Ignorant Affiliates

[Progger]

I agree that managers are trading our emails without our permission

Good point Rick....and this is why i dont answer...all other importend AM´s can contact me over skype.

regards

[BSC]

Hey Jelena;

Unfortunately, affiliates and affiliate managers (AM) are not always on the same side. Some affiliates know nothing about this industry - they just slapped together a casino review table (with all casinos amazingly scoring 4.5 or 5 stars) and a few banner ads in hopes to convert traffic into $. Managers like you are not on the same side because you are looking for a partnership whereas the affiliate wants a quick buck.

I have worked with programs that have had very high AM turnover (red flag!). I've also worked with AMs that never engage with me and have no interest in my site or the initiative behind it.

Luckily, I have also worked with a few amazing AMs past and present, and I know that my success depends on them just as much as their success depends on me. A good relationship with my AMs is the key to getting the information, offers, and media I need for my site. And in turn, their brands get the best and most frequent placement.

Whenever an AM reaches out to me and mentions something specific about my site then I know they took the time to actually visit my site and see a potential relationship. I will always reply and open a conversation. On the other hand, if I receive a generic "form letter" then it's likely they did NOT visit my site and I may or may not reply. Here's a simple example: My site is specific to Canada so if an AM contacts me and goes on and on about how great their brand is in the UK and that they accept EUR/USD/AUD/etc. (but not CAD) then they clearly didn't visit my site and I have no interest in further discussion.

More than once I have had an AM contact me and I replied with specific questions about their casino brands only to be ignored.

I would not say that affiliates and AMs are at war... but I would argue that only a minority of affiliates and AMs are really knowledgeable, engaged with the industry, and work hard to cultivate their affiliate/AM relationships. So don't get discouraged at the ones that don't reply, be persistent until you get to the ones that DO. These are the affiliates that want to have good AM relations and more importantly, they are the ones that recognize how valuable they are. They're the ones you want to focus on. Don't even worry about the non-responders.

[Sherlock]

I hate this f****** thread. Influenced by this I managed to answer to one of the spams as the first thing in the morning. Response? Can you tell me which site do you have? What should I tell you f******* moron. Probably the one you are contacting me from?

The problem with those cold emails is not just more or less intruding my privacy. It is the endless dumbness of the people that are sending them. It just drive me nuts, so I am losing focus on million times more important things. What should I expect from someone who even does not even remember which website he spammed?

[TauAffiliates]

I hate this f****** thread. Influenced by this I managed to answer to one of the spams as the first thing in the morning. Response? Can you tell me which site do you have? What should I tell you f******* moron. Probably the one you are contacting me from?

The problem with those cold emails is not just more or less intruding my privacy. It is the endless dumbness of the people that are sending them. It just drive me nuts, so I am losing focus on million times more important things. What should I expect from someone who even does not even remember which website he spammed?

I totally agree that this is a bad way to operate and you should ignore requests of this nature. Unfortunately it seems to be that the barriers to entry for setting up an Affiliate program and product are still a bit too easy.

Having been on both sides of the fence, i can understand both viewpoints , the fact of the matter is that BSC captures it exactly when he states

Luckily, I have also worked with a few amazing AMs past and present, and I know that my success depends on them just as much as their success depends on me.

It is never easy to find that kind of working relationship and a lot of work and effort goes into achieving this state. In the interim , real life goes on and all of us will be contacted by idiots and good people. Its up to you to decide to answer or not. I prefer to be emailed and to ignore if necessary. TO not be emailed means that i am not doing things right

[Roulette Zeitung]

Hi all

After lot of emails sent as Affiliate Managers and many unanswered, I couldn't resist not to share some thoughts and seek for some answers, especially from affiliates.

So, my main question is - Is it so hard to reply to an email, at least with something like - I'm not interested?

Hello Jelena,

first of all: Here in this forum and also in real life, you see a lot of conceited idiots, arrogant washouts and uneducated scapegraces. You'll find this kind of people on both sides of the table, working as a casino representative or as a webmaster.

It's very easy in my opinion. If an email is only a pre-written standard text without any personal note, where only the name in salutation will be changed, then there is absolutely no need to respond to it. If the person knows my name or the name of one member of my family, and this data was not purchased or exchanged illegal on conferences - what is common in this industry - then it's really lame to sent us a mass mail.

On the other side, if it is an individual created email, then it is an impudence of the webmaster if she/he ignores the lines.

