Affiliate Mastery: Building Connections, Avoiding Mistakes with Tara McCommons

[00:00:11] Jake Fuller: Okay. Welcome back to the Profitable Performance Marketing Podcast. I am your host, Jake Fuller. Excited about the topic this week. Our topic is pretty broad and you can dive into this one pretty deeply, but it’s going to cover the mistakes that merchants or brands make when coming into the affiliate channel that don’t allow them to succeed or grow at the rate that they expect.

[00:00:34] Keeps them from being the big fish, if you will, among the competition. And my guest today is a longtime friend and colleague Tara McCommons from LinkConnector. Welcome to the show.

[00:00:44] Tara McCommons: Hi, Jake. Yes, thank you. I’m honored to be here.

[00:00:48] JF: It’s good to have you.

[00:00:49] TMC: And with you this time. Yes. So it’s great.

[00:00:51] JF: Yeah, so we’ve had a few return guests this year or this season but it’s a first for me as the host and it’s good to have them come back on. And I know you’ve been on with Jamie in the past, but it’s great to have you jump back on and let me keep getting my host feet wet, if you will, with some common faces.

[00:01:08] TMC: Awesome. I’m honored.

[00:01:10] JF: So for the listeners who may not know you, do you want to do a quick introduction and kind of talk about your background in the affiliate space?

[00:01:17] TMC: Yeah, absolutely. So I am Tara McCommons and I am Vice President of Sales and Marketing with LinkConnector, an affiliate marketing network that we just celebrated 20 years in March this year, and I began my career within the industry with LinkConnector 20 years ago last month, actually.

[00:01:39] So I have had the privilege and good fortune of wearing a lot of different hats within LinkConnector starting out on the front lines in bringing in new merchants into the network and then recognizing the chicken and egg situation that we need the affiliates, too. So switched gears and worked a lot on establishing affiliate relationships within LinkConnector to help our team introduce those opportunities with our merchants to help facilitate the relationships.

[00:02:11] And I have been a avid supporter of the Performance Marketing Association was on the Performance Marketing Association board of directors for two terms and love going to the conferences and helping to support the growth of our industry. And your podcast is an excellent, channel for that growth and education.

[00:02:35] So honored to be here today.

[00:02:37] JF: Thank you. I do love the PMA. They do some awesome work over there. And one of our episodes that we’ll be releasing soon is with Tricia Myers. So that’s going to be a fun one for listeners as well, but thank you for the intro and I love the timeline. I was just chatting with Jamie Birch, our founder at JEBCommerce, for those who may not know, most of you probably do.

[00:02:56] I believe last week we celebrated our 20th anniversary as an agency. So same timeline as LinkConnector. I know that Choots and Jamie got into the space more or less, or at least launching what they’ve launched at the same time. So happy 20th to you from us and in the same celebratory way.

[00:03:15] TMC: Quite incredible. Yes. Congratulations. That’s awesome.

[00:03:19] JF: Here’s to 20 more. It flies by, I can tell you that.

[00:03:22] TMC: It does. It does. Yes. But that’s one thing with our industry, always evolving and challenging and learning new things. It does make it fly by.

[00:03:31] JF: And that is a good segue into the topic. The channel does evolve quickly, but as we dive into our topic this week, obviously as both a network from LinkConnector side, and as an agency from my side, we deal with a large number of different merchants, retailers, and brands that we represent, that we work with, and we also talk to and speak with a lot of publishers and affiliate relationships that we have established over the years.

[00:03:56] And the topic this week is really diving into the mistakes that merchants might make as they either have been in the industry for some time or the channel, I should say, or if they’re just looking to jump into the affiliate channel and launch their first program, there’s a lot of common mistakes that, that I find that can hinder success and growth.

[00:04:14] But from your perspective over the years, what are maybe some of the top two things that stick out when brands launch an affiliate program that they need to be prepared for so they don’t shoot themselves in the foot, so to speak.

