How to Get Your Affiliate Program Ready for the Holidays

It’s that time of year again…it’s officially time to start thinking about the Holiday Season. Is your affiliate program ready? If not, today’s episode is especially for you. And even if you THINK your program is ready, odds are, you’ve probably missed out on something, so listen up. This episode will show you exactly what you need to do RIGHT NOW to get your affiliate program firing on all cylinders in time for the busy holiday season.

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LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Ultimate Guide to Holiday Affiliate Promotions

Affiliate Promo Plan Template

How to Warm Up Your Audience Before a Promo

How to Activate Inactive Affiliates

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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy

How to Maximize Your Black Friday and Cyber Monday Affiliate Sales

How to Leverage Affiliate Manager Relationships with Jessica Turner

Does This Break the First Rule of Affiliate Marketing?

How to Measure Affiliate Program Success: Key Metrics to Track

How to Get Your Affiliates to Promote on a Short Timeframe

How to Get Your Affiliate Program Ready for the Holidays

So it’s that time of year again. It’s officially time to start thinking about the holiday season. My question is, is your affiliate program ready?

If not, today’s episode is especially for you. And even if you think your program is ready ODS are you probably missed out on something. So listen up.

This episode will show you exactly what you need to do right now to get your affiliate program firing on all cylinders in time for the busy holiday season.

So it might seem a little bit early to start thinking about things like Black Friday and holiday shipping deadlines and Christmas and even New Year’s sales. But now is the time to do it. Right now, as this is releasing here, it’s Halloween day.

This episode is releasing on Halloween. It’s the time to start thinking about all those other things. The further in advance you think, the further in advance you plan and notify your affiliates, the more successful your promotions will be.

And as we’ve talked about in the past episodes, it’s that time of year where for some of you, 50, 60% of your sales could come in the next couple of months. And so we talk about planning and thinking. Like, I want to spend 50% to 60% of my time thinking about that.

There are times of the year, there are weeks I remember when I worked with Shutterfly and Adidas and some other big companies where Q Four was such a big thing. The holiday season was massive. And I would spend so much time, like my first year with them, so much time planning a promo that was like in the middle of June.

And these are huge programs. So the difference that time of year was from if I spent a lot of time, was from $300,000 to $400,000. Like, we would do $300,000 in the affiliate program with no big thing, and I would spend all this time for an extra $100,000.

And you go, well, for small businesses, for some of our clients, that’s a big deal. That’s a huge deal. But for them, it wasn’t a big deal because in the same week, in the same seven day time frame, say from December 10 through 16th, it could be the difference between 2,000,004 or $5 million.

So the same amount of effort and planning and just sheer hard work could be a two to $3 million needle mover. So that’s why it’s important to be thinking ahead and planning and notifying your affiliates now, because every little thing you do, like even the smallest things, could move the needle 1% on your entire year’s revenue. It’s not that big of a deal.

Yeah, it is. So today we’re talking about how to get your affiliate programs ready for the holidays. And to be clear, this starts right now.

This starts right now. Now, in the last episode, I talked about how to make your Black Friday and your Cyber Monday promotions, how to max those out. And today I want to talk about pretty much the rest of the holiday season from Tuesday after Cyber Monday on, how do we get our affiliate program ready for this.

And there’ll be a little bit obviously that applies to Black Friday and Cyber Monday because those are the kickoffs. So everything I’m going to talk about today applies to those as well. So let’s start with the very first thing you need to do as this episode is releasing in very early November.

For some of you or who knows, you might be listening to this in June way off in the future. Right now, I want you to focus on rest and prep. As I mentioned in the last episode, this could be an exhausting period of time.

For some of you listening, this period of time isn’t huge. For those of you in retail and other industries, like I said, this could make or break your entire year. I’ve worked with affiliate programs.

I mentioned when I worked with, like, shutterfly and Adidas. When I kind of got into that first year of doing a Q Four, a holiday season, I didn’t know what to expect. And I remember the first year we had killed it.

