Suggesting to delete the emails was a joke. I thought that was pretty obvious.
Part of my job as an affiliate manager is to not only maintain contact with existing affiliates, but to grow the program by finding business opportunities with NEW affiliates… I don’t see other companies sitting around waiting for business partners to walk in the door. IMO that is a recipe for failure. A business doesn’t grow itself. It would be like you putting up one page of a website then sitting there expecting players to find it without you continuing to improve it and look for new opportunities to get more visitors and more players in the door. Every business is proactive in their search for new business no matter what industry they are in..
An example I can think of is in my last job. I was a web developer and managed a group of designers. When there was no work, we would all pitch in and just call random businesses that didn’t have a website yet. Most were pretty happy that we called because they wanted to get one organised but just didn’t have the time to get on it. I don’t see a difference between that and this.
I also have an affiliate site within another industry (not gaming related) and I receive emails every day from people wanting to do business. I send them a polite “No Thankyou” if I’m not interested and generally they will not email me again.
I get the odd ones from China who don’t stop but just get someone else from the company to email me the exact same thing (offering me personalised items not realising that I actually don’t sell anything on my site even though I’ve told them a million times) and yes, that is frickin annoying. But the majority are not like this.
Personally, I welcome this. If someone wants to offer me more money for doing my job, bring it on!
Not all affiliates participate in forums, or attend conferences, or spend their whole day looking at advertising. In fact most of the affiliates I work with don’t do any of the above. So how did I find them? I sent them an email after finding their website and some of my top performing affiliates started working with us because I sent them an email.
If every business in my town stopped by to show me their product, I think that one of those would eventually walk in and offer me something that I would really like to try that I would have never found myself.
The choice is yours whether you choose to welcome an email like this or not. There is no golden rule that says you have to read and reply to every single email you receive, but IMO by not getting them at all you could potentially be shooting yourself in the foot.
Cheers
Renee
Rewards Affiliates