Got a promotion coming up soon? In this episode, I’m breaking down how to get affiliates excited to promote and keep that energy building right up to launch day… using the exact pre-promo strategy we use with clients to turn “I might promote” into planned emails, scheduled posts, and a strong first day.
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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy
How to Choose the Right Affiliate Manager
How to Get Affiliates Excited to Promote
How to Avoid the Biggest Affiliate Program Mistakes (Part 2)
How to Avoid the Biggest Affiliate Program Mistakes (Part 1)
How to Decide Between an In-House Affiliate Manager and an Agency
How to Help Affiliates Write Emails That Convert
The 6 C’s of Elite Affiliate Programs (Part 1)
Every great affiliate program follows the same basics. They’re built on the same pillars that lead to success. Promo after promo, year after year. They work in every niche. They work for small programs and large ones.And I promise you that they will work 10 years from now, 20 years from now, and beyond. So listen up, because today we’re going to cover the first pillar of all great affiliate programs. So, welcome back. We got a new year here, and we’re going to do a new series on the podcast. We’re going to be covering some of the basics. We’re going back to basics here.
And a while back, I actually did a series called the Three Cs of every successful Affiliate Program. And we’re going to revisit that as a part of this series. But that series was a little bit incomplete because I’ve actually got three more pillars to great affiliate programs. As I studied this and really thought, like, okay, what are those foundational pillars of, a great affiliate program. I wanted to do a series here at the beginning of the year to really hone in on that.
We’ll get into some fancy schmancy stuff later in the year, we’ll get into some more advanced stuff. We’ll get into some. All these things as the year progresses. And of course, next year and beyond. Believe it or not, I’ve actually got almost two years worth of podcast episodes planned out.They’re already on the calendar, and I’m excited to get to them. But we’re going to focus on the foundation here at the beginning of this year. So I’m going to share those first three Cs over the next few episodes. And then I’ve got the final three Cs, the final three pillars. So I’m excited about this series.
We’re getting back to basics. We’re going to get started with that first pillar. So let’s jump right in. This is all about creating affiliates who are engaged and motivated. They’re taking action.They become those loyal affiliates that we talked about that, you know, I said it last episode. Like, they promote you over and over and over again. Not just like one time and then flake out or every couple of years. They promote, you know, they’re going to promote you pretty much anytime you ask them. That’s what we want.
We want engaged and motivated Affiliates. Affiliates who, who do irrational things, you know, they go the extra mile. You know, as I think I said a few episodes ago, where I talked about, like, the affiliate who sent 10 emails on Cart close day. Because I said that I did it once. And she was like, well, I thought that meant that I was supposed to do it.And I’m like, holy crap. Like, that’s like. It blew my mind. Right? So again, I want to share these three simple strategies for engaging and motivating affiliates.
If you get these three things right, they will take action. And not only will you inspire the small affiliates to do better, but you’ll actually get more out of your top affiliates as well. And this is all about building that army of affiliates that we talked about. So it starts with the first C, which is contests. I want to share with you how to run, an affiliate contest that gets more than just the top affiliates involved.I’m going to share some of the keys that. Before I do, just a quick reminder, make sure you download my free report. Your first 100 affiliates. You can do that at mattmcwilliams.com first 100.
Mattmcwilliams.com first first. 100. Go grab that. It walks you through the part about how to find the affiliate so that you can build that diversified army of small, medium, and some large affiliates.You know, this isn’t just about the small affiliates, like I said. Secondly, make sure you, you know, if you have an affiliate program and you’re like, you know what? I want to take mine to the next level. I hear what you’re saying, Matt. I’m in.I’m in. With this new model. I need help doing this. I can’t do it myself. I need some coaching.
Go check out youraffiliatelaunchcoach.com fill out the application, set up a call with my team and I. We’ll see if you, you know, if you’re a good fit. I’ll tell you if you’re not. I really will.Like I will say, listen, you know, this is. It’s not a good fit for you yet. You need a few months. So how do you run an affiliate contest, again, that gets more than just the top affiliates involved? Well, there’s three keys.Number one, you need to offer a minimum prize. This is a guaranteed prize that anybody with a little bit of extra effort can achieve. So one of our favorites is if you make three sales, you get access to a course.
