Are affiliates lazy…or is there something else going on? 🤔 If you’ve ever wondered why some affiliates seem to sit on the sidelines instead of going all-in, this episode is for you. Spoiler alert: It’s not just laziness. Today, we’re tackling what really holds affiliates back—and, more importantly, how to motivate them to promote more, sell more, and make YOU more money. Grab a notebook and listen in…this could change everything!
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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy
Why People Really Subscribe & Buy (It’s Not What You Think)
Why I Finally Started My Own Affiliate Network
Scaling Your Affiliate Program and Your Business Without Spending a Fortune
How to Expand Your Affiliate Army by Recruiting Non-Traditional Affiliates
2025 Affiliate Marketing Predictions
Are Affiliates Just Lazy? How to Motivate and Get the Most from Your Affiliates
Are affiliates just lazy or is there something else going on? If you’ve ever wondered why some affiliates seem to sit on the sidelines instead of going all in, this episode is for you now, spoiler alert. It’s not just laziness. And so today we’re gonna tackle what really holds affiliates back and more importantly, how to motivate them to promote more, sell more, and make you more money. So grab a notebook, listen in they this could change everything. Let’s get started. All right, so nod your head yes, raise your hand, whatever. If you’ve ever brought on an affiliate, you have given them everything they need to succeed. You have followed everything. I talk about how to onboard affiliates welcome them. You followed all the best practices, and then nothing. Nothing.
Literally nothing. Just radio silence. No clicks, no sales. Not even like a polite, hey, I’m working on it. And at some point you thought, are they just lazy? Is that what it is? They’re just lazy? I get it. You know, it’s frustrating. You put in the time and the effort into recruiting affiliates only to have them literally do nothing. But the truth is, it’s not just laziness. In fact, it’s almost never the real issue. Now, this isn’t a situation where you hire somebody and you’re paying them. You’re giving them benefits, you’re giving them an office, you’re giving them the, you know, the resources, and you’re paying them every day. Let’s just say $300 a day, $400 a day, and they’re not doing the work. That’s not the case because affiliates aren’t employees.
Like, they’re not even independent contractors really, like, tax purposes. They are. We Send affiliates a 1099 just like the guy who does your video editing. No, I paid the affiliate to do the video editing, and he did the video editing. That’s different than an affiliate. These are independent business owners. They are juggling a million different things, and promoting your product isn’t always their top priority. So today we’re going to dig in a little bit to what’s actually holding them back.
Why do some affiliates never take action? Why do others start strong and then kind of fizzle out? Most importantly, how do you light a fire under these affiliates? How do you get them excited to promote? So by the end of this episode, what I hope to deliver is some real practical strategies to not only activate your affiliates, but to motivate them, keep them engaged long term. That’s the goal here. So once you understand what makes them tick, you can turn those quote unquote lazy affiliates into some of your biggest revenue drivers.
All right? Now, one thing to keep in mind. This is a numbers game, right? This is a numbers game. The reality is, like any great affiliate program, when you have more than, you know, a hundred affiliates, over half your affiliates are never going to be active. That’s just the reality, and there’s nothing wrong with that. So I’m not talking about those. I’m talking about the ones who were active.
They could be active, they have potential and yet they’re not. So how do we actually get them to be active? If you’re running an affiliate program, you’ve got a ,thousand affiliates and 590 of them are active, you’re probably doing almost everything I’m talk, I’m going to talk about in this episode, what I’m about to share with you.
Might only get you another 15 active affiliates. But if you’re doing this and you’ve got 500 affiliates and only 52 of them are active, you can make a lot of improvement. You know, I was looking at our training guide, so their training guide for our agency, and one of the things this says in our training guide is this says your inactive affiliates are the lowest hanging fruit available to grow our client sales. Most of the time they just haven’t been told what to do, how to do it, or when to do it. So tell them, help them, make it easy for them. That’s from our training guy. What that means is we take on a client and they have a thousand affiliates.
Need help activating your affiliates? Use my proven email templates for getting inactive affiliates in the game and making sales! Get them here!
They’ve done a great job recruiting them, and they have 103 of them that are active. We go in and work on those 897 other affiliates and within weeks we have an additional 50 to 200 affiliates who are active. And then we continue to work on it. Eventually we might activate as many as 250, 300 of them. The reality is that because it’s been a long time for some of those clients, some of them are long gone. Some of those affiliates are a lost cause. And that’s fine. Like I said earlier, at least 450, 500 of them are never going to be active no matter what we do, no matter what the client does.