We had crushed it with the stuff I had done for Shutterfly. We were at 90%, I think almost 100% year over year growth through October. And I didn’t realize how important November and December were.

That’s my fault. But also, nobody really told me. And we actually were only up about 25% year over year for November and December, which is great.

But that meant for the whole year we were only up, I think, like 46% when I’m thinking, man, I mean, I had bonuses tied to 50% growth. I had bonuses tied to 20% growth. I had bonuses tied to, I think, 35% 50.

And then I had my 75% growth. And I’m thinking, man, we’re at 90 something percent. Even if it goes poorly, we could finish the year at 75, 80%.

And quite frankly, my naivete and not working hard end of Q Three into Q Four probably cost me about $50,000. It was a substantial amount of money that I could have made. Now, I learned that lesson in the next year.

I paced myself throughout the year. And the following year, I remember we were only at like 40, 45 basically what we finished the year before through October. But in November and December, we were up like 65 70%.

So we finished the year north of 50%. That’s how much it can move the needle, so it can be exhausting. And so this is critical this rest and prep.

This is why I listed it first. Before I get into the tactical stuff, things are starting to get crazy. So right now is the time you need to do the things.

I talked about a few of these last episode. Talk to your family. My wife needs to understand that when I’m going into one of these phases, like, hey, we talk about it together, I’m going to be busier.

I’m not going to take the kids to practice. They have soccer practice four or five days a week. I might take them once or twice.

And I need you to please do the rest. We might pick up dinner, an extra time or two a week. And I won’t cook, or she won’t cook because she’s taking a kiss to soccer practice.

I might be up a little bit later. I might whatever. And just talk about it with your family.

Let them understand why Daddy’s working a little bit more. Just have that discussion now, not when you get into it. And then there’s regrets.

Get a little bit of extra sleep right now. That’s one of the things I recommend doing. When I was pacing myself to get ready for the really busy season, I would typically go to bed 1520 minutes earlier and wake up about 1520 minutes late.

Just get a little bit of extra sleep. Leading into the really busy season, I recommend altering your diet, especially when you think about the holidays coming up. The reality is, like, I’m going to enjoy Thanksgiving.

I’m not going to eat seven pieces of sweet potato pie like I might have when I was a kid, but I’m going to have a piece or two. I’m going to try a few other things. I’m going to probably eat a few more carbs than I’m used to.

So in preparation for things like this, I start to eat much cleaner, like eliminate sugar. I reduce my caffeine consumption again so I can get more sleep also in parts, so that when I need it, it’s more effective. I reduce processed foods or eliminate them.

I tend to just eat a little bit less too. Like, I don’t eat a ton of carbs normally, but basically I’ll go to less than 60 grams a day during this kind of preparation stretch. And once things are going, I’m trying to maintain the highest level of energy that I can.

It’s just not as important to me in March to do those things. So I do make some adjustments once things get going. They need you to be available.

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Your affiliates need to be available. We talked about this. Like, you’re going to be working early and late hours.

You’re going to be working weekends. You need to be on all channels. You need to communicate how they want you to.

So right now, the next couple of weeks is the time to finish your focus work. Don’t be writing swipe copy in December. Go ahead and write it now so you can be more reactive during the holidays, so you can be more available and not having to try to do focus work.

All right, now’s the time. If you have to create your own graphics to create them, now’s the time to do that focus work type things where maybe you need an hour or two uninterrupted and it’s really hard to get an hour or two. Uninterrupted work time during the busy stretch.

Because you’re getting so many emails and pings from affiliates and you need to respond to them because speed is important then. So right now is the time. Prioritize sleep and exercise, getting outside, meditating, whatever it is that you need to do to be at your peak.

And then when you get into the busy stretch, you still need to prioritize those. So for me, I’m going to prioritize getting an extra 30 minutes of sleep versus 30 minutes of watching something on Netflix, even if it’s a show I really like. We’re really into the English game right now, and I would just have to give that up.

