Successful Affiliate Onboarding: How to Setup Your Affiliates to Win

So you’ve got some affiliates interested in promoting you. Now what? How do you onboard your affiliates and set them up for success right from the start? That’s what today’s episode is all about. I’ll share the key steps to ensure your affiliates hit the ground running and maximize their potential. Get ready to learn how to create a winning onboarding process that propels your affiliates to success!

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Links Mentioned in this Episode

Weekend Email Template

Sample Affiliate Promo Plan

How to Write Swipe Copy for Your Affiliates

How to Warm Up Affiliates Before a Launch

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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy

How I Grew a Major Affiliate Program from $15M to $325M a Year (In Only 4 Years)

How to Create The Right Affiliate Commissions

Top 14 Reasons Your Affiliate Program is Failing (And How to Fix It)

How to Steal Your Competitors’ Affiliates

How to Create High-Converting Swipe Copy for Affiliates

How to Create an Affiliate Program Agreement

Successful Affiliate Onboarding: How to Setup Your Affiliates to Win

So you’ve got some affiliates interested in promoting you. Now what? How do you onboard your affiliates and get them rocking? Well, that’s what today’s episode is all about, getting your affiliates started the right way. Let’s get started. So my friend Alan Thomas came to me the other day.

I had referred some people to him as affiliates. Alan’s been rocking. You know, you’ve listened to him in a previous episode. He’s now co hosting our live lessons every Thursday at 02:00 pm. eastern. You know, shout out for those. But he has his own business coaching men on, losing weight, and he’s rocking the affiliate world. But he’s like, Matt, you sent me all these affiliates. What do I do now? Like, now what? I don’t know what to do. I’m like, well, let me walk you through that. So I never did. I totally forgot to actually share all this with Alan, but I told him I would record a podcast episode or record something for him. So this is my way of answering Alan’s question. It kind of depends on where you’re at.

Just to be clear, how do you onboard affiliates? Well, it’s very different. If you’re a brand new program, you’re getting like one affiliate per day. Well, then you set up calls with them all. You know, if you’re an established program, you’re getting, you know, ten new affiliates a day. It’s different.

What I’m going to do is take you through that journey today from beginner program. Maybe you’re getting one or two affiliates a week to a more established program. Most of the stuff is the same. It’s consistent throughout. If you’re a new program, like I said, you get on the phone with each of them.

The key is to establish the program. You want to wow your early affiliates, get things moving. If you’re an employee working as a new affiliate manager, you want to impress your boss with some early momentum and you want to do those things. If you’re an established program, like when I ran Shutterfly’s affiliate program, or Adidas affiliate program, we were getting 300, 400 affiliates per day.

You know, especially like the time of year from like November 1 through Christmas. It was crazy. There was no way I could get on the phone with any of them, let alone, you know, all 300 or 400 of them. But I want you to think about this from the affiliates perspective, what do they want? This is why I recommend being an affiliate.

So I recommend doing this. I’m a much better affiliate manager now that I’m also an affiliate because I know what affiliates want. I know what I want. They want it quickly and they want it easily. So I’m going to walk you through the steps. You need to take the things you need to do to onboard your affiliates here today.

So, Alan, this one’s for you. Buddha number one. You need to set them up if needed. All right, so that’s, that kind of goes without saying. A few of these early ones like, well, duh. No. You know, we handle affiliates a little bit differently than a lot of people.

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We like to white glove it. We don’t. I personally, as an affiliate, again, I go back to rule number one, do what I would want to do as an affiliate, right? I don’t like it when people send me a link and say, go fill this out. That just ticks me off. I’m like, I’m busy, you know, and this is not an ego thing. I just, I might not be able to get around to it.

And then I’m like, I forget about it. I’m not signed up four days later. Well, that’s your fault as the affiliate manager, not mine. So we white glove things. We sign them up, we set up their account, we get them their links, we do all that. Now, you may do it differently, and that’s fine. I’m not against that way.

But do what you need to do on the, on the tech side. Add them to relevant Google sheets or Excel spreadsheets or databases. Right. One of the things that I highly recommend not doing is we don’t use the system to send most of the emails. So if they’re in infusionsoft, we don’t email them through infusionsoft.

We don’t email them through convertkit. Here’s the reason. In Convertkit, in Fusionsoft, if they unsubscribe from my main list, they’re also unsubscribing from affiliate updates. They may not want to do that. I’m gonna give you a really good example of that. I’m on Jeff Walker’s list. Why was, I was on there twice. I was on there two times. I had an affiliate account and I had opted in to some stuff using that email, and I had my regular just subscriber account. So every time he sent an email to his list, I got two of them.