You know, if you’re promoting a course, a $2,000 course, you make three sales, you get access, it costs you nothing. I mean, maybe a few of the people who would have gotten three sales would have bought it anyway.Okay? But it costs you nothing, and it’s incredibly motivating. So we looked at these numbers when we put this in place a, few years ago for one of our clients. The previous year, they had like four sales or four affiliates who had between three and five sales. The following year, they had over 200 that had between three and five.
Some of the people the year before who had like one or two, they hit that three. They got four, they got five. And they’ve specifically said they were motivated by that threshold. Robbie Miles, who’s on our team now, was a part of that affiliate promotion. And he said he was like, I knew I couldn’t get 10 or 15 sales the first year I wanted to get access to the course.
I busted it to get to three sales because for him, you know, yeah, the few hundred bucks in affiliate commissions was nice. It was like a $200 product. But he also got access to a $200 course. Now, he had bought the course the year before, so for him to upgrade was only like, you know, $97 to the new version may have been less than that, but it was like he got access to it, and he was just really excited about that. If you’re a smaller affiliate, doesn’t that sound motivating?
Like, there’s, okay, all I gotta do is get three sales. Three sales and I get access to this. So offer some sort of a minimum prize. It doesn’t even have to be access. If you don’t have a course, it could be to a launch recap.You know, you’re gonna do a recap of your launch. If you’re in the Internet marketing world, that’s pretty powerful. It could be that you’re gonna do a, I remember specifically we did a mastermind, and anybody that got. I think it was five sales got invited to this mastermind. And so small affiliates, like, oh, my gosh, I get to be in on this mastermind with, like, you know, this big Internet marketer guy.
Make sure that your affiliate program has a solid agreement (AKA Terms & Conditions). To make things simple, grab my template here!
Get creative. What’s something that you could offer? Could be access to a membership. You know, if, hey, you make three sales, five sales, you get six months of membership into our program, or you get six months of our membership. Cost you practically nothing compared to some people.Like, oh, it cost me $2,000. No, it didn’t. Most of those people probably weren’t gonna pay $2,000. That’s the reality. So that’s number one, offer a minimum prize, a guaranteed prize that’s really easy to achieve but will require those smaller affiliates to push a little bit.
Maybe they were only gonna make one or two sales, but you’ll get 200 affiliates who get an extra one and a half sales. That’s 300 sales at $2,000 a pop. Right? There is over a half million dollars in extra revenue. Second key is offer random drawings.Okay, what do I mean by random drawing? A, random drawing is where you do something online and I’m going to pull up some examples here. One example that we did was everyone who does just 25 registrations for the webinar is entered to win $2,000. You send 25 registrations, you’re entered to win. That’s it.
Everybody who does just two sales this weekend is entered to win. Everybody who does a sale this weekend is entered to win. We did one for Michael Hatt years ago. Basically every email you sent on cart close day, you were entered to win. In fact, we did that one was.It was like every email you sent was an entry. So if you sent seven emails, you got seven entries and you had a better chance of winning. And again, I mentioned Robbie Miles, but like I remember specifically Robbie telling me the story about that. He was like, well, I know I can’t win any of these other contests, but this is one that I control. This is what he calls a process goal.
You know, the outcome goal is, Well, I finished 25th on the leaderboard or I made five sales or I got 50 opt ins. He’s like, I can’t control that. I can control how many, how many emails I send. And so what I did was I created a specific email address. I think it was like, you know, F2F or free to focus.That was the launch we were running of Michaels. It was like F2F mattmcwilliams. com so you got F2F mattmcwaims. com put that on your email list and make sure you include it on all of your emails about this. And then we just automatically had those go to a folder.