In my busy stretch, I’m going to prioritize exercise over something else, prioritize getting outside, getting outside as much as I can and things like that. Now, how do you balance that with being available? How can I be available and prioritize those things?

And so for me, I worked in blocks when I was in one of those busy stretches. Same with like, a big product launch. I work in blocks, so I might work from like 07:00 A.

m. To 09:00 p. m.

. That’s 14 hours. But I’ll never work more than, say, nine or 10 hours in a day.

So, for instance, I’ll wake up. I don’t normally check email first thing in the morning, not on my normal day. I’m recording this at 1034 in the morning.

I haven’t even checked email yet. I won’t check email until sometime this afternoon. But during a launch, during the holiday season, I’m going to check email real quick, just see what do I need to react to.

Are there any messages? Anything that needs to be responded to first thing?

That’s after, I like, I make coffee real quick. Then I’m going to break for an hour, and I’m going to do a workout. Then I’m going to check messages real quick.

And you’ll see, this is a pattern. Like, I’m just going to check messages real quick. I don’t want to go more than an hour and a half, 2 hours without checking messages.

I’ll eat breakfast, hang out with the family, go for a quick walk with the kids, with the dog, get ready for the day. Then on the afternoon, twelve to two, I’m going to check messages, post any update, et cetera, et cetera. Two to three, I’m going to take a break.

That might be go for a walk, have a snack, meditate nap. That’s a good thing to do. Spend some time with family.

Then I’m going to work for a few more hours, and I’m going to schedule all my stuff for tomorrow. That’s when I’m going to schedule the email that goes out first thing in the morning so I don’t have to do that first thing in the morning. I’m going to check messages, all that.

I’m going to take a break, have dinner. Then I’m going to work again for a couple of hours from, like, 730 to 09:00. Total is only like, eight or 9 hours, but no one goes more than a couple of hours without a response.

Then on the weekends, I just make sure to check in three or four times a day. So I’ll check in again first thing in the morning, sometime around midday, sometime mid to late afternoon. Again in the evening.

Nobody’s going more than a few hours without a response. Usually it takes 20 minutes each time. You can also leverage your team if you have VAS, like, I’ve got VAS overseas.

I’ve got team on the West Coast in the Pacific time zone. And so we are purposely, as we grow our agency, we’re purposely bringing in people from all over the world so we can virtually have all day coverage if we need to. So that’s how you balance those things.

But right now, it’s important to rest and prep. All right? The second thing to do to get ready to have your best holiday season ever with your affiliate program is you got to get crystal clear on all dates.

All dates. I said this before, you need to be clear about the important dates. So affiliate managers, you need to tell your affiliates, you need to over communicate the important dates.

Affiliates, you need to ask them what the important dates are. The key here is to make sure that your affiliates know the date ranges. So the date ranges and the times, right?

Is your Black Friday sale Friday only, or is it Friday through the weekend? Is your Cyber Monday sale Monday only? Or is it Monday and Tuesday?

Does it expire at 06:00 p. m eastern or midnight Pacific?

Like, where does it apply? They need to know this well in advance right now. You need to consider all of the holidays, not just the big ones.

Like, everybody focuses on the big holidays, right? They focus on Black Friday. They focus on the last shipping day for Christmas.

They focus on New Year’s Eve, things like that. There are so many holidays you can create a great campaign off of. There’s Black Friday, but then I never heard of this until a couple of years ago.

Small Business Saturday, there’s Cyber Monday, there’s Cyber Tuesday, there’s Hanukkah, which goes on for eight days. There’s free shipping day. There’s the last day to guarantee shipping before Christmas.

Now, this depends on your company and your location and things like this, but typically there’s like a last day to guarantee regular shipping where you don’t have to do like, the $100 shipping, and that’s usually like December 18, 19th, and that’s in the lower 48 states. You’re guaranteed to get your thing before Christmas Eve. But then there’s like the guaranteed day if you pay for the expedited shipping that might be like December 22.