Leopold

[Miles_FTA]

Its part of any good affiliate mangers jobs responsibility to try source new business and the one way is to look for new sites and contact them through there contact forms . I agree with affiliates you dont need to and have no responsibility to answer these at all but just understand we are not trying to spam you its just we need to find new partners and are required to try whatever means of getting a response as we can.

I am persistent i dont give up unless i am told to and have signed up one or 2 affiliates through shear persistence ( Not spam) as i am sure a few on here can confirm but that's my way and doesn't work for everyone but i feel out of site is out of mind and ll i really am after is an answer one way or another .

I know how it feels to be a new affiliate manager trying to source new business its tough out there .

What I dont understand and maybe guys can shed some light on this for me is is the following .

So traveling from South Africa its a long way and its expensive for us to get to conference and hence we must must have a full meeting schedule to make business sense in sending us.

So in this vein i send out a weekly invite email in which i ask people if they are attending and can we meet.

I get 0 Responses .. The next week I do the same get 0 Responses and so on ..

Then after week 4 or 5 I get a response from an affiliate to say " Stop Spamming me on this email" Now he took the time to send me that response but could not take the time to respond to me after the first email to say Sorry Miles we wont be attending.

I would have then taken him out of the lists and not sent him another email again for this topic.

So im not saying its required at all but surly if you respond saying NO then us affiliate managers or those of us that dont sale binary will get the message and not email again ?

If we dont get a response we think

1) Did he get the email ?
2) Are they okay why are they not responding ?
3) Are they coming not coming ?

And we continue to send emails to ask the same questions sometimes a simple reply makes the world of difference and avoids issues of Spam etc

[Sherlock]

Hey Miles, you spammed me here via PM last year. It is your business, your decision. Surely you get some affiliates this way. But be sure you **** off some other ones. You can think I did not get the message or I forgot it. No, I remember it.

My opinion about conferences: yes they are expensive. Are they really needed? And for small affiliates? Is not there some other way how to do the business? I do not say there is. I am from the other side and maybe the fancy conferences are needed. But I never attended one. I do not need it. I do not see how people can need it. What is the point - when we interact like robots online - to meet offline? Will it be better? What kind of people from online business need to interact offline to do the business? Yes affiliates do not pay it, they have it for free. To be later screwed with commissions.

But if the conferences are necessary and all the spam associated with them too, so be it. I am maybe weird. But I remember you and the spam via PM. And I remember even two of my affiliate managers Ryan Henderson (Unibet) and Richard (SIA) who remember me and that I never go to conferences, so they are sending me up and there personal email (not spam), that they know I am not going there but if I am probably not changing my mind.... And I value those guys highly. I even flew to one of them overseas just to have couple of beers (and I am abstinent).

[-Shay-]

If I send a cold email out that is unsolicited, I am in breach of contract and labeled a spammer.

[lufc]

To be honest if you are sending out the same email 4 or 5 times (or if any other programme did that) that would instantly be a warning and time for me to look at ending or stopping promoting that brand.

There are numerous ways to know if somebody has opened/read an email so there is no excuse to keep sending the same one. Especially if you are simply selling (obtaining new affiliate).

Not sure if that is a lack or training on your (or your companies) point or simply you (your company) not caring. Huge red flags for me either way

Its part of any good affiliate mangers jobs responsibility to try source new business and the one way is to look for new sites and contact them through there contact forms . I agree with affiliates you dont need to and have no responsibility to answer these at all but just understand we are not trying to spam you its just we need to find new partners and are required to try whatever means of getting a response as we can.

I am persistent i dont give up unless i am told to and have signed up one or 2 affiliates through shear persistence ( Not spam) as i am sure a few on here can confirm but that's my way and doesn't work for everyone but i feel out of site is out of mind and ll i really am after is an answer one way or another .

I know how it feels to be a new affiliate manager trying to source new business its tough out there .

What I dont understand and maybe guys can shed some light on this for me is is the following .

So traveling from South Africa its a long way and its expensive for us to get to conference and hence we must must have a full meeting schedule to make business sense in sending us.

So in this vein i send out a weekly invite email in which i ask people if they are attending and can we meet.

I get 0 Responses .. The next week I do the same get 0 Responses and so on ..

Then after week 4 or 5 I get a response from an affiliate to say " Stop Spamming me on this email" Now he took the time to send me that response but could not take the time to respond to me after the first email to say Sorry Miles we wont be attending.

I would have then taken him out of the lists and not sent him another email again for this topic.

So im not saying its required at all but surly if you respond saying NO then us affiliate managers or those of us that dont sale binary will get the message and not email again ?

If we dont get a response we think

1) Did he get the email ?
2) Are they okay why are they not responding ?
3) Are they coming not coming ?

