Travel Affiliate Program doesn't work! HELP! (14)

Hello, Guys,

I'm Vilius from travel agency "Baltic Tours", which is the oldest and biggest in the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia).
We've launched an Affiliate program on www.cj.com 1 month ago, but nothing goes well.
We're active on cj.com almost for a month, we got 118 accepted Publishers, but none of them started to advertise our products. I tried to contact them personally via cj.com or some of them directly via email to know what is wrong, but nobody is replaying to my messages.

Guys, can someone help us to improve our program? Feel free to comment or suggest what's wrong with the program we made. Also we can make a new custom made programs for every particular Publisher if it's needed. Just don't understand where is the problem, if publishers wanted to connect with us by themselves, but they don't start to work with our product.

Our current affiliate program looks like this:
Customer completes a tour with valid payment

• 10% commission (average tour price is 1180 euro per traveler)
• 60 day referral period
• Unlimited referrals
• Standard lifecycle

Check out how competitors or other travel brands attract affiliates, for example;

- reward them with higher % after X amount of sales (1-10 sales = 10% CPS, 11-20 sales = 12% CPS etc etc)
- create dedicated pages for the most sold trips, or create temporary campaigns ("this week 20% discount on all trips to Latvia", "free car rental if you book hotel+flight via Baltic tours etc)
- approach affiliates with relevant conversion rates (if affiliate = e-mail ---> show them results of internal mailing/affiliate mailings)
- give kickback fee's, trips, gadgets as a reward when 100 sales are being made for example (you can even start a contest)
- push coupon codes - but avoid coupon code content sites (people google for "Baltic Tours coupon code", before booking the trip, whilst they will book the trip also without coupon code")
- organize affiliate meet-ups, lexures, training etc - invite them to the office and spoil them
- quit with CJ.com, or at least go to other networks which are more travel focussed (affpaying.com might help for example?)
- reward publisher managers inside the networks for pushing your campaigns towards certain affiliates
- make sure your website is optimized for conversions, ofcourse you do that already, but maybe invest a bit more lol

- start a thread on STM (done haha), loads of affiliates born/live/avoid taxes via the Baltic countries and know/have affinity with the countries.

Welcome, I am sure some Balticians (just made up a word I think) will chime in!

First of all.. Just had a look at your website and I really like it! Its a very clear and easy to navigate website.

Have you contacted CJ to see what they think the issue might be? You can also ask them if they can push your program a bit more, for an example in their newsletter.

I'd have a few questions too

- What kind of promo tools do you have ready for affilaites? Some dedicated landing pages, lead collection pages etc ... or do you want them to send traffic directly to https://baltictours.com/? In order for a promotial funnel to work, there has to be some "angle" behind it, sending traffic to the homepage won't convert and the affiliates know it.
- How popular is CJ in your region? Maybe not that much? I'm sure there are local affiliate networks that you could work with, we surely have them in Slovakia and I see no reason why there shouldn't be some like that in your region too. Did you try to find them?
- I see no link to the affiliate program on your website, why is that? You need to promote it as much as possible. Assuming that https://baltictours.com/ is your website of course
- How about offering more options to the affiliates, not just revenue share, that can turn many away. A pay per lead maybe, selling discount coupons ... there are many other options that could be easier to convert.

I could ask a few more, but let's address these first

Cheers,
Matej.

Short story shorter: Nobody is sending traffic to your offers because what your offering is not worth their time and investment... so change that.

Travel vertical is very competitive and anyone that can successfully run that kind of traffic searches out and obtains the best possible offers in the industry, then demands even better terms. Also I dunno if big travel affiliates are working with CJ but instead either directly with advertisers or through other affiliate networks.

What Matuloo says about CJ could be correct. In Europe Awin is a lot more well known then CJ.

Originally Posted by stickupkid

Check out how competitors or other travel brands attract affiliates, for example;

- reward them with higher % after X amount of sales (1-10 sales = 10% CPS, 11-20 sales = 12% CPS etc etc)
- create dedicated pages for the most sold trips, or create temporary campaigns ("this week 20% discount on all trips to Latvia", "free car rental if you book hotel+flight via Baltic tours etc)
- approach affiliates with relevant conversion rates (if affiliate = e-mail ---> show them results of internal mailing/affiliate mailings)
- give kickback fee's, trips, gadgets as a reward when 100 sales are being made for example (you can even start a contest)
- push coupon codes - but avoid coupon code content sites (people google for "Baltic Tours coupon code", before booking the trip, whilst they will book the trip also without coupon code")
- organize affiliate meet-ups, lexures, training etc - invite them to the office and spoil them
- quit with CJ.com, or at least go to other networks which are more travel focussed (affpaying.com might help for example?)
- reward publisher managers inside the networks for pushing your campaigns towards certain affiliates
- make sure your website is optimized for conversions, ofcourse you do that already, but maybe invest a bit more lol

- start a thread on STM (done haha), loads of affiliates born/live/avoid taxes via the Baltic countries and know/have affinity with the countries.