That’s the reality. And then there’s another. A lot of times we take over a program, there’s another 100 to 200 that are never going to be active because they signed up three years ago. And if we had come on board two and a half years ago we would have been able to get them active. But we’re not able to now. But still we come in and sometimes double or triple the active affiliates in a matter of a few months. Cause we focus on that low hanging fruit. Like our guide says, you know, most of the time they haven’t been told what to do, how to do it or when to do it.
So I tell our affiliate managers, tell them, help them make it easy for them. About eight, nine years ago we ran Michael Hyatt’s Five Days to youo Best Year Ever affiliate launch. This was one of the last affiliate programs back in the day that I ran pretty much single handedly. Uh, I was 90% of the work was mean. And we had 944 affiliates who had not sent traffic after the first week. This is a short launch, you know, short. Relatively long actually for a launch, but it’s a three week window and one third of the way through. We had 944 of them who had not sent any traffic, not a single click.
Three days later we ran an activation campaign. Three days later we had 291 of them were sending traffic. Three days later. Almost a third if my math is right. In total they produced more than $104,000 in sales. It was a big deal. Spending a little time focusing on those inactives generated over six figures in revenue. Now the truth about lazy affiliates, as I mentioned earlier, you know affiliates, they’re not employees, they’re independent business owners. They have their own priorities. So they’re waking up today, they’re not thinking of your business, they’re thinking, I got to send that email to my list. Oh my gosh, I didn’t do that new TikTok video series. I’ve got to record a podcast.
I’m supposed to be promoting an affiliate offer this week. As I’m recording that, I didn’t wake up thinking about that on my list. When I look at my list of things to do, one of them is to record this podcast. The second one is to work on the next podcast. Normally I get far ahead and I’m not right now because of some stuff that’s going on, just keeping me busy. So I’m going to record this podcast and as soon as I get off this I’ve got a call a Biz dev call for our business. Then I’m going to work on the next podcast. And then my third thing is I’ve got to run some reports and study some analytics for a client. And if I get to it, I might just write some new emails for about two weeks from now.
My plan is has nothing to do with this affiliate offer that I’m supposed to be promoting right now. Is it because I’m a bad person? No, it’s because I’ve got other priorities. And so it’s important to understand the real reasons why they don’t promote. Understanding the reasons is what’s going to determine the best approach to take to activate them. So we understand, why aren’t they promoting? The first reason they kind of signed up just because, right?
If you’re on a network, they saw your program like, ooh, that look, you know, shiny object. I want to sign up for that. Or you’re in a hot industry, right? Seven years ago it was CBD Oil, you know, and so everybody was signing up for those. If it’s AI driven, right now, everybody’s signing up for AI programs. So person A sees person B promoting something and they sign up and then they don’t ever do anything. And this happens a lot more than I wish it did. But there’s three reasons why that happens.
Number one, it’s not a good fit for their audience. Number two, they don’t have any idea how to promote it. And then the third reason, they don’t have time to promote it. So with this group, the people who just kind of signed up because it was the hot thing or they saw somebody else promoting it, there’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing you can do to take it from being a bad fit for their audience to making it a good fit for the audience. Now, if you can find a reason why it’s not a bad fit, it was never a bad fit in the first place. No, actually, here’s how this could work for your audience. That’s different.
If they have no clue how to promote it, you’re probably not going to be able to help them. And if they literally don’t have time, well, you can’t make time for them, Right? Can you? I don’t know. I don’t think you can. So you just gotta kind of remove them and move on. Right. The second thing is they end up promoting a competitor. Now, this could be two ways. Number one, they’re in that phase where they’re looking for something to promote. They sign up with you. And two, Other competitors. And so there’s three that they’re kind of choosing from and they’re signing up.
Yeah, we all sell our affiliate program on the front end, but no, they want to see how it is in the back end. What are your tools really like? What’s your tracking really like? What network are you on? What are you like as an affiliate manager? You know, are you responsive? And things like that. They’re testing you out. And then the second thing is they promoted you for a while, but now they’re promoting a competitor. The reality is, no matter how awesome your product is, how amazing the commissions are, how great your relationship with is, sometimes the grass is, or at least seems greener on the other side.
