How important is your relationship with an affiliate manager?

[MichaelCorfman]

The folks who run the affiliate summit conference (a general affiliate conference, without a gaming focus, held in the US twice a year), conduct an annual survey of affiliates. You can see the report covering their 2013 survey here: 2013 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report. If you want you can participate in this year's survey, but you would have to be quick, since today is the last day they are accepting responses. The survey can be found here: affstat.com.

I found their site and the poll when considering what question to ask today in our weekly poll. What better place to look for inspiration than a poll designed for affiliates in general. And it means we can compare our results looking at gaming affiliates to the results from a broader affiliate audience.

Here is the question I chose, and the frequency different answers were given by the general affiliate audience in the 2013 survey:

How important is your relationship with an affiliate manager?

• Critical to my business - 22.8%: I typically join, promote, or terminate programs because of the affiliate manager.
• Somewhat valuable - 51.9%: I sometimes join, promote, or terminate programs because of the affiliate manager.
• Irrelevant - 25.3%: I almost never consider joining, promoting, or terminating programs because of the affiliate manager.

Besides voting in the poll, share the reasons behind your view.

Michael

[grem]

It is partially important. However if you have an affiliate manager you like a lot, this will not mean much if the program doesn't have a good product or reputation. Like grand prive bad reputation but good people on board trying to fix it but good people can only go so far.

[casinoplanet]

A good relationship with am's might work out well in terms of getting exclusive bonuses etc. But I promote several programs for some years and hardly hear from the am. However, some programs change their am's almost as often as an average person changes their underwear

[DanHorvat]

A difficult question - do you work with good products, good affiliate programs, or good affiliate managers?

I voted "somewhat valuable" as I'm still looking for an answer to this. AMs are important but I won't punish the brand if it's a good one and the AM happens to be inadequate. On the other hand, some AMs seem to hide behind the power of their brand so...yeah, still looking for an answer.

[RacingJim]

Somewhat valuable - It helps a lot if you have a good relationship with the aff manager, but it is not crucial. If the program is good and converts and pays well then it becomes irrelevant.

On the flip side if the program is terrible and doesn't convert or has a crap deal structure or bad affiliate terms such as cookie lengths, then no amount of nice affiliate managers are going to change it.

[F-L-C]

I voted somewhat, a program that changes affiliate managers every month definitely rings alarm bells for me

[alicasino]

I would like a better relationship with AM,s however it seems they contact you, promise great opening offers and rev share, then you never hear from them again, well until they email you to say they are leaving and this is your new AM. I do have one exception to the general rule (bet365) Quite fancy an AM job if thats all it entails anyone know of any vacancies, I promise to do the unexpected and answer emails

[Bettingsites]

Having a good relationship with your affiliate manager could depend on what you want to achieve. One AM that I know bemoans the fact that many affiliates seem to completely ignore his messages. Some affiliates know what they want and do not feel that interaction with AMs will make any difference to what they do.

However, interacting with AMs can open up new ways of thinking and I recommend that it's much better to meet up with them where possible; It's good business practice to do so.

[thomasj]

having an AM that answers their emails is critical for me

[Doolally]

The Aff Mgr isn't critical but a good one can be worth their weight in gold to both the program and the Affiliate. Of course, they need to be able to back it up with a program that's 100% reliable, honest and willing to support the affiliate through the difficult times too!

[TheGooner]

I voted irrelevant in the terms of the question. The AM is not a factor in joining, promoting or terminating. That's because AMs can start or stop tomorrow and if/when that happens you still need all the other factors to be correct.

However, a good AM is instrumental in developing and expanding the relationship and maximising the potential synergies of the website and the program. I think that is where a good AM is worth his/her weight in gold.

If I look at our best programs Bet365 (with Ed), Bovada (with Paul / Riyaz), Affiliate Edge (with Martyn / Stephen), Rewards Affiliates (with Renee) and ChipSplit (with Cory) then it's clear that the AM has helped to develop and expand the profitability.

We work with 12-16 other programs that COULD be at the same level, their offerings and systems are not too dissimilar, but their AMs have not helped us to get past their frustrating systems and/or provide demographic insight.

So to my mind the AM does not influence the join decision - but does have influence thereafter.

[sweetbet]

It's important for me to know who the affiliate managers are and how to contact them. Most of the time, I don't need to contact them, but if an issue arises that I need assistance with, then I need to know who to contact, and I need to know that I will receive a quick reply.

[Casino Online Rating]

Working with friendly AMs, who are eager to help us and provide us with exclusive bonuses for our visitors makes us more willing to promote their brands, however, we also pay attention to affiliate programs and casinos they promote, because we want to offer our users only the best and most reliable sites. Btw, we got to know many great AMs thanks to this forum

[iGamingWriter]

For me the AM is the lynch pin that decides how well a program is going to perform. I accept that my needs are different to most affiliates, but I need communication when player complaints come in. A good AM will often be the difference between a casino that decides to share information and communicate freely when problems arise and an uncooperative group that won't share anything and as such won't rank well.

[Sergej_AGR]

"Irrelevant" for me. But I must admit that it´s much more fun to work with personable AM´s like Sivan/Europartners than with some other guys.
On the other hand I have an AM who always answers "Please send an email to the support". Not sure why this AM is in my skype list, but I still keep working with them

[BestPokerDeals.net]

having an AM that answers their emails is critical for me

+1 for this

[wettFORM.AT]

all the brands I work with have a very good affiliate managers. Interesting but the best performing brands also have the best affliate managers. So it is very important to me to have a good relationship with my affiliate manager. Sometimes it is not possible for me to wait several weeks for a response. I have also droped some brands because it was not possible to get in contact with them. When it is not even possible to talk to them how should this cooperation continue? In my opinion there is no way.

[nsawins]

Affiliate managers come and go like the seasons.......no point in worrying too much about the AM as long as they are good at returning emails and solving issues quickly. I can't tell you how many AM's we've gone thru with big sites as they are constantly changing.

[ocreditor]

Affiliate managers come and go like the seasons.......no point in worrying too much about the AM as long as they are good at returning emails and solving issues quickly. I can't tell you how many AM's we've gone thru with big sites as they are constantly changing.

Agreed !

But its very hard to say goodbye when a very good AM is leaving.... you get used to good treatment and than BOOM ! They're gone !

[BestCasinoGameGuide]

It's important to be in good terms with everyone, no one knows when those colleagues will be helpful