I clicked unsubscribe. I no longer got affiliate updates, and I have seen this happen time and time again. That’s why we don’t use the system. We use a mail merge tool that called gmass. We also use another one called yet another mail merge. I don’t recommend one over the other. We use both of them pretty interchangeably. There’s things I like about both, but we use those tools and we email them through a spreadsheet. Now, if you’ve got 300,000 affiliates like we had at, you know, Shutterfly and Adidas, you can’t do that clearly.

But as much as possible, I try not to email them through the system. And that’s a whole tech conversation. I’m not going to get into that. So you need to add them to whatever database that you’re using, you know, beyond your regular, your regular system. Number two, you need to send them a welcome message. You need to make it warm and inviting. Right.

Well, this is going to have some of the elements that we’re going to talk about here, but the big thing is just make them feel like, you know, you’re really glad that they’re a part of your affiliate program.

Make them feel welcome. It’s called a welcome message for a reason. I want this to feel warm and inviting. Think about it like I’m welcoming you into my home. I wouldn’t use a bunch of corporate speak. Dear sir, thank you for being a part of our affiliate program. We are honored and humble. Like, what the heck is that? I feel like I should just do like entire episodes where I read emails that affiliate managers send and critique them. You guys, you know what? Let me know if you’re interested in that.

Do me a favor, text me at 260-217-4619 260-217-4619 and just let me know if you’d be interested in me critiquing affiliate programs. Like different things, like things that I’m seeing and then commenting on.

It could be good or bad. If you’re interested in that kind of content, text me. That’s actually not a bad idea. I may just do it anyway, but I’d love to hear from you if you’re interested. All right, so number two, you got to have that welcome message. Number three, you need to give them their tools. Now, I’ve done a whole episode on this.

I want to focus in on just a few things very quickly. Number one, you got to give them swipe copy. All right? It’s one of the most important things you can give them. Killer swipe copy they can use for every part of your promotion, whether it’s a launch or whatever. I’m not going to go into a ton of detail, I’ve shared this before, but number one, you got to hire a copywriter.

You know, you got to hire somebody that can write it objectively. You’re too close to the product to be objective. Number two, you need to include images you know that your affiliates might need. Number three, you need to have different versions for different audiences. So if you’ve got different target audiences, write different swipe copy for each of those.

Number four, you need different links so you need some short 2300 word emails. You need some thousand word emails. And then you need some blurbs for things like newsletters, right. And maybe a 32nd clip from a podcast. And then number five, you need to teach your affiliates that swipe copy is a guide only.

I talked about this in the last episode. Don’t use the swipe copy. You know, don’t copy and paste the swipe copy. As an affiliate. The worst thing you can have happen is a hundred affiliates all sending the exact same identical emails. Tell them to make the emails personal and only use the swipe copy as a starting point.

Share my guide on that with them. I. The links in the last episode, share that with them. Right. You need to give them social media posts and images and links, of course, and give them the login information and all those things. So give them the tools that they need to succeed. The number four thing you need to do is ask about them, learn about them, get to know the affiliate, learn who they are, learn about their website and their promotional methods. Again, as much as possible. Again, 300 affiliates.

That’s different. Early on you should know all kinds of stuff about them. I think back to my early affiliates, I can still name them, I can still tell you stories about them. I still know, remember their URL’s. As my programs got bigger and bigger, I began to know less and less. But early on, learn about them.

Keep a database where you know things like their wife’s name, their husband’s name, their kid’s name. Do you at least know their, you know, okay, what sports do their kids play, what activities are they in, where do they live? Like when you’re talking to an affiliate for the fifth time and you’re going, oh, remind me again, what part of the country are you in? You sound like an idiot. That’s just ridiculous. Like, no, I should not have to remind you where I live. You should know. You should know.

Like, that’s just, I mean, when I talk to my friends, they don’t ask me questions like that. Be their friend. So ask about them. Learn about them. Number five, part of the onboarding process. Learn how they like to communicate. You need to learn their preferred method of communication and then use it. I know. I work with affiliates that only do WhatsApp. That’s all they use. So I have to use that, period. I’ve got two that I can think of. That’s it. But I have to use that Skype.