You need to know this and communicate it to your affiliates. Obviously. There’s christmas day, there’s boxing day, there’s new year’s eve.

There’s all kinds of days in there. There’s all these holidays and nobody even knows what they are. Look them up and communicate them.

We call them ETPs excuses to promote. There’s a lot of sales and deals and cool ways to integrate holidays into your marketing. On Black Friday and Cyber Monday, for instance.

It’s all about deals. It’s all about price. And that’s fine if you want to compete with other deal makers and other people who are going to cut prices.

I’m not going to discourage you from doing that. But it’s also ridiculously. It’s so busy, it’s a madhouse.

Everyone is promoting and it’s hard to stand out. But what about Hanukkah? There’s less competition.

It’s eight days. You could have a different promo each day, a different deal, a different theme. Just get creative.

For a free shipping day, focus on free shipping offers. It’s easy to promote a few things and offer free shipping or the last guaranteed shipping day before Christmas. Like, if you have a retail product, you have a physical product.

This is key. Promote this. So communicate these dates and what offers you’re going to have to your affiliates.

Then communicate more and more and more. Like over communicate. Right.

Run some promos that aren’t just Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the Norms. All right, number three, you got to study what’s hot in your program and what’s hot overall. Like, what are the hot items this year?

What should your affiliates be promoting? What products are outperforming? The norms are there certain things that you’ve noticed historically that have gone up this time of year.

You sell more of them now. You don’t sell a lot of them in June or July, august or February, but you sell a ton of them in November and December. When are those products hot?

Is it Black Friday? Is it Cyber Monday? Is it early in the shopping season?

Is it right after Christmas? Is it New Year’s resolution related? This is all prep work, right?

You need to know what these products are and when they’re going to peak. So study study past years. Study your competition, that’s number four.

Study your competition and what’s working for them? What are they doing promo wise? Look at your affiliate payout.

Is this still competitive? Competition raised their rates. What is the competition doing in terms of contests for affiliates?

What are they doing in terms of incentives? We’ll talk about that a little bit in a moment. What kind of creatives are they providing?

Look at the competition and see what they’re doing. Study it. Maybe you can’t react right now, but you can make a note for next year.

That’s why I said so many times, you need to be an affiliate for everyone, your competition. You got to be spying on them, quite frankly. You need to see what they’re doing.

You will learn so much from them. Now, speaking of creatives, the fifth thing you need to do to get your affiliate program ready for your best holiday season ever is you got to get your creatives lined up. I’m going to tell you upfront, I talked about this earlier.

Creating anything last minute this time of year is going to be a challenge. So do the work. Now, this is focus work, whether it’s your graphic designers or you trying to get these things put together.

Wait, December 17, we should have some last shipping day banners. No, you should have had last shipping day banners on November 10. You don’t necessarily need to give them to your affiliates on November 10, but you should have them ready on November 10.

So if you’ve got to create some graphics, this is for those of you who have to create them yourself, or if you just need to give some guidance to your graphic designers. Just a few things. These are some best practices here for graphics that we’ve learned.

I mean, I’ve been doing affiliate graphics for 18 years now. These are things that I found and I’ve cross checked these with kind of like best practices across the industry. So it’s not just my experience.

These are what definitely work for creating awesome graphics. Number one, use images of people, not cartoon stuff, right? Not graphics.

So images of people just work better. Real people. Keep the picture simple.

You want to focus on the product. Don’t make the picture vague. Well, there’s a smiling person.

And what does that have to do with anything? So you really want to focus on the product. Split test as much as you can, see what works.

Make sure that one of the things we have to do these days. You got to check your images on mobile, send yourself the image, put it on your phone. Don’t zoom in.

Can you read the text? We’ve talked about this before. Making them holiday themed.

Just by making graphics slightly holiday themed. So adding some snow using kind of those winter colors like the light blue and the dark blue and white, red and green, green and gold, blue and gold, silver and gold, silver and gold. So I’m going to start singing Christmas songs here.