That is the nature of affiliate marketing. So when this happens, you need to understand their why. You need to understand, why did they leave? Why do they choose to promote somebody else over you? In other words, What I mean is. Shut up and listen. If you’re talking to them about their why, don’t get defensive. Don’t get angry. Don’t try to convince them. No, no, no, no, no. You really should come promote us. Just listen to why they switched.
Maybe the other offer converts better or the new offer converts better. Maybe this new company is paying better. One of those competitors is paying better commissions. Maybe it’s their affiliate tools. Maybe it’s the communication with the affiliate manager. Maybe it’s the promise that maybe those other things are the same, but they’re gonna promote each other. So it’s like, well, duh, you know, I can. You know, I’ll make the same amount of money promoting you, but if you’re gonna promote me, I’m gonna make more money long term, so maybe that’s it.
So when you’re dealing with a situation like this where they’re promoting a competitor, like I said, number one, stay calm. Ask why they switched, and listen. Don’t say anything. Just listen and say thank you. I guess they’re just saying something, but, you know, give them some time. Follow up in a few weeks to see if there’s anything you can do. So if the issue is something like tools, right, they have better copy, they have better training, they have better graphics. This is a sign that you need to fix things.
Get them what they need, get better graphics, Get. Get better copy, get better training, get better tracking, whatever it is, get better tech. Give them what they need and then tell them that you listen. Oh, you said you wanted better graphics. Well, I took a look at theirs. Ours are ten times better. Now go get better stuff. If the issue is conversions, find out what the competition is doing to beat you.
Go study it. Spend some money if need be. Maybe the issue is that they have a better funnel. And so the initial sale, let’s say it’s $100 sale up front, you’re both converting at 6% and you’re both paying a 40% commission. That’s not why they left you. They left you because they’re doing a better job selling on the back end. So go buy some stuff. Invest in studying their funnels. You know, do what Russell Brunson suggests. Funnel hack. Find out why it is that your average order size is $100. Their average order size is $170, and that’s why your affiliate left. Then work on your stuff. Get your conversions up. Get your average order size up. If the issue is commission structure, pay more money.
Like, don’t get into a bidding war, but make sure you’re competitive. If an affiliate leaves a program that’s already paying 50% and this other program’s paying 75%, just let them go. It’s not worth killing your margins. But if you’re paying 30 when you really should be paying 40 and this competitor’s paying 40, by gosh, pay 40. Like, don’t be cheap. If you’re being cheap and you’re getting beat, stop being cheap. If you’re being fair and reasonable, but you’re just getting beaten by a competitor that’s going to try to take over the market, well, adjust. But there might not be much you can do.
If the problem is that your policy is you don’t do reciprocal promotions, reconsider. It might be worth promoting them to keep them. Or consider other alternatives. If you can’t do A true reciprocal promotion. I’ve talked about this in past episodes, like introduce them to somebody, we can’t promote you. You know, if you’re an affiliate manager, your hands are tied. My company has a policy where we don’t do those types of promotions or you don’t do very many throughout the year and you can’t promote this particular affiliate. Introduce them to some people who can, that’s just as valuable.
Like whether I send you $50,000 in sales or somebody else that I referred you send you $50,000 in sales, do you really care? No. So the first reason, again, they signed up kind of out of because it’s hot, whatever they saw somebody promoting. The second reason, they decided to promote a competitor instead. The third reason is they went out of business. All right, Nothing you can do there. You move on. The fourth reason is they don’t know how to promote. Here’s the news flash. That’s your job. Sometimes they just don’t know how to promote your product. Maybe they haven’t done a good job adapting to the ever changing landscape of the marketing world Right. Your job is to help them. Is that clear enough? Your job is to help your affiliates succeed.
So that means you got to do things. They take time, they, they take energy, they sometimes take money. They take brain power like hosting, training, webinars. Show them how to promote. Doing a monthly call with your affiliates to answer questions and give them ideas. Studying what your affiliates are doing. Recording videos to show them how to promote. Getting on calls with them one on one to help them and give them strategy. Tell them to subscribe to my site. Yeah, seriously, that’s not a bad idea. Like give them information. Remember, it is your job to help your affiliates.