Outside of. If it wasn’t for affiliates, I would literally never use Skype, but I have some affiliates that prefer Skype. There’s Voxer, there’s email, there’s text messages, there’s, you know, some people like getting phone calls. It’s weird, but they do, you know. No, that’s fine. I’m cool with that, actually.

But some people prefer Facebook, you know, DM’s Facebook or Instagram, DM’s, things like that. Easiest way is just ask them. You know, like you could do a survey, send it a quick survey. You could just hit reply and let me know, you know, initially all you have is their email, hit reply and let me know. What’s, what’s your favorite way to communicate? I want to make sure I communicate in a way that you most prefer.

You’re going to get better replies that way, which is going to benefit you. So I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I’ve got somebody that prefers text message and something big is happening, I’m going to text them, not going to send them an email or Facebook message. All right, the 6th thing you need to do, make sure they understand the basics, the basics around your program’s rules.

What are they allowed to do and not allowed to do? Commissions. Are there any particular commission structures, any nuances? Special commissions? Like you get 50% on course sales, 30% on the membership, things like that.

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They need to know the products and the pricing. If you have ranges of prices, they need to know what those are. And so they’re. You’re not. For one, they’re going to market it better. For two, you’re going to have less questions on the back end. They need to know important dates and time periods. And of course, if it’s a launch, they need to know not only when does the launch start, you know, okay, the launch starts April 21, but when does the promotion start? Well, it starts April 10. When does the warm up start?

It starts late March. They need to know those things. You need to tell them and be clear about that. They need to know when you pay. Do you pay monthly for the previous month? Do you pay on the 15th? Do you pay, you know, net 30? What do they, what do you pay?

When do you pay? How do you pay? They need to know what bonuses are up for grabs. I mean, this is kind of 101, right? If you’re going to offer bonuses and prizes and contests, they need to know that. They need to know how to contact you.

So I’m not going to list, like, I’m going to I’m going to know my affiliates preferred methods, but in my signature I’m going to listen, you know, a phone number that they can contact me at and I’m probably going to list like one alternative means my preferred method because maybe they don’t have a preferred method, maybe they don’t care. So I’m going to give them like two ways to contact me. In addition to email number seven, get on a strategy call with them.

You know, I’ve talked about this before, but one of the best things you can do to get your affiliates to mail more and promote early and get them going is just to create a personal promotion plan with them. When you meet with your affiliates one on one, before the promotion, you’re able to craft a custom plan.

Now we actually call it a commitment plan. Now, there’s something we changed a couple of years ago. We found like this, you know, Robert Cialdini, right? The principles of commitment and consistency means that people stick to this plan. So we call them commitment plans. Usually what we found is that if we can get them one on one, do a plan, they agree to at least a few extra emails and they’d previously planned on sending. So this is a personalized plan. I’ve got a sample template that you can download.

I will put the link in the show notes. I think it’s just mattmcwilliams. com aff plan. You can go download that. These work so they only, you know, they only work when you’re small or you’re, you know, you’re only picking up like a few affiliates. Or maybe you can do it with your, your top 20 or 30.

It’s hard to do with more than two people a day. That gets a little bit out of hand with the bigger programs. Do them once or twice a week in small groups. So everybody that signed up this week, we’re going to get together and do a promotion plan. In fact, this is something we used to do with some of our bigger programs. We would just do it twice a month, just regularly, and anybody could sign up.

When you signed up for the program, you could be a part of these calls and we basically do kind of more of a generic one and craft them together on those calls. The 8th thing that you should do to onboard people is give them a quick start guide. Like this is one to three pages. Really.

It should be two, like on the high end. If it dips into a third page, that’s fine, but it’s a very quick guide. How do I get my links? How do I create custom links? How do I find swipe copy? How do I find images? How do I find blank? Like, where is it? You know, how do I access my stats? How do I log in? How do I contact you? What are the basic no nos? What’s working for others?

You know, what are the mailing plans? When are the dates? Like, this is all in one spot. All these things I’ve been talking about in one spot. Right there in one spot. What’s the commission, the products, like all this in a quick start guide.

That’s important with these mailing plans, for example, it goes back to what we just talked about, like doing the kind of the generic meeting where you create those promo plans. I’ll meet with 2025 affiliates for a big launch. Personally, we have 1000 affiliates. So what I do is I give them our mailing plans. We call them our ABC plans. The a stands for all in or aggressive.