You get the idea, right? You need to give these to your affiliates and affiliates, you need to ask for them, and if needed, create some yourself. But for your affiliate programs out there, start creating those now.

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When I first started doing it and I wasn’t the greatest graphic designer in the world, I’m still not, but I was really not very good back then. All I did was take the regular graphics that we had and change the colors. That’s all I did.

I just changed the colors. Same logo. Just our logo at that time happened to be it was white and gold on a dark background or black and gold on a light background.

So I took the logo for Legacy Learning Systems, I took that logo, I kept the gold, and when it was white, I just put it on a dark green background, added some red accents and a couple of little pieces of holly in the corners. And that was my banner. I just took it and put a very light blue, put a little snow on the bottom, like, made it look like the logo was sitting in the snow and added some snowflakes and that was it.

That’s as simple as it is. It can truly be that simple. So that’s graphics for Swipe copy, go ahead and write it or have it written.

If you have a copywriter, do that now. Like I said, right now as we’re getting closer and closer to major promos like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we want to start getting that to our affiliates now. And so my advice is just get a month ahead and stay a month ahead.

That means if you’re listening to this on November 1, you need to have copy by the end of today ready for December 1. And then November eigth, you need to have it ready for December eigth and so on and so forth. If you can stay about a month ahead, that’s good enough.

But definitely get way ahead. All right, so we’ve got the graphics. We’ve rested, we’re prepping.

We got those dates down. We know what’s hot. We know what we’re going to be promoting.

We’re going to be studying the competition. We got those graphics. Now, number six, we got to plan our promos and contests and create promo plans.

So what promotions are you doing? There’s a million ideas, whether it’s a sitewide sale, product sales percent off, dollar off. And by the way, if it’s under $100, you’re better off with a percentage.

So 30% off of a $90 thing feels like a lot more than saying $27 off. If it’s over $100, you typically want to go dollar amounts, because if it’s a $500 product and you say 10% off, that doesn’t really feel like a lot. But if you say $50 off, that feels like a lot.

Or $100 off, $1,000 product feels better. So the point is, what promotions are you doing? What contests are you going to run?

I definitely recommend having individual goals. I’ve talked about this a ton, where you say, hey, you have a goal for the last couple of months of the year, and you look at where they were last year and compare that to where they are this year. So if I particularly want to do this with affiliates that are down a little bit year over year, if you were down, let’s say, January through October, you have somebody who’s down 30%.

And last November and December, they did $10,000. That means they’re trending. They’re down 30%.

They’re trending towards $7,000. I want to incentivize them to hit 10,000. So I’m going to reach out to them with something like that.

I’m going to offer them a nice little bonus to get them going. Again, you got to put together promo plans for your affiliates. Now, we don’t call them promo plans anymore, but if you go to Mattmcwiams.

com Affplan, there’s a guide there. It’s totally free.

Grab a guide. Got a template for you to use to put together a promo plan. Get on a Zoom call or a Google Meet call and map out their promo for Black Friday through Cyber Monday.

Map out their promo for the rest of the year into the early part of the year. Now, they need this year round. But again, we talked about it before.

It’s more important this time of year for a lot of you. So schedule those strategy calls. Schedule them now.

Start getting on the phone on Zoom weeks before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So that’s number six. You got to plan those promos and contests, create those promo plans.

Number seven, you got to test. Test everything. Test multiple times.

The stakes are so high, so you got to make sure things are working. Test links over and over again. Obsess over this, test the whole funnel.

Test everything. Then you got to lock things down. You need a cutoff point.

I’ll talk more about this in the next episode. But you need a cutoff point. So about three to five days before Thanksgiving, there are no updates.

No updates. You need to put a moratorium on tech updates. So we test everything.

Then you got to stick to the calendar as much as possible. No surprises. Like, you can call an audible once, maybe twice, but if you start calling a bunch of audibles and changing promos and doing all this with your affiliates, it’s just not going to work.

