When our client’s affiliate program launched in December of 2019, there were only far off conversations of COVID-19 and how it was impacting other countries. And I think most of us thought this would be like swine flu or H1N1. While it caused much heartache for those affected, it didn’t stop our economies or lead to shelter in place orders.
Then COVID-19 came to America and work from home became a thing, and the economy took a huge hit, and continues to do so.
Our highly experienced affiliate managers didn’t miss a beat. Here is how they met and beat every projection and forecast we and our clients had for this launch:
- They didn’t miss a beat. As the environment changed, they reviewed their Strategic Roadmap and identified the elements that were still relevant and the ones that weren’t.
- The tactics that no longer applied were dropped and a heavier emphasis was placed on the tactics that were.
- They performed a vulnerabilities assessment to identify the areas of weakness for the program.
- They created a mitigation plan for each of those vulnerabilities.
- Then they executed their new plan.
- Aggressively reached out to top partners to negotiate integrations, placements and exposure, integrating a top performing partner that had otherwise refused to partner, but by leveraging all our relationships our team got them on their site.
- Since this client had not yet focused on their SEM channel, the team used affiliate partners to fill the gaps by bringing in two ™+ partners and one long tail keyword search affiliate partner.
- Created custom landing pages for individual affiliates to increase conversion rate.
In times of crisis and change, it is important to review plans, pivot and mitigate risk and then get moving. As Brad Pitt’s character said in the beginning of World War Z – “movement is life”. And that is true in times like these.
If you need help creating a plan for your affiliate program right now, set up a 15 minute free consultation with me personally and I’ll help you get on track. You can set up a time at calendly.com/jamiebirch or contact us at gethelp@jebcommerce.com.