So the excuse, if the reason is that they just don’t know how to promote, that’s on you. That is a fixable thing. That’s where I mentioned earlier with Michael. The 944 that weren’t active, the 291 that were, about 2/3 of those came because we showed them how, we gave them the tools they needed to succeed. And then the fifth reason, most common is, well, I’m going to get around to it later. Now, there are two types of the quote unquote, get around to it later affiliates. The first type, which accounts for like 1/10 of 1 millionth of a percent, is they truly have it on their calendar. And as a matter of fact, if they showed you their promo Calendar, sure enough, October 17th through 25th, they are promoting you. And then the second type of get around to it later is they’re really never going to get around to it. They’ve forgotten all about you and the only way to fix this is to give them a little nudge. I have said this probably 10 times on the podcast over the years. It’s one of the most oft repeated phrases I use.
Often all it takes to activate inactive affiliates is a gentle reminder. That’s it. These affiliates are never going to take action unless you give them the nudge they need. And that means sending a specific email that works to get them off their virtual couch and actually start making some sales. I’ve sent more than 300 different versions of activation emails over the last 20 years and there are a handful that work. And if you want them, I’ll put the link in the show. Notes mattmcwilliams.com activate they’re completely free. I’ve got a few of my best performing ones. I have cataloged these. I’ve studied them, I’ve split tested them.
These are the ones that I still use to this day. And because they work so mattmcwams.com activate you can get all of the different versions there. So why do you need to activate these inactive affiliates? I’ve talked about this in past episodes. I’m not going to go into a ton of detail. It seems kind of obvious, but I actually know people who don’t do it on purpose.
They just assume the effort’s not worth it. So they believe that affiliates are lazy, that if someone signed up and doesn’t promote, it’s just because they change their mind, it’s not a good fit. They’re lazy, whatever. And most of the time that’s not the case. They got busy. They could be in that first category. They signed up on a whim. Oh, they saw somebody else promoting it and then they were like, yeah, I want to do that. And they signed up. But here’s what happened. They signed up for your affiliate program. They had every intention. But then. And I’ve had this happen. This is a real thing. Five minutes later, their wife called him. Kid broke his leg at school. Kids got sick. Something happened. Server went down. Our website’s down. Oh, trap. One of our employees is sick, but we know what he’s heard from them in 24 hours. Are they alive?
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You know, let’s find that out. Let’s. A client called, a family member needed you. In other words, life got in the way. And all they need is that gentle reminder. And so when they come back from whatever kept them from promoting, they have a Mound of email. They have calls to return, they have poster. Right. They got videos, podcasts to. They’re not thinking about you. No offense, but it’s just not that high on their priority list. That gentle reminder gets them back on track and they, they get fired up again. That’s all it takes with most people. So key takeaway, it’s not about laziness, it’s about barriers. So what do you do with these affiliates? Well, first it depends on what type of program you’re running.
You know I mentioned Michael Hyatt’s launch earlier for five days to your best ever. That was a launch that was time bound. So I’m going to talk about that first. But then we need to talk about Evergreen programs as well. Okay, so the first type of program is when there’s a launch. When you’re running a product launch or a book launch or any time bound promo, the window to activate affiliates is incredibly, incredibly short. So there’s some special quote unquote rules that you have to follow. Right.
So in a launch you have to first decide, okay, who’s considered inactive. If you have a 15 day promo and you’re one day in, just cause they haven’t promoted doesn’t mean they’re inactive yet. So we consider an inactive affiliate to be anyone with three hits or less or one opt in by day four or five depending upon how long the launch is. So if it’s a shorter launch, like 12, 13 days, we’ll probably do this on day four. If it’s more like 15 to 17 days or 20 days, we’ll do day five. So I said three hits in one optin, why not zero and zero? Because usually you get at least one or two hits when somebody’s just testing and maybe an opt in when somebody’s testing. And so if they have three, three hits, I assume they’re just testing.
If I happen to reach out to somebody and they have three hits and like, no, I really did promote just means they’re really small and whatever. What harm did I do by saying I noticed you’re not active? Like, yes, I am. Like they’ve never had anybody be like, you’re a moron, I hate you, I’m gonna quit now. No, they’re just like, I really am, I’m trying. And so that’s who’s inactive. Again, three hits, one opt in by day, you know, four or five depending upon how long the promo is. Typically, like I said, I’ll reach out to them around day four, day five, depending upon how long it is I’ll reach out.
