with creating a program strategy, Affiliate managers define clear goals and objectives for increasing traffic, sales, and revenue. Identify the target audience and key affiliates in the market to recruit. They develop messaging and marketing creative for affiliates and a competitive reward structure. This is repeated monthly, quarterly, and annually.
Manage
An affiliate manager is in charge of the brand’s affiliate program, whether an internal affiliate solution like AffiliateWP or an external affiliate network such as CJ Affiliate, ShareASale, or IMPACT. We are responsible for launching new campaigns, approving affiliate applications, responding to affiliates’ questions, and troubleshooting technical issues. We also ensure affiliates comply with the brand’s terms and conditions, write and send newsletters, upload fresh advertising assets and manage affiliate commission payments.
Recruit
A large part of any affiliate manager’s day is spent looking for and recruiting potential affiliates. We use marketing research tools to help us find and build lists of promising affiliates to contact. We develop outreach campaigns to contact the affiliate list and work to create win/win partnerships with publishers who can put the brand’s offer in front of their target audience.
Negotiate
Affiliates aren’t one-size-fits-all, and each may have different requirements. The affiliate manager is responsible for negotiating commission rates and other terms of the affiliate agreement to ensure a mutually beneficial partnership with each affiliate.
Communicate
To maximize any affiliate partnership, affiliate managers have to communicate and educate. We consistently inform affiliate partners about new products, product updates, and promotions. We educate them by suggesting copy edits for their website, helping them with campaign tweaks, and teaching them marketing tactics that can help them be more effective and successful.
Track
The affiliate manager is responsible for tracking the affiliate program’s performance, including traffic, sales, revenue, and budget. We use this data to calculate metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate (CR), cost-per-action (CPA), and return on investment (ROI). Doing this helps us monitor the program’s health on an individual level and the affiliate program as a whole.
Analyze
The only way to grow an affiliate program is to understand what is working and what isn’t. A good affiliate manager will spend part of each day analyzing each affiliate’s CTR, CR, CPA, and ROI to identify trends, growth opportunities, and challenges that need to be addressed.
This list doesn’t include every element of an affiliate manager’s role nor go into the fine nuances of each one; however, I think it covers the main areas of the position and enough detail to understand what we do and why we do it.
Affiliate managers are some of the most well-rounded marketers there are.
We are relationship builders and nurturers, deal negotiators, support agents, program managers, and teachers.
We are data-driven analytics nerds with an extensive understanding of online marketing tactics.
We write copy and blast emails.
We know the ins and outs of every traffic source.
We are the swiss army knives of the marketing world and I, for one, love it!
I hope this has shed a little light on an area of marketing I’m incredibly passionate about. If you have questions or comments or still have a confused look blanketing your face, please use the comment section, and I’d be happy to chat with you about it. Also, if you’re a company looking for an experienced affiliate manager, please hit me up, as I’m #opentowork!
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