Special Announcements

Special Announcements are next step in building trust, and generating activity within your afiliate team. If you discover a really exciting tool, or maybe an intriguing post on business forum that will be useful to your affiliates, make a special announcement to your team. This may not light a fire under every member of your team, but it only takes one or two folks to become active to really change dynamics of your entire organization.

Delivering Your Messages

Most affiliate programs provide a simple autoresponder which allows you to send group messages. Most of these only have capability of sending text messages, but to send your newsletters and announcements, they can be extremely effective. If you want to really get your teams attention, try using one of many commercially available autoresponders on market today. These will allow you to set up and deliver not only text pages, but HTML documents as well. For those of you who aren't familiar with this, an HTML newsletter looks like a miniature Webpage, complete with color, banners and hyperlinks. This is a great way to give a little bit of pizzazz to your written communications.

Keep in mind, that you can send newsletters and special announcements to your team, even if your team only has a few members. By properly wording your messages, you can create illusion that you are leading a very large organization. This lends credibility to your efforts, and your response rate will improve.

Continue to Refine your Messages

Look for words and phrases that have a tendency to "tell people what to do" and replace them with "suggestions and recommendations." Nobody likes to be told what to do, and when it happens, natural reaction is to rebel, or worse yet, to ignore your message. When this happens, you risk losing your affiliate forever.

Enlist Support of Others

When you finally do get a couple of interested and active affiliates, involve them in your daily activities. There are two immediate benefits to doing this. First, you will build a relationship that benefits both of you, because both have unique qualities to contribute to business relationship. For instance, their talents can be exploited in areas of editing and proofreading. Second, you will be able to train your affiliate on how to proceed in their business. You will be able to pass on key knowledge as to what has worked for you, and what to avoid.

Remember, if you are getting a lousy response to your followup efforts, chances are that you only need to refine what you are doing. Use Ecards to get a reader's attention. Keep your messages short and simple. Be sincere. Build trust among your team members with newsletters and special announcements. Continually refine your messages, and enlist support of others on your team.

By following this short lesson, you should see a dramatic improvement in your response rate, and a corresponding increase in your commission checks. : )