So in like a 17 day promo, typically 17 is like the average that we find. It’s more like 16.8 It was a little bit longer a few years ago, but it’s been getting a little bit shorter over the last few years. We’ll reach out, you know, on day 4, day 8 roughly. In day 10 or 11 we’ll find a milestone in there. So day 4 will typically be like the second prelaunch content, something like that. Day 8 will typically be around the third pre launch content. Day 10 or 11 would typically be around cart open. So if it’s adjusted, you know, if there’s different, like typically day four, day five, again, pretty consistent in there. We’ll typically reach out after the second piece of pre launch content depending upon when that is, the day after the third piece and like the day after cart open roughly again, give or take a day or two on either side of those. And so we reach out at least twice, usually three times, but we space them out a few days apart. Don’t worry about being annoying though.
This is the biggest thing. You have to balance getting results and getting on their nerves. But it’s not like they can send you less traffic. If they’re still at zero on day 10 and you’re like, well, I’ve already reached out twice, should I reach out? Yes, reach out a fourth time. Like, I mean, really, they can’t send you less traffic than they’re sending than the zero they’re sending. So why would you worry about being annoying? Especially if you’re doing a once a year launch. This is your entire one time to get them active this year.
So get them active. Now the second part is if you have an evergreen program, truly, sales are going on 24, 7, 365. So back when I ran the Shutterfly affiliate program late 2013, we had more than 15,000 inactive affiliates. Now again, a bunch of them were inactive and had been a part of the program for a long time before I came on board. So we were never going to activate them.
We did one push right after I got there that lasted less than a week. And this was middle of the year. We were able to activate nearly 1400 of them who produced more than $430,000 in additional revenue just that year. Okay, so again, you’re seeing the numbers like most of these, 10%, And we’re doing everything we can, but Most people activate 0%. One of my favorite activation campaigns was actually one of my very first.
The first I done with an evergreen retail program. I’d done one with an evergreen Legion program. I’d done one in the launch world. But when I took over the Learn and Master Guitar program, when I got there, there were 704 inactive affiliates. Most of them had been part of the program for well over a year that we basically, we considered them dormant within a month. Again, I did exactly what I tell our people to do. This was back in 2009. I got there in May of 2009. I did exactly what I still teach our in agency today. The lowest hanging fruit is inactive affiliates.
So get after it, like help them, teach them, show them what to do. So again, 704 inactives. Within a month, we had activated 261 of them. Why were we able to do that? What was the difference between that and say, the slightly less than It had to do with just the types of affiliates. Like these were mostly people who just needed a little bit of guidance. They didn’t sign up on a whim. I mean, some of them did. Clearly they weren’t promoting competitors, although some of them were.
But we had a higher percentage of them who really just needed some handholding. And most of those affiliates, over the next year, they only made five to 10 sales. But they were the reason why we were able to grow that program from 2. 2 million a year to over 6 million a year within a year. Of the top 10 affiliates, by years in four of them were from that group of inactive affiliates, including two of the top three. So while most of those 261 collectively 200 of them probably, I say, only only produced about 300,000 in sales. First of all, that’s still amazing. This is back in 2009, 2010. That’s still awesome that they generated that additional revenue.
Two of the top three affiliates and for the top 10 were from that group. So in short, when you do this right, it absolutely works. So use those emails, go to the Show Notes or go to mattmcwams.com activate get the emails. No matter what you do, any evergreen affiliate program with more than a few dozen affiliates is going to have some that become inactive. No matter what you do, every launch affiliate program with more than a few dozen affiliates is going to have some that become inactive. You can run the best program with the best commissions, have the greatest personality. Some of them are just going to fall off the earth.
I shared those reasons earlier. Those are universal. Ultimately it comes down to motivation. So five things to motivate your affiliates. Number one, make it ridiculously easy for them. These are the basics that we’ve talked about. Swipe, copy, graphics, bonuses, clear promo schedules. The easier you make it, the more likely they are to take action. Make it super stupid simple for them. Secondly, train them. Talked about this. Webinars Q&As tutorial videos help them understand how to promote share what’s working for other affiliates.