And then we had, I don’t know, like something like 784 emails in there, you know, the next day, went in, went to random. org, typed in 1 and 784, clicked on generate random number and it pulled up 407, you know, or whatever. And I just went to the 407th email that was. It took me like three minutes to run this contest. So think about the.What are some ways where you can run contests where there’s an element of, of randomness to it. You know, where there’s an element where anyone can win, you know, with a little bit of effort. 25 opt ins. 25 registrations for a webinar. Like even when, when I only had 100 people on my list, I could get 15 or 18 from my list to register for a webinar.
And then I just had to text a few friends and say, hey, are you interested in this? Maybe that gets me four or five, post it on Facebook and get another three or six or whatever. And I’m over 25. You know, we’ve had people, I think of JR Reed. JR Reed had literally no list at all in the first launch that we ran for five days to youo Best Year Ever A few years ago, zero list still did like 25 sales and finished in the top 40.All from just texting and Facebook and instant messaging people. That was it. It’s a very powerful way to, to get people interested in the contests. And then the third key is make sure you use deep leaderboards. We often see like the top 10.
Right? That’s great. Top 10. Go top 50. Go top 50.I’ve heard so many times that this really got people going. Like, I was in 39th place, but seeing my name, seeing my picture on the leaderboard was huge. Does it take a little bit extra effort? Of course it does. But is it worth it?Of course it is. Because the other thing is people see themselves. And like a lot of times we’ll do like a picture leaderboard for the top 30 and then we’ll go. But we’ll list like as far down as is practically possible. They’ll see themselves in 63rd and they’re like, I just want to get to top 50.
When you’re normally in 63rd. What’s the difference between 63rd and 41st? Nothing. The difference between 63rd and 49th is, you know, 14 spots. But when you don’t even know because you’re not even on the leaderboard, you don’t have anything to fight for.So the farther down, further or farther. I always wonder about that this would be farther. I think this would be a measure of distance. The farther down you go, the more you get people engaged, the more motivated they are to do something. And you’re like, oh, one person moved up, you know, five spots because they made an extra couple of sales.
Okay. And that’s not really that big of a deal. What if 30 people move up because they made an extra three sales? On average, again, 90 sales times $2,000 product. If it is, it’s $180,000 in revenue.Oh, okay, so it’s not a $2,000 product, it’s $100 product. Well, then maybe they made 20 sales. You know, maybe you got 50 people to move up. Like, there’s a lot of ways to skin a cat. So it’s like one idea extra half million, another idea extra 200,000, another idea, a hundred thousand.
You almost did a million bucks just from, like these three things that can move the needle. I mean, let me ask you, do you like to see your name on a leaderboard? Of course you do. Of course you do. So go deep with your leaderboards and above all else, with your affiliate program.Make sure that your affiliate contest and really your whole affiliate program overall, make sure it’s fun. Ah, I found that one of the secrets to affiliate program success. I mean, you know, yeah, you got great conversions, you got great copywriting, you got to know the right people, you got the right affiliates, all that stuff. That’s the F word. I mean, affiliate programs should be fun.
They should be fun for you. They should be fun for your affiliates. And I’ll never forget this conversation I had that really solidified that for me. Like, I always made them fun. And I knew that it was kind of moving the needle, but I didn’t really know that much.But this is probably about four or five years ago, I had a conversation with, my friend Cal Young, who was, he was the operations, manager for one of our clients at the time. And he said, I want this launch to be so fun for our affiliates that they’ll tell everyone about it and beg to promote it again. And I was like, wow, that really could, That’ll have an impact. Like, there’s a direct correlation between fun and results. And in fact, in that particular launch, like, we kind of approached that line of going overboard with the fun, you know, but the more fun that we introduced, the better the results.
In fact, we nearly that particular launch, we actually almost doubled our high end goal for opt ins during the launch. We more than doubled the opt ins from the previous launch. The less fun one. Now, there’s more factors than just fun, but that played a role. And so when, I say make your affiliate program fun, I’m basing it on not just anecdotal evidence, but I’m basing it on the hard data.The more fun we made it, the more active the affiliates were, the more likely they were to promote in the future. So how do you make your affiliate program fun? Well, I’m going to share three ways here based on the acronym FUN F U N. Right. The first one, just the F is focus on results.
