Screening process for new partners

People ask us all the time how we vet new lead providers and how can we tell if they will produce quality leads. Well, the truth is that you never know for sure until the leads come in if the quality will be there. But there are many things that can be done up front to separate the good providers from the bad or fraudulent ones. Here’s a list of just some of the tests that we put new affiliates through before deeming them worthy of testing allocation:

1. Ask Questions – we start with a questionnaire – just some basic questions such as:
a. Where are you driving traffic specifically? To the homepage? Internal pages? Specific offers?
b. What will be your exact marketing path from user to lead be? Please provide specific examples of each.
c. Please provide the lead path from the point where a person enters your site, fills out the lead, and then exits your site.

The questionnaire usually creates as many questions as it answers. It gives us a good idea of what the potential affiliate has in mind and what direction to take the conversation. Sometimes the process ends here as it’s obvious that there is not a match.

2. Research – This is the time to see if what the potential lead providers are saying is true. We have many tools at our disposal that can confirm or disprove info given on traffic levels, marketing methods, etc. Typing the URL on a search engine can occasionally give some interesting information as well.

3. Review the Site – this is probably obvious, but just because the site has an EDU focused domain and the homepage features a school search does not mean that it functions properly. Nursing schools listed under the Welding tab? We’ve seen it before. An affiliate claims that all their traffic is organic, yet their content seems to be “borrowed” from other websites? Much more common than you would think.

4. Undercover Work – The next step is to go through the lead generation process on the proposed affiliate’s site. This can determine if their forms are functional, if they are doing something inappropriate with the exit traffic, or if anything else just does not add up.

Again, this is just a small sample of the kinds of hoops that a potential affiliate must jump through before we’re willing to give our stamp of approval. It’s a very involved process, but can go a long way to make sure that our client’s dollars are well spent.