And we continue to send emails to ask the same questions sometimes a simple reply makes the world of difference and avoids issues of Spam etc

[Miles_FTA]

@ Sherlock you remembered me .. LOL so see mission accomplished- Job Done - You may choose not to work with me or to work with me and that's fine its your choice and your business. i had apologized numerous times to you about that it was not my intention the day you chatted me those PM stopped all i was doing was my job.

@ lufc- Thanks for your input I think 12 Years as an affiliate manager and with some of the biggest casinos on the planet is enough training anyone could need but thanks for your feedback none the less .

Not in one shape or form have i ever forced anyone to work with me .. Those that chose to work with me either from me being persistent and finally getting in touch or those that know me for all the years i have been doing this work with me because i am Honest Trustworthy and good at what i do. They will vouch for the fact they chose to work with ME not the companies i have worked with because my level of service and knowledge of the industry are great and i give affiliates the level of service they require and expect.

The Choice is yours .. How many people here have been caught because they chose to work with Groups who turned out to be Thieves or Rouge becuase the affiliate managers promised them the world and just could not deliver on those promises?

I wont apologize for who i am or how i go about my business if you worked with me in the past or work with me now you know what your getting someone that will fight in your corner always and goers out of his way for his affiliates even to the fact that i have to leave my young family at home to travel for weeks at a time to visit affiliates just to say hello.I do it because i love MY Job .. Love the Industry and Love the affiliates i work with - No excuses

All i am saying is its expensive for affiliate managers based in South Africa to Travel overseas and to make an effort to meet affiliates they work with face to Face its a nice thing to do so a response of some sort is just Curtious and polite thing to do .. Every affiliate that sent me a response was taken out my sending list after send 1 so they never got a further email .. its 4 emails 1 a week over a four week period before a conference that's it its not month after month of repeated SPAM.

[universal4]

The issue that the majority of affiliate managers most often refuse to address....

WHERE did you get the email address?

If it is an affiliate that is signed up to your program, by all means solicit them for conference meetings, more traffic, better positions etc.

If the email address came from a list....or was compiled without direct contact with the recipient first....check your programs terms of services to see of the affiliate will jeopardize losing his affiliate account and future commissions if they send player solicitations to a "list".

Yes, this makes the first connection with affiliates a somewhat difficult task, but that is what affiliates go through every day making the first connection with a player.

Rick
Universal4

[Casinorep]

Another little point is, I have found quite a few aff managers who were all there at the start to get me to sign up, but then if I have problems down the line or something changes on the program (e.g. rev share or negative carrover situations where I've been told it wouldn't be applied but then it does), they go hiding and won't deal with any difficult queries. It's these experiences that harden us to the game and you start to feel a lot less guilty about just ignoring people.

As per the other responses on here, I always try to reply quickly to programs I actually work with and those relationships are important. But as for the daily requests from new programs, yeh, most get ignored unless it's a program I already had in my mind to give a try.

Amen to that. I feel that in today's landscape, about 40% of affiliate managers aren't useful. They'd send offers and solicitations asking me to send more players or join their programs, but go silent when I ask for assistance in things aside from which banners to choose or which bonus offering to list. Thus many present themselves as email marketers rather then relationship builders.

So when an affiliate manager "cold emails" me without offering any value, I'll ignore.

[Muppet]

So, my main question is - Is it so hard to reply to an email, at least with something like - I'm not interested?

If I did that to all the unsolicited email I receive in my private inbox (note, very important, this is separate from where our contact form goes) I would never get any work done on making our site better for our visitors. The simple truth is that when you spam me, don't expect a reply, because I have better things to do. And yes I realise the irony of what I am doing right now.

I understand you're very busy (especially if you're a webmaster or "one man show affiliate"), you receive lots of advertising material, offers, emails from your current AMs, spam messages etc., but I still can't understand that Godlike attitude and ignorance from many

"Godlike" and "ignorant". I'll use what little tact I have and resist saying what I really think of that. Just ... wow.

I still don't understand why is it so - we are not opposite sides, we work together and have mutual interest.

I know this is how you and almost every other affiliate manager THINKS most affiliates work but I don't agree at all. My interest is in the visitors to my site, in giving them good information and helping them make informed decisions. The rest takes care of itself. I am not part of a casino's marketing department and my site does not exist for the purpose of promoting your business.