[00:04:26] TMC: Yeah, and this is a topic that can go well beyond a podcast series. I have several things that come to mind important things that can oftentimes be overlooked, but one of the primary ones is when merchants don’t remember to humanize their program. So putting the personal touch with this. You and I know that the success of an affiliate program is rooted in relationships, and those relationships thrive on engagement, attention that personal connection. Helping merchants to recognize that include your contact information as part of your program description, include your contact information in the emails, in the newsletters, but really take the time to not just market your program to your affiliates, but also engage with them, ask them questions.

[00:05:26] Tell me how you promote. What is your audience demographic made up of? What do you need? And that is just critical, I think, to building that relationship, a trusted relationship and helping to motivate the affiliate to want to lean in and become a part of that program. Not just looking at it as a transactional relationship.

[00:05:52] Because there’s so much behind it and there’s people behind it. So that’s one thing that we always stress to merchants: put that human touch in with your program because it will go a long way to creating and strengthening the relationships.

[00:06:05] JF: I think you said something there as well, when it comes to, I wrote a bullet point list and it just kept growing as I kept thinking of other areas in which merchants may hinder themselves from a successful program, but communication was a big one and under communication, there are so many facets and you talk about relationship-based channel.

[00:06:24] And we say that a lot in our channel and in our space that it’s relationship-based and part of that is communication. So I think for a lot of brands that we see, even if they’re running it in a transactional manner, there still needs to be communication, right? So a big thing that we see missing from programs that are stagnant, that are down year over year, that should be up is that they’re just not communicating with their partners.

[00:06:47] They’ve got partners live on their program that have declined over time. And when I asked, when’s the last time you’ve had a phone call or send an email about a product update or a release, or send an email to your partners when you have a promotional opportunity coming up for the brand, and their answer is six months ago, 12 months ago, or we don’t communicate or send out newsletters or emails to our partners.

[00:07:10] That’s a big red flag. I think communication is definitely a big part of it. And the more you can humanize it I think the better. But it also… go ahead.

[00:07:19] TMC: No, I was just gonna say in a genuine way as well. Taking the time, especially as you do get affiliates performing email them individually, go beyond just the mass newsletter emails, but be genuine with it.

[00:07:32] JF: A hundred percent. I think authenticity sticks out in this space where we’re talking about, how do you stand up against the competitors, maybe in your vertical as a brand. And one way to do that is create more of a personal touch with those affiliate partners and create that relationship because if someone feels like they’re reading an email or picking up the phone from a friend, it’s going to be a lot easier to communicate and connect with them and maybe work on new ways to promote your brand than your competition might have.

[00:07:59] TMC: Right.

[00:08:00] JF: It also lends itself to, we’re only talking so far about putting a human touch in here, talking about communication but a broader spectrum issue that a lot of merchants might have is understanding the resources that go into operating this channel. Do you find that a lot of brands just miss the mark based on the resource time or allocation they have internally to put into the program?

[00:08:21] TMC: Yes, very much and that’s another point that I was going to bring up as far as leaning into the resources that are available in our industry, specifically that with agencies. So recognizing that you get out of this what you put into it and relationships take a lot of nurturing and attention and exactly what you just said, the communication piece.

[00:08:43] So yes, if as a merchant, you don’t have the internal resources dedicated to be invested in this consistently, then an agency is ideal for helping to support that and also having those connections with the affiliates as well.

[00:09:02] JF: And I think it’s common. I think there’s… on my end, probably, we’ll stick with a conservative number, at least half of the brands that we speak to that run a program internally, it’s not a dedicated affiliate manager. It’s the person saying, "Hey, I’m the paid media director. I’m, I mainly focus on Google ads and Meta maybe email marketer that comes in and runs all the email efforts for the brand" also was given affiliate to oversee and don’t realize the amount of resource time that goes into operating a successful program.

[00:09:32] So that is something commonly that we see and try to dictate what they can do internally, if they want to go that route or what resources are available to them to be more effective at managing their program or what options they have otherwise, which one of those would be obviously agency help or outsourced help for that program.

[00:09:50] TMC: Yes, exactly. And it’s all about the longevity with this as well. So it’s not by any means a quick thing that they’re going to start seeing results. So having somebody that can invest in this beyond that first six months or beyond the first three months, because a lot of times, as we know, you’re going to start seeing the rewards of this six to eight months down the road as those relationships start building up and doing the actions, the goals that the merchant has for those programs consistently.