If they’ll let you reach out to the affiliate and say, hey, I love this. Can I share this with our. 99% of the time they say yes. Third, create urgency and excitement. Use the things that we’ve talked about. Contests, live leaderboards, special bonuses, scarcity. Make it fun, make it rewarding, but get them moving, okay? Give them an excuse to promote. Here’s the simplest thing in the world. If you have a thousand affiliates right now and let’s say 300 of them are active, easiest way to get 20 of your affiliates active in the next 10 days is just to run a promo that’s good for only those 10 days.
Easiest way in the world. And of course let them know about it and repeatedly tell them about it over and over and over again. Post about it in your Facebook group. Post about it. You know, send emails about it. Text them, reach out to them individually. Let them know about this promo. That’s the easiest way. The fourth thing to motivate your affiliates. As I just talked about, personal outreach is better. Email DMs texts a simple Hey, I noticed you haven’t started promoting yet. How can I help? Believe it or not works. Yeah. Again, grab the templates. Some of those work better than the others that you might do, but anything is better than nothing. And then the fifth thing that keeps them active is recognizing them, rewarding them. Public recognition, Private thank yous Surprise bonuses like congrats, you had your best month ever last month.
Here’s a bonus that works amazingly well to keeping them active. Speaking of keeping them active, we need to keep them engaged long term. So we need to build relationships. You have five things here as well. As far as the long term. Build relationships I mentioned earlier, they’re not employees. They’re not just promo machines. They are partners. So relationships. Keep them updated. Regular reach outs, tips, new offers, success stories. You want to get successful affiliates. You want to get 10 affiliates off their butts tomorrow? Again, assuming you have over 500, you want to get 2 to 3% of your affiliates off their butts in the next seven days. Send a success story. No special activation required. Like, you’re not going to send any of the templated emails that I have. These aren’t specifically to get them active. Send success stories. It’ll also help your active affiliates, you know, again, offer promos and things like that. Early access to promos. You want to get affiliates active.
Here’s another way. You get 2 to 3% of your affiliates active in a week. Announce a promo for next Tuesday through Thursday, it’s a three day promo. And let affiliates exclusively promote it on Monday. That’ll work. Fourth, just keeping things fresh. Create new angles, new creative angles, seasonal campaigns, new incentives. Like, I’m recording this like a week and a half before Valentine’s, about a week before the super bowl, right?
Working in those angles and just finding different reasons. You got sprin coming up and then you got summer, you got out of school, then you got back to school. But before that you got July 4th and you got the summer solstice, and then you got the beginning of fall and you got Labor Day. Before that you got Veterans Day, you got all these things. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, last day of Christmas, shipping, New Year’s, you know, all these things, right? I mean, I only named like a quarter of the things you could possibly use. And then lastly, celebrate wins. They make their first sale, you congratulate them.
They make their 10th sale, you congratulate them. They make their first thousand dollars, you congratulate them, their first $2,000. Their best day, their best week, their best month, whatever it is. Keep reinforcing small wins and the wins will get bigger and bigger. This is psychology 101, right? So I’ve talked about the why and the win and all that stuff. How do we reach out to them? The how part is super simple. You use any means necessary to get in touch with them. Email, text, Telegram, WhatsApp, Voxer, Facebook, Instagram, DMS, you name it. I mean, you name it. Social media, smoke signals, carrier pigeons, whatever you can think of.
Reach out. Learn their preferred method of communication. If they prefer text, use text. If they like chatting on Skype, you can accomplish so much more with a quick Skype message than you ever could sending 10 emails. Now, that said, I’m going to share one that we’ve used over the years. I’m going to share the email version, but honestly, you can tweak this to fit any type of text, Skype message, dm, et cetera. Right? This was a particular email that we’ve used hundreds of times.
I’m going to read to you, the example that we used, the one that I mentioned earlier, Michael Hyatt’s five days to your best year ever campaign. I’m going to use that as an example that we sent on day five of the launch. And the subject line was, everything okay? So if your name’s Joe, it was Joe. Everything okay? First name. Hey, first name. Just checking to make sure everything was okay. I had you down to support Michael’s launch, but haven’t seen any activity yet. There are still plenty of time to join in. The launch is going amazingly well, but it’s not too late for you to get started. Let me know how I can help. That’s what I’m here for. All the best, Matt. Now, this email has five elements. Again, you can tweak this for any platform, right?