This goes back to what I just said. Plan your promos and contests. Everything is done in advance.

Test those links. Test the whole funnel. Make sure every little thing works.

Because if something’s broken in August, might cost you a few bucks. If it’s broken this time of year, it could cost you millions. That’s the simple reality.

So we want to make sure everything is working. Obsessively number eight, this is a great time to look for inactive affiliates, all right? Affiliates who haven’t made any sales recently.

Check in on those previously active affiliates who maybe haven’t posted about your stuff in a few months. Ask them what kind of content they’re looking to push during the holiday season. Let them know what new products are available or what new products are hot and how those fit in with their potential holiday content.

If you just reengage with these affiliates, like I said a moment ago, reach out to the ones who are kind of inactive. And I wrote an entire article, by the way, about how to activate inactive affiliates. I’ll link to that in the show notes.

Just read it and follow what I teach at work. And one of the ways is, again, like I said earlier, you reach out to them and you say, hey, if you beat last year’s, November and December, here’s what I’m going to do for you. This is a real example, by the way.

Maybe last year they did a little bit over $100,000. We had an affiliate at Shutterfly that had done something like $110,000 a year before, and they weren’t inactive, but they were much lower. They were running at like 30% year over year, and they really hadn’t done anything in about four months.

So I said, hey, last year, November, December. You did? $110,000.

If you beat that by even $1 this November and December, I will give you a $20,000 bonus. Now, to be clear, with Certify being a physical product, photos and pillows and calendars and blankets and all that, a $20,000 bonus on $100,000 in sales basically took us to I had to get approval for this. Took us to break even, right at break even, possibly losing a few bucks.

Now, a few things about that, and I’ve talked about this before, but number one, they were basically looking at doing about $30,000 if that, in Q four. So I’m paying $20,000 for that extra $70,000 in sales, which again, basically takes us to the breakeven point or possibly even losing a few bucks. Number one, they are not going to hit exactly $110,000.

Usually, when people try to go for 110,000, they blow through it, and they end up at 130. So we make money on that extra 20, or they try, and they fall just short. And that’s exactly what happened with this particular affiliate partner.

They ended up at $94,000, which was a $64,000 increase over what we were projecting. That was a big win multiplied by numerous affiliates like that. We didn’t have to pay them the bonus.

And here’s the thing. They kept going. They reached out to me and said, hey, what’s our goal for Q One?

And I told them. I said, your goal for Q One. It’s a slower time.

I was like, Last year, you did whatever. I said, A couple of years ago, you did something. I think it was, like, $70,000 in Q One.

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I said, you guys beat that $10,000 bonus, and they missed it again in Q One. And then it was like Q two. Now Q Two, they were big in the graduation niche.

So Q two was like $100,000. And I said, tell you what. Hit $100,000, $15,000 bonus, and they hit it.

And we paid the 15,000. Over the course of those three quarters, we got effectively an additional almost quarter of a million dollars in sales. We paid out a $15,000 bonus.

Pretty good ROI there, right? So if you want to get all my email templates for Activating Affiliates, we’ll put a link in the show notes. Just mattmcwiams.

com activate, go check that out. You can download those templates.

They’re free, and you can use them to activate your affiliates. All right, two more. Two more.

We’ve got things planned. We’ve got all of our graphics done and all that stuff. All of our creatives are ready, and our calendars mapped out, and we’ve tested stuff.

I want you to consider sending a physical mailing right now in early to mid November before the Black Friday rush. So I want you to consider sending something in the mail to your current affiliates and to some prospective affiliates. If you try to mail something in December, it’s pointless.

People are getting so much mail in December, maybe, like, the very 1 December, you could get away with it, but it’s just a busy time, and you want to give them time to react to what you send them. So send it now. Like, these stand out.

There’s so much email clutter. I mean, I’m an affiliate. I get 50 to 75 emails a day right now in October, what am I getting in November and December?