[00:10:20] JF: Agreed. Do you feel like there’s any other glaring areas where to back up, let’s say you’ve got active programs. You have many at LinkConnector, for example, so merchants that come on board that you think, man, there’s no reason this should not succeed.

[00:10:34] What are some common pitfalls that brands get into when setting up a campaign and starting to target different affiliate categories? Are there pitfalls that you see them jump into where they’re not realizing the potential of the channel based off of internal decisions they’ve made?

[00:10:49] TMC: Yeah. So one critical area is emphasizing your value proposition to affiliates. Thinking just as a brand shows their value proposition to users on their website on their home page having their recognition where they’ve been featured what their mission statement is helping affiliates to be aware of that, too.

[00:11:12] So the value proposition, beyond just that of the program itself, as far as the average order value or the commission payout, or if there’s an introductory payout, which is highly recommended, especially as the merchants get started. They’re an extension of your marketing team, so helping them become aware of the strengths, your value proposition within your industry, is hugely helpful to empower affiliates with that knowledge. And then as far as once the program is up and running reaching out to affiliates, being open minded about all the many different affiliate segments that an affiliate program can help get you in front of beyond just coupon or content as an example.

[00:12:01] JF: Well that, that brings up another question when it comes to categorically there’s… I think what a lot of brands don’t realize you can truly take a full funnel approach within the affiliate space. Especially today, there’s partners that can drive awareness and introduce new customers to the brand.

[00:12:16] That’s a little bit more long tail play with those partners, all the way down to those that can help site conversion rates and retargeting efforts for consumers that have already been on site, maybe considered making a purchase and everything in between. And so when you talk about being open to those categories, how important do you think flexibility is for merchants when they jump into this space on testing new ideas, new partners, and new strategies?

[00:12:40] TMC: Yeah hugely important. And that’s one of the beautiful parts with an affiliate program is that testing piece that it does give a merchant the ability to test with different technology partners, as an example, which can definitely help to give a competitive edge, help to protect lost revenue from a merchant site that users may bounce from their site, a technology partner can help fill in there and really provide a competitive edge customer retention.

[00:13:11] So being flexible to the many different affiliate segments is definitely critical to the program succeeding, but also for the merchant to recognize where their customer is, what their customer interests are the touch points that are involved in a sale. It’s so non-linear right now. It’s not just reading in a newsletter or reading on a content site, but it’s hearing about it from within your social feeds.

[00:13:42] So those are your, Content creators. So recognizing that these are touch points that you can access within your affiliate program, helping you as a brand to be there where your customers are.

[00:13:54] And oftentimes, you want to be there from a full funnel standpoint, but if it’s only one particular segment that you’re honed in on, you really risk that over reliance on that segment and miss out on audiences that you could be capturing otherwise, and that likely your competitors are there.

[00:14:12] JF: That’s true. And I think there’s still brand loyalty for some consumers. I think we all have that one brand or maybe a couple of brands where I know I’m only buying this brand for this type of shoe for this type of, home good, whatever it might be. We all still have kind of some loyalties there where we still want to get a deal, but either way, I’m going to buy this brand, but by and large and figuratively speaking, there’s a lot of competition out there, regardless of what vertical your brand sits in, and in my experience over the past 14 years in digital marketing, consumer behavior has changed pretty drastically.

[00:14:47] We’re brand loyalty. has become less common. It’s more what’s going to fit the bill now. What’s going to be the best deal that I can find. What’s the hottest new item or trend going on right now. And these are many different touch points of how people are constantly bombarded with new opportunities through social media, through all sorts of different types of introductions where they’re reading about a product or an article or a brand.

[00:15:13] And that dictates them maybe trying something new. So I don’t think brand loyalty is as common as it might’ve been back in the day and to retain those loyal customers, you continually have to engage with them, market to them, and win them over.