After we have seen countless affiliate programs retroactively change terms, shut down or sell players without a corresponding termination payment, or just plain go rogue, I think it is abundantly clear that the safest thing to assume is that despite the claims made, and the conferences and parties, most affiliate programs place affiliates' interests a distant second behind their own. That is their prerogative, but it helps if affiliates aren't deluded about it - or dare I say "ignorant"?

Interesting thing is that the biggest and/or most successful affiliates, who are probably the busiest at the same time, posses that business ethics and always kindly reply to new and existing affiliates.

Or perhaps it is just because they can afford to employ someone to sit there and answer emails all day long. Poor person.

That is also a pretty insulting thing you just said there to all affiliates that aren't "the biggest and/or most successful".

How do you treat emails you receive or Skype contact requests? How do you choose whom to reply? How do you choose a brand to work with or not to work with? How many collaboration offers do you receive daily from operators and their managers?

All Skype contact requests are deleted unless I requested it. Emails are bad enough, the last thing I want is more idiot affiliate managers unfamiliar with the concept of time zones trying to Skype me or phone me in the middle of the night like they usually do. Thank goodness my phone now has a do not disturb mode that automatically switches on at night time.

If I receive an email that comes directly to me and I have never heard of or spoken to you before then it gets deleted without a second thought. If it comes through our contact form then I have someone who deals with that. That doesn't guarantee that you will get a reply. If we're not interested we won't bother.

Sometimes it looks like we're in some kind of a war - affiliates vs. operators

AffPower, Cpays, Affactive, SkyVegas, EuroPartners, Red Hot Revenue, Grand Prive, BeWinners, AffEurope.

Sometimes we are.

[-Shay-]

Is there a place where one can report unsolicited/unsubscribed emails? I would say we start a list here of companies who do in fact spam - but such things don't always catch any wind here.

[Muppet]

I suggest starting an "Ignorant affiliate managers" thread.

I'm sure that one will end up one of the longest threads on here.

[slotplayer]

I hate this f****** thread. Influenced by this I managed to answer to one of the spams as the first thing in the morning. Response? Can you tell me which site do you have? What should I tell you f******* moron. Probably the one you are contacting me from?

The problem with those cold emails is not just more or less intruding my privacy. It is the endless dumbness of the people that are sending them. It just drive me nuts, so I am losing focus on million times more important things. What should I expect from someone who even does not even remember which website he spammed?

just what I attempting to convey in my post, (post #23), maybe I didn't do a good enough job. Messaging is another thing I try and work on as well.

[Triple7]

Is there a place where one can report unsolicited/unsubscribed emails? I would say we start a list here of companies who do in fact spam - but such things don't always catch any wind here.

We could make a thread here at the forum.

Lately I am getting a lot of spam from AffPower-related casinos.

[slotplayer]

my guess is casinos sell the list of players that have closed their casino account. once I closed my casino accounts it seemed I stated to get some some snail mail from casinos I never heard of.

[-Shay-]

We could make a thread here at the forum.

Lately I am getting a lot of spam from AffPower-related casinos.

I think more than just a list is needed - though we can make a list as well.

[FruityJelena]

Hi everybody

Hope you're having a pleasant and joyful weekend!
Just wanted to add something very important to this thread.

First of all, thanks again for generously sharing your experience and satisfying my curiosity. I really hope I didn't offend anyone with anything, I didn't have any intention to do that.
Second, many of the posts here made me realise that there is a lot of affiliate managers who consider their job to be pushy and persistent sellers and that's really annoying, so I understand more why there is simply such general opinion about that role and I understand more why many affiliates gave up on replying to each of them (us).

Third and most important is something funny, but actually not so funny.
Yesterday I discovered something. Started to ask myself why there were kinda insulted reactions about the title, somebody even tried to justify it with language barriers - this person was right. I typed "ignorant" into google translation and automatically got shocked and embarrassed at the same time, realising how offensive it sounds and how far away the translation is from the thing I tried to say.

So, ignorant means uninformed, untaught, inexpert etc. I was like --> --> --> --> -->

The thing I was sure "ignorant" means is - someone who is ignoring you or somebody else and just doesn't want to hear about something you're saying or doing (messages in this concept), takes no notice on something etc. It was supposed to mean that affiliates ignore and don't respond to messages and offers from affiliate managers!

Big sorry from me for this confusion and bad usage of words, not intentional!

If the title can be changed, it would be really nice, because I feel embarrassed and stupid about mixing up words and their meanings, giving this topic the whole different meaning. Title suggestion would be - Affiliates ignoring affiliate managers' messages - for example or better - Non-responding affiliates - THIS WAS THE POINT Moderators, it would be awesome if we can change the title.

Truce and peace and big apology!