If you operate an affiliate program, you’ve probably spent a lot of time thinking about how you can get new affiliates to join. If you talk to operators of established programs, however, you’ll be told often that getting affiliates to sign up for a program is only one small piece of the puzzle; a bigger challenge remains. Once an affiliate signs up for your program, how do you convert that raw affiliate potential into something productive for your company?So let’s be plain: left to their own devices, most people who sign up for your affiliate program will never send you any sales or any measurable traffic. Since data is not publicly available as to why so many affiliates aren’t productive, you will have to collect your own internal data by polling affiliates who have not produced any results. New program operators should anticipate the problem of unproductive affiliates and build a comprehensive plan for addressing it. It’s your job to reduce the slackers and increase the achievers.

If you have not yet opened your affiliate program to the public, it might be prudent to delay your launch until you have in place a set of procedures for opening a dialogue with new affiliates as they sign up. Most affiliate programs simply send off an automated “welcome” email to new affiliates, but fail to initiate more personal contact. You should avoid this mistake by trying more creative ways to start a dialogue with your new affiliates. That means contacting them in a manner that solicits a response.

Establishing a connection with an affiliate provides several invaluable benefits. First, it provides you with an opportunity to solicit feedback from your affiliates about their experiences with your program. Second, an affiliate who is trying to decide which of several programs to support might well lean in your direction if he or she has already had personal contact with you or your staff – assuming that contact was a positive experience. And third, initiating a dialogue with your affiliates provides an opportunity for you to educate your affiliates about how to get results from your unique program.

Educating your affiliates is vital in today’s competitive online landscape. Investing time in affiliates does come with some risk, since there’s nothing to stop them from taking the skills they learn from you and then leaving to put them to work for the competition. That’s a problem that many employers face too. However, your alternative is to simply leave your affiliates to sink or swim on their own, and you can’t expect them to stick around very long if they don’t see some rewards for their efforts.

You know your product better than anyone else; you have access to sales statistics that your affiliates cannot see. You know which of your own marketing campaigns have produced the best results, and which have been disasters. That means it’s your job to steer your affiliates in the right direction so they’re not spinning their wheels promoting your products or services in ways that you already know aren’t effective.

If you aggressively initiate dialogues with affiliates who sign up for your program, and take extra steps towards personal communication beyond automated welcome messages and email newsletters, you’ll increase your chances for turning raw affiliates into successful salespeople for your products or services. You’ll also increase your knowledge about what works and what doesn’t work in your own affiliate program, and that will provide the foundation you need to make the kinds of improvements to your program that will get positive results.

Invest time and attention into your affiliates because the alternative is a poor choice.