[00:15:30] TMC: Yes 100%. And that’s something that an affiliate program is so powerful in opening those channels for merchants to get that exposure and to capture users that don’t have that brand loyalty, but hone in on what your promotions are right now for your products to try and capture that user and lean on affiliates like search engine marketing affiliates that can help to capture that high-intent search where they may not necessarily be looking for a brand, but instead a particular product and a search affiliate is a great example of one that can help get you that visibility and capture that user interest rather than a competitor.

[00:16:13] JF: I 100% percent agree. And I’ve seen that play out quite a few times with brands. I guess on that too, when it comes to strategy and utilizing different types of partners, reward strategy, how important is it for brands that want to stand out and find growth in the channel to implement strategy, and how often should they be looking at that and reassessing that strategy, whether it’s their commission strategy their partner strategy, how often should that be in review? And when you see a brand do really well on LinkConnector, do you see that as one of their common threads?

[00:16:44] TMC: Yeah, I think it depends on the brand and on the seasonality of it as well. Thinking seasons whether it be the winter, the spring, the summer. But yeah, assessing the demand of your products and looking at your affiliates to see who can help capture that demand. But even more importantly, educating the affiliate about that demand curve as well.

[00:17:12] That’s one thing that I think is important for merchants that too often many don’t do, but take for example halloweencostumes. com is one of our merchants. So they definitely assess their affiliates starting summertime, like leading up to the season, but they also educate their affiliates that their season doesn’t start in October. It actually begins building in August.

[00:17:39] So adjusting that strategy to help empower affiliates with the knowledge around Orange Tuesday as an example that I wasn’t aware of and that is I think the day after Labor Day. Yeah, and that kicks off the Halloween season, but having that knowledge helped affiliates make informed decisions around their strategy for introducing paid placements or featured spots about the merchant’s particular product.

[00:18:10] So I think it depends on the merchant Jake, as far as when to reassess the strategy. But I think at least four times a year, like thinking about the quarters and recognizing that you don’t want the relationships to go stale. It’s hugely competitive. There’s so many merchants launching programs.

[00:18:30] So keeping that relationship going, even in the off season is super important.

[00:18:37] JF: I wholeheartedly agree. And I think quarterly is a good benchmark. I think every quarter there should be at least an assessment of how you’re utilizing your affiliate partnerships, what your strategy looks like, from a reward perspective how are you rewarding different actions from different affiliates?

[00:18:52] It’s important to look at on a quarterly basis and more important as well as competitively run an analysis I think one thing we look at and tell our brands that we either represent or they’re launching a brand new affiliate program, or they have an existing one is when’s the last time you’ve done a full analysis on what your competition’s doing?

[00:19:10] It’s a good barometer to see if you’re off that mark and a reason why you’re not seeing the growth that you think you should.

[00:19:17] TMC: Absolutely, and looking at things from a consumer standpoint, too, doing some searches to see, and this is something that I think merchants can find new relationships this way too, but where are your competitors? And seeing as far as on review sites and everything, and are you on there as well?

[00:19:34] So that’s information that is hugely helpful to find new relationships throughout the year as well.

[00:19:42] JF: Agreed. Now, another topic, I want to dive into same topic, but another area for brands to consider is, do you ever find that when brands launch an affiliate program and they’re not considering their overall site consumer experience, their bounce rate, their conversion rate what that does to their success and how does that impact the success they can have an affiliate with some of the partners they want to work with? Is that something they should be looking into before they launch an affiliate effort?

[00:20:11] TMC: Absolutely. Yes. We often have merchants ask how many orders can they get? Or how quickly can this gear up? And how quickly can they start seeing conversions? How many conversions are they going to see? And there’s so many variables that factor into that. One of which is their site, the conversion rate on the site, the user experience, and that is critically important.

[00:20:33] And that’s something to include within your program, again empowering affiliates with the knowledge, but what your conversion rate is and products top selling products as well and asking them specifically, about their testing. How much A/B testing do you do? Because that’s critically important.

[00:20:52] And what other channels, digital marketing channels, have been effective for them? And what’s the conversion rate for those? Because the conversion rate can be very different for search versus email marketing as an example. But yeah the quality of their site absolutely factors into the success of the affiliate program.

