How to Run an Aggressive Affiliate Program While Protecting Your Brand – MarketingSherpa Case Study on Oakley

MarketingSherpa published an interesting case study on the techniques employed by Oakley to protect their brand.

The case study focused on five tactics used in the Oakley affiliate program in their brand protection efforts:

• Recruit aggressively

• Filter Applicants Just as Aggressively
• Develop strict criteria for affiliate marketing tactics
• Seasonal Incentives
• Communicate frequently

The case study was largely a manifest of best practices in affiliate marketing, but there were a handful of items that stuck out to me.

Erwin’s team ran a 30-day ad on the sign-in page of Oakley’s affiliate management service. The ad contained the Oakley logo, plus a basic commission offer: 7% on all sales up to $5,000 per month; 10% on anything after that.

This was under the banner of aggressive recruiting, so I presume after this 30-day offer, the commission rates were returned back to a lower level? If so, I’d say that’s Kryptonite to affiliates after the higher rate comes back down to Earth.

With that in mind, Oakley allows affiliates to receive commission on sales for up to 45 days (the range is generally from 30-45) from the time a customer first clicks through to the Oakley site. And, unlike many programs where an affiliate only gets a commission on a first-time customer, or gets a decreased commission for repeat customers, Oakley offers affiliates full commissions each time a customer accesses Oakley through the affiliate site.

They have a 45 day cookie, but the affiliates only get commission when the customer “accesses Oakley through the affiliate site”? I am not clear on the role of the return days if the customer must go through the affiliate link for the commission to be attributed to the affiliate.

Erwin believes that affiliate emails, no matter how well done, will eventually result in damaging the brand.

I think it’s certainly important to monitor email and be discriminating in the way a company’s message is positioned, but the wholesale dismissal of email? I think that’s a bit misguided.

To each brand their own.