Affiliate Education and Activation Campaigns

This year, the Apogee team will continue its robust recruiting efforts. We did a great job in 2017 finding new affiliates in the ShareASale network by using the internal recruiting tool. We also used Media Rails and Group High for organizing those contacts and finding new affiliates to join our programs. In 2018, we are committed to stepping up our affiliate education and activation services in addition to recruitment.

Our affiliates ask the same basic questions on a daily basis. We've always had our canned responses and offers to help but engagement with them has been minimal. I beg affiliates to read newsletters and ask questions. Don't go through the merchant customer service when you have questions, just hit reply to a newsletter or the approval email! We are real managers. We want to help and we are fast with responses.

The Rise of Apogee Video

Last year, I started learning as much as I could about video marketing. I had an idea long ago to start doing Camtasia screencast tutorials, but that never really took off. Lately, I've been studying with coaches and using the software on a weekly basis. Our screencast quality is going to be terrific and thorough.

This time last year, we started our Apogee Live video conference calls with affiliates and merchants. They have been fantastic and we now have an aggressive schedule for more in 2018. We're looking to record two each month with a slate of guests and topics—client updates, affiliate education, industry news—that will keep viewers coming back for more.

More product reviews for our clients are coming. Many affiliates don't know the best practices or ideas on how to do reviews. We will demonstrate techniques that work, giving affiliates some basics with which to begin creating their own unique content.

Daniel and I did hundreds of podcast episodes together many years ago. We both have the itch to get back into it so this is our chance. But it's going to be through video interviews. Starting in February, we'll have a new series of short video chats with affiliates, managers, merchants and thought leaders about the state of the industry. We're calling the series Affiliate Voices, a throwback to a podcast that we used to run back in the day.

The team is going to work together on this project so Christen might be teaching bloggers how to grab links and Daniel might be teaching them how to run reports. This strategy is going to take all year to implement. But after the foundational videos are created, I'll be able to answer an affiliate with a YouTube URL and say, “Let me know if you have any other questions.” My video creation coaches have been inspiring. Most every question can be answered by some video in their archives. I've learned some amazing tips and it feels great when that happens.

What do I need from you? Two things.

Subscribe to the Apogee YouTube channel! Right now! Click and hit subscribe. We're realists: our stuff isn't going to go viral and rack up a billion views. We aren't doing this to make money from YouTube, we are doing this to help affiliates make money. We aren't going to buy subscribers or views because that doesn't help us. What helps us is a pool of subscribers that are affiliates, and affiliates beget affiliates as the saying goes. What, that's not a saying? It should be.

So, then, tell a friend. That's the second thing. Tell a friend, a colleague, a fellow affiliate, about the channel. We get a subscriber, an affiliate gains another resource for affiliate education, and we all win.