Last Updated: 6/30/2021
Once you get through the process of registering as a merchant on CJ Affiliate, you’ll need to launch your program by recruiting affiliates. The speed at which you will be able to scale your affiliate marketing program and meet your sales targets for the channel will depend largely on how well you can recruit new affiliates. And in order to effectively recruit affiliates to a new program and educate them about a new brand will depend on excellent pitching. Here’s how to do it.
Create an eye-catching Program Description
Before you begin pitching, focus on optimizing your network profile – specifically, your Program Description. With so many recognizable brands with incredible offers on CJ, crafting an eye-catching Program Description that stands out is imperative for competing with other brands in your category and attracting affiliates’ attention.
Your Program Description provides an opportunity to brag about your brand and products, and it’s what affiliates see first when they arrive on your merchant page. Include a brief description about your brand and products, but focus on what would be attractive to an affiliate promoting your company. Does your website have high monthly traffic? A high conversion rate? You should use your Program Description section to include as much information as possible about metrics that savvy affiliate marketers care most about:
Average Order Value (AOV)
Commission Rate
Cookie Duration
Monthly Traffic
Conversion Rate
Performance Incentives for Top Performers and Exclusive Affiliate Promotions
Cross-Device Enabled
Mobile/Content Certification
Dedicated Affiliate Team (if you have one)
For more tips on how to build out an attractive Program Description, see CJ Affiliate’s guide here.
Save time with CJ Affiliate’s Recruitment Tool
As a merchant on CJ Affiliate, you have access to numerous ways of finding and filtering affiliates that you’d like to pitch. Use the Recruit Partners tab to search CJ Affiliate’s vast network of affiliate publishers by variables such as:
Keywords (product, industry, etc)
Category (i.e. Home & Garden, Consumer Electronics, etc.)
Country
Network earnings
Geographic source
Publisher classification
Experiment with searches and filters to understand what types of affiliates are available. What categories of affiliates are relevant to your brand? Which affiliate categories will have the biggest financial impact on your business?
Once you’ve answered these questions, you can approach your affiliate outreach in a streamlined way by prioritizing affiliates into groups like “product reviewers” or “mommy bloggers” or “mainstream media.” With your groups established, you can tailor a pitch message to best suit each group. Creating relevant pitches for each group and doing group messaging will save you time versus emailing affiliates one by one.
Read on for a few pitch template examples you can work with, and learn more about CJ Affiliate’s Recruit Partners tool here.
Create an attractive commission offer
The most important part of your affiliate pitch will be your commission offer. How much will you pay the affiliate per sale, and how will you pay them? Will your commission offer change based on affiliate category?
CJ Affiliate’s commission bonuses and features like Situational Commissioning give you the ability to get creative and build hierarchies. You can incentivize your affiliates to hit certain sales targets with attractive bonuses, commission increases and limited time promotions.
Taking advantage of these features won’t just jumpstart recruitment at program launch time, they’re also important to use on an ongoing basis. A five year study on CJ Affiliate programs found that even though publishers that were in a program in the first year still contributed a meaningful percentage of advertiser program revenue, on average, 60% of program revenue comes directly from newly recruited publisher partnerships. So, get creative with your commission offers and create new affiliate incentives around big online shopping holidays and other sales events in your marketing calendar. Get more advice on engaging with affiliates on an ongoing basis here.
Crafting your pitch
A well-written affiliate pitch message is brief but thorough, and provides the affiliate with links to your website, social channels, and a Media Kit with content they can use. A general framework for a pitch is:
INTRO (1 – 3 sentences): Introduce yourself and the company
BODY (3 – 4 sentences): State your offer, provide more details about your products/services; state value propositions. Why would affiliate’s audience benefit from knowing about your product/service? Use bullet points.
CONCLUSION (2 – 3 sentences). Provide your contact details, request a reply, and if applicable, link to a Media Kit, your website and social channels.
You can use the below templates for pitching within the CJ Affiliate interface or in emails as part of your broader PR/marketing efforts.
PITCH TEMPLATE EXAMPLE 1: PRODUCT REVIEWER
Hi __________!
My name is ___ and I’m the founder/inventor of ____, a [insert product / description]. I found your [YouTube channel, website, etc.] and really enjoyed [insert recent relevant content} wanted to see if you/your team would like to try our ___ and join our affiliate program.
Our brand just launched [recent launch timeline] but our {product name] we’ve already been featured on [insert recent press recognition, awards, etc]. More about our new [product name]:
· Feature/ Value Prop 1 solves problem xyz
· Feature/ Value Prop 2 “
· Feature/ Value Prop 3 “
Just reply with your shipping address and we’d be happy to send you a [product name] for a review. I’ve included links to our Media Kit and social channels below. We have a very limited number of units reserved for media reviews, so please let me know by [date] so I can reserve your product.
Thanks!
Name
Website
Social Channels
Media Kit
PITCH TEMPLATE EXAMPLE 2: TRADITIONAL MEDIA / BLOGGER
Hi __________!
My name is ___ and I’m the founder/inventor of ____, a [insert product / description]. I recently read your article [insert article title/hyperlink] and wanted to tell you about our product [insert reasons why it’s relevant to the article]. We’d love to work with you as an affiliate partner and can offer you {insert offer}.
We think your
· Feature/ Value Prop 1 solves problem xyz
· Feature/ Value Prop 2 “
· Feature/ Value Prop 3 “
I’ve included a link to our Media Kit with high-res image/video content you can use, as well as links to our social channels below. Please let me know if I can help with any questions about our company or [product name] – looking forward to hearing back from you.
Thanks!
Name
Website
Social Channels
Media Kit
Growing your CJ Affiliate Marketing Program
For more tips of pitching affiliates growing your CJ Affiliate program, check out our article How to Grow Your Affiliate Marketing Program.