What I mean by that is don’t just do fun for fun sakes. Like, you have to make things fun and have a clear result in mind. Okay. Fun for fun sakes might make you giggle, but does it deliver a result? You know, if you post an.Like an animated gif of. Of a leprechaun riding a unicorn, like, that might be funny. but does it move the needle? So the key here is to tie everything into the cta, the call to action for your affiliates. What is the action that you want them to take?
Do you want them to mail about the webinars? Okay, then make sure that the fun is tied to that. Do you want them to start doing Facebook ads? Make sure the fun is tied to that. Maybe you want them to double their sales.Try to double their sales in the next 24 hours. Whatever the desired action is, make it clear and tie the fun into that. the U is for uniqueness. Be yourself. Be yourself.Like, unless yourself is boring and not fun, then be somebody else. Reminds me of a shirt I got a shirt for. I bought a shirt for Robbie on our team. I think it was for his birthday. I don’t remember if it was for his birthday or if I just randomly found it and wanted to mail it to him.
Just funny. It was like. I forget what it said exactly, but it was something like, always be yourself, unless you can be John Galt, then be John Galt. I was like, that’s a great shirt. If you don’t know who John Galt is, don’t worry, Google it.You’ll figure it out. Who is John Galt? Some of you got that and you’re like, ah, ah. Yeah. But most of us have at least some semblance of humor, right? So if so, use it. If you have a dry sense of humor, then be dry. If you’re sarcastic, be sarcastic. If you’re kind of goofy, be goofy. If none of the above are true and no one has ever laughed at you in the past three years, then hire somebody to be funny.
I mean, I kind of consider myself to be moderately funny. I think I have a decent sense of humor, but I know when to bring in a professional. So I had an opportunity with Jeff Goins launch a few years ago. I was like, how can we announce these affiliate prizes and announce them in a fun way? So I hired a, ah, George W.
Bush impersonator. I’m going to play the audio from that here. My friend John Morgan. I mean he’s amazing, right? John is just, I mean he is just.John is just amazing. He, really is. He’s the best George W. Bush impersonator out there. Just a genuinely amazing guy.So we hired him to announce the affiliate sales prizes. So I’ll play the audio here and then I’m going to link to the video if you, you need to see it. You need to see John in action. He is hysterical. I’ll link to that video on YouTube here in the show.
Notes Gracious greedifications Tribe writers affiliation Affectionados one and all, W here to thank you for coming together for the common purpose to build a tribe for the em of America and infinity beyond. Everybody wants what I want and that is to win. In fact, I am a winner. That’s the W in my middle name. Poppy41.And my mom predicted that I would one day learn to walk. Therefore they named me Walker. But you have to be a walker before you’re a runner. And I was a two term governor of the great state of Texas before I was a runner for president. In either case, that both qualifies.
I won two terms and that qualifies me as a winner with the American people. It doesn’t matter what the polls say. For that matter, it doesn’t matter what the French say either. Oh, okay. Back to the tribe riders, you wonderful affiliates.If you help Jeff, you’re going to be a winner as America will be a winner when the tribe grows. Here’s what you can win. We’re going to start off with the sales contest. There’s ten prizes. Now the top prize, numero uno wins a ten thousand dollar cash prize plus an all expense paid trip to Nashville for Jeff’s Mastermind with a suite that’s a hotel suite that’s bigger than a regular room.
It’s very sweet and you can bring your sweetie and you can even drink sweet tea. Numero dose is 3500 buckaroonies plus an all expense paid trip to Nashville for the mastermind. Third place is 2,500 bucks and all exped pence’s trip to Nashville for the mastermind. Fourth place is 1750 Buccanini’s plus a paid hotel and a ticket to the Mastermind and so on and so forth. It goes all the way to the place where you get 100 smackers and a free ticket and meals to the Mastermind.
