When it comes to affiliate marketing, affiliates and merchants should have a common goal. Whether it is to increase sales or new leads, both parties should be on the same page to accomplish that goal. However, over the past year we have seen instances where merchants have made decisions regarding their affiliate program that have left affiliates saying, “Huh?”

Sometimes a merchant’s decisions can be so egregious that they’ll end up on an affiliate’s “Naughty List”. In fact, veteran affiliate marketer Tricia Meyer has written a great blog post about merchants who deserve lumps of coal for their actions this year. We would like to expand on that list with a few additional things we have seen merchants do this past year that would certainly qualify them for placement on an affiliate’s “Naughty List”

So merchants – Please take note of the things you can be doing to avoid being put on that list and getting lumps of coal next year!

1. Lack of Advance Notice:
Wouldn’t it be nice to receive an email that informs you of a new coupon that is going live next week, and if you can try to give it extra exposure? No, instead affiliates receive urgent emails that say, “OUR NEW COUPON IS GOING UP TODAY, CAN YOU PLEASE POST IT ALL OVER YOUR SITE ASAP?!?!”

Affiliates are busy business-people so merchants need give affiliates as much advance notice as possible so they can prepare their websites and marketing plans as needed.

2. No Promotional Details:
Some merchant’s not only fail to give advance notice, but further drop the ball by not giving the complete story about a new promotion. So, affiliates are expected to drop everything to promote this great offer, but are not told the coupon’s expiration date or that the deal is only available for 150 sales and suddenly that promotion must come down RIGHT NOW! Accordingly, the merchant shouldn’t be surprised when affiliates decide it’s time to move on to the next program.

3. Changing Commission Rates:
It is natural in the course of business that circumstances beyond a merchant’s control often necessitate change. However, cutting an affiliate’s source of income (i.e their commission rate) should be one of the very last steps a merchant considers when reviewing the long-term sustainability of their affiliate program. If a merchant decides to essentially reduce the affiliates income, the merchant should not be surprised when affiliates drop them like a hot potato to find a comparable program to promote. There was even one story of an affiliate’s commission being cut from 4% to 1.5%! I hope the affiliate said “Adios, amigo” to this merchant!

4. Putting a Program on Auto-Pilot:
There are far too many well-managed programs out there for affiliates to work with instead of working with a merchant who thinks they’ll a successful affiliate program by auto-approving every application received from China and Taiwan, from ToolBar/BHO affiliates, and PPC hacks. If an affiliate finds themselves in a program that suddenly appears to have no one steering the ship, the affiliate will look elsewhere to find a professionally managed program.

5. Vague PPC policies:
A merchant should have a Program manager that knows the ins and outs of PPC management and whether affiliates should be allowed to do PPC-Marketing. Any successful PPC-Marketer that a merchant works with should not be subject to constantly-changing keyword and PPC-linking policies. A merchant needs to set their policy after carefully considering the pros and cons of what keywords are allowed and which are restricted, then stick with and enforce it.

6. Keeping Outdated Links Available:
A sure sign of a program that needs professional management help is a program that has coupon codes for Christmas still available in mid-July. It is cumbersome enough for an affiliate to find the right link to use in the network interfaces, so merchants need to take the responsibility of removing dead and expired links from the networks.

7. Reactionary Decision Making:
When merchants react to situations they may not fully understand or don’t want to invest the resources to research, they often react with knee-jerk decisions that lead to terminated relationships with quality affiliates and ultimately, the death of their affiliate programs. Many times the decision to terminate their affiliates comes with little advance notice, rather the merchant sends an email which states something to the effect of, “Effective immediately, affiliates in the state of XYZ, are terminated from the XXX Affiliate Program”. Making snap decisions without doing proper due diligence leads to bad decisions which ultimately hurt a merchant’s relationships and the affiliate programs success.

8. Having Tracking Problems:
This has to be one of the most frustrating thing a merchant can do. An affiliate works hard to get a customer to their site, they market and pre-sell a product, a customer clicks over and YES, there is a conversion!!! Then, for some reason the tracking suddenly stops working and future sales do not get credited to the affiliates. Merchants that are not consistently reviewing their affiliate tracking systems for accuracy are doomed to fail.

9. An Unusually High Reversal Rate:
A sale was tracked and commission was paid, but for whatever reason the sale gets reversed. Yes, reversals are something every e-commerce site has to deal with, but a unusually high reversal rate will keep the smart affiliates from investing their time promoting the merchant. And merchants that fail to respond to questions about the reasons their orders being reversed will only further alienate their affiliates.

10. Working with Parasite Affiliates:
With the amount of self-policing that occurs in this industry, if a merchant is working with affiliates that are the so-called “Black Hat” affiliates and does nothing about it, you can be sure affiliates will make it well known that the merchant’s affiliate program is one other affiliates should avoid.

11. Providing Very Short Cookies Times:
In e-commerce, comparison shopping is a given, meaning a customer that comes to a merchant’s site from an affiliate’s site may not complete the transaction after that first visit. Why penalize the affiliate with a very short cookie time because the customer decides to leave the merchant site in order to read one more review before completing their purchase? Merchants should permit the maximum allowed cookie time thereby giving the affiliate maximum time to earn a commission.

To sum it up, a merchant’s communications should be clear, thorough and should provide advance notice whenever possible. Secondly, a merchant needs to proactively manage their affiliate program to eliminate any pitfalls that come from program negligence. If a merchant does these important steps, they will have a much greater chance of maintaining successful relationships with their affiliates over the years.

Surely this list is not all encompassing and there are other things merchant’s have done over the year to end up on an affiliate’s “naughty list”. Please feel free to share what you have seen – with your input merchants can work towards improving their affiliate program for everyone’s benefit!

Happy Holidays and Happy E-Commercing!