Why suspending inactive publishers can harm your affiliate program – and what to do instead

A growing trend amongst some advertisers and agencies is suspending affiliates once they’ve become inactive (no clicks or sales) after a period of time. But is that the right strategy for an affiliate program?

Affiliate management, and its approach, often varies between affiliate managers, whether in-house, agency or network managed. What all affiliate programs have in common is that they work with a group of websites, blogs, influencers, and advertising clients on a risk-free, performance basis.

A process on the rise is program managers who suspend publishers that have been inactive for a period of time. This means affiliates falling into this segment are no longer permitted to track for the advertiser, and won’t be paid out if their tracking links are used during a sale once the suspension is complete.

Suspending publishers is a drain on time and hinders potential for opportunity

From a practical point of view, there’s very little logic in this strategy. The affiliate, by the very nature of their inactivity, is cost-neutral to the program. There is no cost or liability to work with them, therefore allocating resources to go through the program and suspend a segment of publishers is generally counter-productive.

The advertiser (or its agency) would often suspend before even making an attempt to contact the affiliate to discuss the opportunities of a partnership. Instead, they take the face-value performance as the total “opportunity”. In reality, the partnership process is much more complex.

In some cases, affiliates have integration requirements or work on a project basis (e.g. specific activity, rather than an evergreen merchant page), and therefore simply accepting an invitation to join an affiliate program does not necessarily equate to an affiliate actively promoting the advertiser. Fast forward six months, the publisher remains inactive. Does this mean they should be suspended?

Streamlining the number of publishers ultimately results in a smaller pool of affiliates that the advertiser can work with, which in turn increases reliance on the affiliates left over. One advertiser we began working with only had 48 affiliates on the program, as they had suspended more than 3,000 others. We found that the criteria for suspension was simply that they didn’t drive sales. Within the suspended affiliates were some of the top 50 partners for the sector, they simply weren’t activated and engaged with. Once on-board, we re-joined these partners and activated them, which created an almost immediate result for increased traffic and sales.

The solution: Spend time with publishers to create opportunities for your affiliate program

If you have a number of inactive affiliates, instead of allocating resources to “culling” the program, first make steps to reach out to that publisher segment. Take time to understand the publisher and it’s offering, and present an opportunity for the publisher.

Next, set up some activity with the publisher; you’ll often find just by doing this will drive traffic and transactions and enables you to see the strength of the publisher’s audience.

If the publisher still remains inactive, focus on other publishers – especially those recently active. Removing the inactive publisher has no net benefit to the program, so the time spent in itself is simply a drain on resources.

A good affiliate manager or agency will often have relationships with a wide range of affiliates. For example, Thoughtmix has more than 24,000 constantly active affiliates across all of its clients and campaigns. So while the publisher may be inactive for your program – it may well be a top performer for another.

Your strategy going forward should be to grow the active number of affiliates in your program while consistently testing new campaigns and publishers – you never know what growth that could achieve!