Just think about the math on this. If you spend $1,000 to send a holiday guide, just like a quick holiday thing, could be a four page document to 500 affiliates. That could be your best investment.

It’s like a four, five, six page guide. Go have them printed at Staples or Office Depot. They’ll cost you a buck each to print, and then you’ll pay a dollar for postage.

I mean, I’m estimating I’m not far off. I don’t even know what postage is these days. We bought the forever stamps like seven years ago and haven’t had to buy any since.

Probably not the best investment, actually. Now, think about it. We probably could have just bought a few and then taken the rest and put it in mutual fund and made more money.

But that’s not the point. We just bought a lot. So whatever.

We’ll go $3 to send to 500 affiliates. That’s if you have 500 if you do a save the dates card. Well, not I send emails with it.

Yeah, this just stands out a little bit more. Save the date cards will cost you a dollar in printing and postage. You can literally go online and I mean, not have to do anything.

You just design it and you can have them shipped for a buck. The last I checked, you could send 1000. I looked it was like ninety two cents per thing.

So 500 I’m just going to assume is a dollar, a dollar ten each. That’s a great investment of money, but you need to do it now. So I recommend either sending, like a holiday guide and have some QR codes in there, or just a simple save the dates card or do both.

You could do a save the date card in the next 24 hours. You send that out and it gets them to put those dates on their calendar, and it has a little QR code on it to go to a page that has some more info, has their swipe copy and all that. And then you send out a guide or then you send out something else in a week or so, again spending $1,000.

15. I mean, you say, why 10,000 affiliates? Yeah, don’t send it all 10,000.

Send it to the 500 or so who are making sales, who are actually moving the needle where it’s worth it, and then some prospective affiliates as well, people that maybe haven’t gotten otherwise. Send out a card, send out of mailing. This might be the thing that pushes them over the edge or makes them excited to promote.

And then the last thing this is a summation of everything I’ve said so far. Over communicate now. Now.

Right now, when things are slower, when things start to ramp up, it gets harder. And I’m overly stressing this for a reason. It has its own point for a reason.

You have to over communicate now. Remember, you’re not the only affiliate program they’re in. So over communicate those dates and those promos which you need to play in right right now.

Over communicate with them about what’s working, what’s hot. Over communicate with them to get them their creatives and their swipe copy and contests and get those promo plans done. Over communicate with them about what they could earn if they’re currently inactive and things like that.

Do that physical mailing. This is the key. You’ve got to get them to commit right now.

You’ve got to get things on their calendar right now if you’re going to have a successful holiday season. So if you want more holiday affiliate tips, I want you to do three things. Number one, make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss any of the upcoming episodes.

The next one, I’m going to talk about how to make this your best holiday season ever with your affiliate program. Then I’m going to talk about how to create high converting affiliate graphics. We sort of touched on that today.

But I’m going to go in more detail and I’m going to talk about how to use the holidays to recruit more affiliates. So if you want the those episodes, you got to hit subscribe so you don’t miss them. Secondly, I want you to check out past editions of the Ultimate Guide to Holiday affiliate promotions.

I’ve got a link in the show notes. This is what it says it is. It is the Ultimate Guide whether you’re an affiliate manager or an affiliate, to everything you need to know for the holiday season.

And number three, I want you to download the things that we talked about in the show today, the affiliate promo plan template. Say that ten times fast. Promo plan template?

Promo plan template. I don’t know. I might be able to pull that off.

But I want you to download that. I want you to download the guys we talked about, like warming up your audience, all those things. The links are in the show notes.

And number four, make sure you text me with your biggest takeaway or any questions. Almost forgot. Make sure you text me.

So if you got any questions, need some advice or whatever, or just share your biggest takeaway. I always love hearing those. I get a handful of those every week and I love them because it kind of shows me what people are actually taking away from this.

Usually I’m surprised. Usually it’s not what I think it’s going to be. So text me anytime.

I’ll see you in the next episode.