I want to talk about five elements. Number one, it grabs their attention. If I say, everything okay, John, and your name is John. Everything okay, Susie. And your name is Susie. It stands out. Everything okay. Like, wait, what? Why would everything not be okay? Or maybe it’s not okay and you’re like, no, everything is not okay. My business has gone to have in a handbasket over the last week and I need help. Hey, great way to do that.
Promote this affiliate offer. Right? You know, all right. Second, it reminds them of a commitment. The book influence. One of the best books of all time, Robert Cialdini. If you go to mattmcwaims.com books you’ll see it there. You have to read it if you haven’t. But one of the things he talks about is the principle of commitment. We have a natural desire to do what we said we would do. I remind them of their commitment. I say, I had you down to promote to support Michael’s launch. It’s big key there, by the way. Support, not promote, but haven’t seen any activity yet. Now, a lot of people say, wasn’t this a bit of a guilt trip? Yep, it absolutely is. But it’s also reminding them of something that’s going to make them a lot of money. So I don’t care. And yeah, it’s a little bit of a guilt trip. It reminds them of something they committed to doing. What is wrong with that? The third thing, it encourages them.
There’s still plenty of time to join. It’s not too late for you to get started. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Right? Like twice. I say in there, there’s still time. By day five, some people might think it’s too late to join, but I make sure to tell them otherwise. Maybe they joined three months ago and it’s a never great program. I’m never going to get around to it. Yeah, there’s studies, there’s still plenty of time. Fourth thing it has a social proof. The launch is going amazingly well, but it’s not too late for you to get started.
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People want to be a part of something that’s going well. I want to make sure to point out that things are going great. I want them to be a part of it. And the last thing it says is it offers help. Right? Let me know how I can help. That’s what I’m here for. And make sure you are clear that you are there to answer questions and hold their hand if needed. This email is one of many that I’ve used that works. So if you go to mattmcwilliams.com activate you can get all the templates completely for free.
Hey, so go download them, tweak them, tweak them to figure your voice. Maybe that email I just shared, you’re like, eh, that’s not my voice. But if I tweak a couple of words it is cool. Do that. The principles remain the same. You grab their attention. You remind them of a commitment. You encourage them. Use social proof. You offer help. Don’t make it any longer though. That is about as long as it should be. I could probably tweak it to 5. I could probably change that last one to make it one sentence instead of two. That last paragraph. Let me know how I can help. That’s what I’m here for. By doing a little dot, dot, dot and then a lowercase t instead of a uppercase T. Either way, count the words in that email. In fact, I’m going to do it right now.
Count the words in that email. What do we got? You probably want your email to be in that range. About 50 to 75 words. This is probably on the slightly on the high end of how long you want it to be, because you want it to be super quick. So just to recap, number one, affiliates aren’t lazy. They just need direction. They need motivation.
They need support. As far as an action step for today, I want you to pick one of today’s strategies and apply it this week. That’s it. Just pick one one of the strategies I’ve shared and put it into action this week. You’re listening to this on a Tuesday. Implement this Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, whatever. It doesn’t matter if you implement one strategy and get a 2% lift. Cool you have 2% more active affiliates. Next week you do a new one, you get 5%. Cool. Now you got 7%. Whatever. And then last thing, make sure you go grab those affiliate activation email templates again, even if they’re not on brand for you. It’ll give you some creative juice to use and get going with your activation campaigns.
The one I just shared, it’s one of many successful activation emails that I’ve used over the years and so you can get all of them at matmcwilliams for free. By the way. Matmcwilliams.com activate Listen, your affiliates are ready. You just have to give them the push they need. That’s it. So if you have any questions about this or anything else, text me anytime.260-217-4619 It’s going to be a special one. I’m doing an interview for the first time and I can’t remember how long, but it’s somebody that literally, like it’s one of the five people on earth that I would even bother to do an interview with. And when I had this opportunity come across, I had to take it because I’ve been looking forward to having this conversation for years. And I am talking like since shortly after the podcast started 635 episodes ago, I’ve been wanting to do this interview and I finally got it. When it came across, I was like, I’m all over this. So guys, I’m super excited for the next episode. So make sure if you haven’t yet, you hit subscribe so you don’t miss it. I’ll see you then.
See you soon.