[00:21:11] That’s your house. You want that to be in good condition before you start inviting people in, if you will. Affiliates, they may start promoting, but if it’s not converting, they’re not going to continue to promote that. Or at least not invest as much effort into it.

[00:21:25] JF: And that’s, I think that’s one thing that does get missed is there are times where. When we’re looking at an affiliate program from a merchant perspective, they have to consider, okay, these affiliate partners might have interest in working with you. But something they also look at and that is common to go over is, and this ties to conversion rate is their EPC.

[00:21:43] So affiliates might look at what are they earning per click on the traffic they’re driving to your site? What’s converting? What does that average EPC look like? If your competition is far higher in that regard than you are because your site is a little bit outdated, maybe the consumer experience is not quite as clean or direct for them to convert, it’s not as enticing, whatever that might be, you have to look into that because affiliates, at least from an agency perspective, a lot of affiliates are really fantastic at testing new merchants and bringing new partners on, but in 30 days and 60 days and 90 days, if they don’t see the metrics that they need to see from a performance perspective, they’re going to put their apples back into your competitor’s basket and continue working with them and not you.

[00:22:29] So that’s one thing that I find at least is there’s a lot of brands where we even recommend before you jump into this space. Maybe have a professional come in and do a full conversion rate optimization on your site and do some consumer A/B testing and figure out how to make your site more attractive.

[00:22:46] And mind you, for any brands listening, this helps not just the affiliate channel, this helps all of your channels and understanding how to turn search traffic, social traffic, email traffic, programmatic, how to turn that into better conversion rates on site and better consumer experience.

[00:23:03] TMC: 100%.

[00:23:05] JF: So here we are, it’s Q4 2024. I know a lot of brands that are getting in the space. Wanting to stand out, obviously, everybody’s focused on and pushing towards Black Friday, Cyber week, that entire promotional period that a lot of brands heavily rely on. But what we don’t talk about a lot to really stand out with your affiliate partners is you ran a great promotional period. Maybe you opted into some paid placements that helped you get ahead, but now it’s 2025, we’re jumping into a new year, the holiday season is over. So do you have any tips or tricks for merchants that can continue to stand out and grow as they look toward the new year?

[00:23:47] TMC: Yeah, absolutely. I think one important thing is empowering the affiliates, providing those product feeds informing them of the top selling categories or top selling products leading into the new year. And not just the ones on your homepage, but truly, what is it that is in demand in Q1 that affiliates can help draw attention to.

[00:24:12] And also the creative assets, seasonal around that right now, yes, everything is Q4. I see a lot of Halloween related seasonal assets, and I know we’re going to start seeing Thanksgiving and Christmas but recognizing the other seasons that are upcoming as well.

[00:24:30] Health and fitness in January, Valentine’s day. So empowering affiliates with these creative assets to be able to use within their promotional efforts and keeping your promotions fresh as well. So coupon offers, your deals, remembering to get those updated and affiliates can be very effective with helping to get that audience visibility and conversions in your downtime as well come January. So empowering affiliates with the right tools within the affiliate program to help them be able to succeed.

[00:25:10] JF: Another area I find for Q1 as well as, is when it comes to budget, Q4, everything right now, and you talked about assets a bit. We don’t see rotation of those quick enough sometimes going into January where we need to get rid of the holiday assets that are available and have some fresh brand creative assets, text links, offers, et cetera, that really speak to a new year and kind of the new structure or strategy moving forward. Now that we’ve turned the calendar year over. But one thing that I try to communicate with brands as well is Q4, you’re typically going to find most brands save up some of that budget and they spend maybe 40 percent more than they do any other quarter.

[00:25:48] Or sometimes much larger. Sometimes 80 percent of their budget goes into Q4 alone. And affiliates know this. So affiliate partners right now have inventory. It is limited. They’re selling out of that inventory and sometimes it’s higher price. Now on the flip side, what I find really effective is a lot of those same affiliate partners starting in Q1 in January, now have an excess of opportunities to have additional exposure for brands at a lower price that you can negotiate where you might have your competitors that have spent their budget on Q4 and aren’t doing a whole lot in Q1 other than maintenance. And so we also find good opportunity to plan during Q4 with those partners and start securing Q1 negotiations and exposure.