The c stands for conservative. So all in or aggressive might be like 15 emails. Conservative might be five emails. And then a balanced plan, which is the b would be, you know, five emails. And so we outline, like, here’s what to do, you know, June 6, do this. June 8, do this. June 9, mail to this group, then mail on, you know, here’s what to do each of these days. And so our objective here, just like the personalized commitment plans, just get them to commit to some level of participation.

All I’m getting, all I want them to do is commit to a minimum number of emails, minimum, minimum promotion. And what we found is that people who commit to that c, you know, that conservative level, will often move up to the balanced or even the all in level as the launch progresses. They just want to dip their toe in the water, right? Is this promo going to work for me? And if it looks like it’s working, then they’ll get more aggressive as they go. But the key here is to get them to commit to something on the front end.

We make it very easy, super easy for them to commit on the conservative level. Like the conservative level is usually going to be by five total emails. Maybe six, like two, possibly three to your whole list. Maybe one or two to unopens or, you know, non clicks. One or two to, you know, engage contacts and, you know, maybe six emails. Pretty easy commitment level, you know, only two, maybe three to your whole list.

Like, that’s super easy. And the next thing you know, they add a couple more to their non clicks and then they add, oh, well, when I’m promoting the sales, I only promote it to my engaged contacts. Oh, I can send, you know, six or seven. Now all of a sudden there are 13 emails, which is really cool.

All right. The number nine thing we want to do when we’re onboarding our affiliates is get them their first sale quickly. We want them making a first sale ASAP. Now, if it’s a launch, like, hey, we’re launching in April, it’s January. I can’t, like, I can’t really do anything for you there. But if it’s a regular program, like get them a first sale quickly, incentivize it, you know, like, hey, on your first sale, if you make your first sale within ten days, I’m gonna give you a hundred percent commission, double commission.

You know, maybe you can’t do a hundred percent because you’ve got cost of goods or something, but even then it’s like maybe I wanna, I don’t mind if I lose a few bucks on the first sale. If you make three sales in your first month, then you’re gonna get whatever, you know.

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So it’s like, let’s say you get a $1000 product, you know, dollar, If you make three sales in the first month, I’m gonna give you a $1000 bonus. You’re basically gonna make almost no money on those three sales. That’s fine. Gets them going, right. We wanna give them a low barrier, get them some movement, you know, rather than do the three sales in the first month, you know, you get, you’re guaranteed $1,000.

Maybe it’s, you make three sales in the first month and we’re gonna enter you into a drawing for $5,000, you know, pretty impressive prize. And if you have enough affiliates, you, it’s, it’s actually costing you less money. But again, low barrier, fast moving. That’s what we’re trying to get them to do. And 10th, you need to make it clear that you are there to help. Be available, be on the multiple channels like we talked about. You know, when they email, reply fairly quickly, make it clear.

Tell them I’m here to help. And not just in like a generic way. Tell them I’m here to help. Here are the ways I can help you. What can I do to serve you? Make it abundantly clear that you are there to help. And then the last thing, and we’ll talk more about this coming up.

But once you’ve onboarded them, give them regular updates, educate them, share what’s working and we’re going to talk about how to teach your affiliates and talk about the different ways that you should communicate with your affiliates. But there’s a lot to do.

But now you have the onboarding plan, what to do when your affiliates sign up and how to get them started fast with making some sales. So I mentioned that upcoming episode that’ll be coming up in two or three episodes.

Our next episode, we’re going to be talking about how to use leaderboards to find affiliates, which I’m super excited. I’m going to share kind of a secret strategy there that I don’t, I’ve kind of touched on it in some other content, but I don’t know if I’ve ever shared the exact strategy and I’m pretty excited about that. I shared it with a coaching client recently and pretty excited to share that publicly for the, what I believe is for the first time.

So you’ve got the plan. My question for you, and I’d love if you would text me your answer at I’m going to be the one that responds like, this is not my team or anything doing this. Just to be clear, I want to know, like, which one of these things are you maybe not doing? Which one of these things can you implement? Which one of these things do you think maybe you’re doing poorly and you’re going to improve? And how are you going to improve it? What did you get out of this episode? So please text me, let me know your thoughts, 260-217-4619 and let me know what you’re going to be doing as a result of this episode.

Then make sure you hit subscribe because again, the next episode is all about finding affiliates using leaderboards. And then we’re gonna be talking soon about that communication plan for that ongoing communication. You’ve onboarded them. They’re up and running now. We’re a month later like, oh, what do I do? Well, we’re gonna be talking about that soon, so I will see you in those upcoming episodes. Bye bye.

See you soon.