Now for the guaranteed sales prices Here is not a plus. It’s a one or the other. So if you sell three ticks, you get 100 smacks. And a flicks. Netflix.A Netflix fit. A flip. a bet flip. One of them things that measures your steps. If you make 10 sales, you get 350 bucks.Or an iPad Mini. For 25 sales, you get 750 bucks. Or a Phantom 2 drone. Now, I like drones. They’re cool.But mine cost a way lot more than 750 bucks. For 50 sales, you get 2,000 bucks. Or Batman motorcycle suit. Notice I said suit. How cool is that?
For a hundred sales, you get $5,000Amos. Or an Osaki OS 4000. Zero gravity Shiatsu machine. Oh, baby. For 200 sales, you get 1250 bucks.Or can AM Commander DPS side by side. I think that’s a refrigerator. For 300 sales, you get 20,000 bucks. Or a Ford Mustang. Wow.And for 500 sales, you get $40,000. Or a BMW 220i convertible. So sweet. There’s other stuff, like smart TVs. This deal is better than a plate full of Texas toast with all the butter and garlic, Texas brisket and a mess of baked beans on the side.
And there’s nothing better than that. So get out there and build your tribe, writers. God bless you. God bless Jeff Goins and all. he’s got going.And God bless America. Matt McWilliams: That video was. Was hugely popular, right? Not only did it make people laugh, but it focused on results. It got people thinking about the prizes in a way that if I just sent an email out or just done a video myself, like it wouldn’t have had the same impact.
I still hear about this video today. Still hear about this video today. So, big shout out again to John Morgan. Thank you for doing that. If you ever need a George W.Bush impersonator, check him out. We’ll link to that in the show notes as well. And then the N is for nuttiness. Sometimes you have to get a little crazy, all right? You have to get a little goofy.
You have to get a little nutty. So whether it’s in the way you announce your prizes or the language you use in your emails, don’t be afraid to be nutty. In case you needed it. I hereby give you permission to be a goofball with your affiliates. Again, keep in mind, you need to be focused on results.But nuttiness stands out. Nuttiness gets attention. Nuttiness kind of breaks through the clutter, right? Your affiliates are just like you. They are busy.
They aren’t lazy. They’re busy. They have full inboxes. They have Slack channels blowing up. I’ve got 38 unread messages in Slack right now.Like those things are competing for my attention. If you want to break through to your affiliates, getting a little crazy might just be the way. So make your program fun. Make it fun for them and they will remember it. Make it fun and they will do better than expected.
Make it fun and they’ll tell others. So what have you done to make your affiliate program fun? What have you seen others do? What have you seen others do that makes it fun for people? Again, above all, make it fun.That’s the first C in these three Cs of successful affiliate programs. This is how you build an affiliate program that lasts in the next episode. I will share the second C, the second C that piggybacks on this first one, on these contests. Contests and making it fun. I needed a C for making it fun, I guess.
But you know, that’s how you do it. You have these contests. These keep people engaged. So that’s the first C. I’ll share the next two Cs.Make sure that you subscribe so you don’t miss those. You definitely do not want to miss the next two episodes because you can, you can have all the contests in the world and you can have a fun affiliate program. But if you don’t follow these next two, you’re not going to get results. You’re not going to run an affiliate program based on this new model. What’s working now?
So again, quick reminder, go grab my report your first 100 affiliates. Check out our coaching program if you think it might be right for you. And check out the video of John Morgan. It’s W here. go check that out and then, check out John’s site as well.If you, if you ever, if you just want to laugh, you just want to see him in action, it’s pretty funny. He was amazing. So go check those out. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss these upcoming episodes. And I will see you in the next one with the second sea of successful affiliate programs.
Thank you so much for listening today. Remember to check out all of our deep dives into affiliate marketing at TheAffiliateGuide TV. And if you have a question, ask it at AskTheAffiliateGuide. com who knows, maybe you even be featured on an upcoming episode. And lastly, if you haven’t yet, make sure to leave a rating and review wherever you’re listening to this episode.