[00:26:34] That puts you higher up than you might’ve gotten otherwise. Even for kind of those smaller to midsize brands, we see in Q1 affiliate partners are a lot more willing to put them maybe at a top spot or a home page or a solo newsletter email something they might not have been willing to do in Q4, so it’s also important from our perspective to look at how can you get ahead of your competition to start off the new year by negotiating with your partners right now in the affiliate space.

[00:27:02] And what kind of exposure opportunities they have, what kind of placements they have and negotiating those prices and those placements ahead of time.

[00:27:09] TMC: Agreed, and that is that communication piece and doing it ahead of time. So don’t wait until January 2nd take advantage of downtime starting in December. After that week in between Christmas and New Year’s, but there is time to strategize with your affiliates, communicate with them, have those strategy calls, get your agency involved with that to help prepare for Q1.

[00:27:35] JF: Which will be here before we know it.

[00:27:38] TMC: Yes, it will.

[00:27:39] JF: This whole year has seemed to fly by as they typically do. So well we’ve covered a lot so far. I feel like this topic could go on into many subtopics that we can expand on. Everything we’ve talked about I could have probably a whole podcast episode over.

[00:27:53] But for anybody else listening, what would be your key takeaways as people go into Q4 going to next year as they consider the affiliate channel? How do they make sure they’re not making these mistakes and what are the top things that they can do to ensure growth for their brand?

[00:28:08] TMC: Yeah, so I think it’s definitely communicating their value proposition and updating that within their program as well. So thinking ahead to Q1, what is your seasonality around that? That guess what? Our product is in demand come February for Valentine’s Day as an example. Keeping that value proposition strong within your program and also helping to convey the demand curve of the upcoming season for your products, but communicating with the affiliates, assessing your affiliate performance to see are there different segments that You could lean on more so to help capture that audience in Q1, whether your audience is interested in the health and fitness area, or more about planning ahead for the spring time, but looking at different affiliate segments that can help get you in front of audiences that now that we’re past Q4, making sure that your program is diverse in the right way to align with your goals in Q1.

[00:29:18] JF: Excellent. Diversity is important. I think that is the biggest thing we look at as an agency when taking on a new program is how diverse is it both on number of affiliate partners that are in the program, but more importantly, categorically because there are so many different ways to engage your audience, remain loyal with that audience and see higher conversion rates and even higher basket size with those audiences, depending on different categories or segments of affiliates that you choose. So super important one.

[00:29:49] TMC: Yes, definitely. And that’s also where leaning on your network, on your agency for recommendations on affiliates using the tools within the platform to help identify affiliates within particular segments or verticals that are what aligns with your goals in Q1 and your audience reach.

[00:30:09] JF: 100 percent agree. We could go on for another hour and keep diving into this topic, but I think this is a good topic of the week to give merchants a leg up on what they need to review, what you need to consider. Obviously if anybody has questions what’s the best way to reach you and ask more questions or dive deeper into this.

[00:30:25] TMC: Yeah. I’m on LinkedIn and also via email. It’s my first name dot last name at LinkConnector. com. So tara.mccommons@linkconnector.com.

[00:30:35] JF: Excellent, and for those that might want an agency perspective, GetHelp@jebcommerce.com is a great way to answer more of these questions, we’re always open to those. And feel free to reach out to me directly or email PPM@jebcommerce.com if you have a guest recommendation or a topic you think we should cover on the next episode.

[00:30:55] Tara, it’s great seeing you and I appreciate you jumping on for a recording with us.

[00:30:58] TMC: Oh, thank you, Jake. Yes. You as well. Here’s to a great Q4.

[00:31:04] JF: You as well. And I’ll see you on the other side, hopefully with no more gray hairs than either of us might have already.

[00:31:11] TMC: Sounds great. All right. Thanks so much, Jake. This is great.

[00:31:15] JF: You too. Have a good one, Tara.

[00:31:17] TMC: Bye.