Welcome, I am sure some Balticians (just made up a word I think) will chime in!

Originally Posted by baltictours

Just to ensure, www.baltictours.com provides incoming tourism packages, so our customer target is worldwide, especially from USA and China. So we are looking Publishers from all over the world, not locals.
If my situation is getting clearer for you, maybe you have more suggestions for us?

Originally Posted by baltictours

Hello, stickupkid,

Huge thanks for the comments, some of them are very helpful.
Just to ensure, www.baltictours.com provides incoming tourism packages, so our customer target is worldwide, especially from USA and China. So we are looking Publishers from all over the world, not locals.
If my situation is getting clearer for you, maybe you have more suggestions for us?

P.s. Balticians (guess, you saw the same red correction line below it, haha)

Originally Posted by matuloo

I'd have a few questions too

- What kind of promo tools do you have ready for affilaites? Some dedicated landing pages, lead collection pages etc ... or do you want them to send traffic directly to https://baltictours.com/? In order for a promotial funnel to work, there has to be some "angle" behind it, sending traffic to the homepage won't convert and the affiliates know it.
- How popular is CJ in your region? Maybe not that much? I'm sure there are local affiliate networks that you could work with, we surely have them in Slovakia and I see no reason why there shouldn't be some like that in your region too. Did you try to find them?
- I see no link to the affiliate program on your website, why is that? You need to promote it as much as possible. Assuming that https://baltictours.com/ is your website of course
- How about offering more options to the affiliates, not just revenue share, that can turn many away. A pay per lead maybe, selling discount coupons ... there are many other options that could be easier to convert.

I could ask a few more, but let's address these first

Cheers,
Matej.

I think there are several things that you could do. Let me throw some ideas at you.

1. You need to work on social proof. Traveling to a foreign country and letting someone else (you) handle all the details, requires a lot of trust. All the people heard some horror stories about travel agencies promising the heaven and moon, then failing to deliver. The key to show the prospects that you are a legit agency with solid record. You need third party reviews posted on trusted travel-related resources. You need an active FB page where people can leave reviews (I didnt even find an FB page on the landing page you posted). You should be present on all the major social media... twitter, instagram ...

Facebook can help you a lot, people love to share photos of nice places. I see these in my feed all the time. We have some very active travel agencies in Slovakia, who sell accommodation in Croatia. And since that is the most popular sea-side destination for my countrymen, they all share it like crazy. Instagram can work just as well.

2. Influencers could help you spread your brand. Have you ever tried to work with travel bloggers, for example? How about trying to get in touch with some that have solid following, and offering them a free trip with your agency, in exchange for a review-like-post on their blog?

3. Targeted campaigns offering discounts. Setup a landing page that would offer a discount for a particular tour, for a limited period of time. Try to send some FB traffic to it, targeting people with travel interests. Or use the discount/coupon websites, most of them are heavily aimed at travel related discounts anyways. You won't make much $ from it, because the services ask for a big cut, but it could help you spread the brand further and earn you a few good reviews.

4. Travel aggregators, that's another option. We have a few big ones here again, they pull the offers from "all" travel agencies and list them on their website. Integrating with services like this would give you more exposure too.

5. PR articles... any major news media has travel sections, explore the opportunities of having a PR article posted. If handled properly, this can result into some sales.

All these activities should bring you some traffic that you can use to fine tune your LPs and once you are sure they are converting, it will be way easier to get independent affiliates.

I would also work on building an email list, you can offer some discount to those who signup for it. Something like : "Get notified when we launch a new tour and get 10% off of your first purchase". Build a follow up sequence and email these subscribers with interesting offers and try sell them a tour.

There is so much you can try

Hey,

Matuloo, you're the boss, huge thanks! Now it looks way easier to grow these things!

Originally Posted by matuloo

I think there are several things that you could do. Let me throw some ideas at you.

1. You need to work on social proof. Traveling to a foreign country and letting someone else (you) handle all the details, requires a lot of trust. All the people heard some horror stories about travel agencies promising the heaven and moon, then failing to deliver. The key to show the prospects that you are a legit agency with solid record. You need third party reviews posted on trusted travel-related resources. You need an active FB page where people can leave reviews (I didnt even find an FB page on the landing page you posted). You should be present on all the major social media... twitter, instagram ...

Facebook can help you a lot, people love to share photos of nice places. I see these in my feed all the time. We have some very active travel agencies in Slovakia, who sell accommodation in Croatia. And since that is the most popular sea-side destination for my countrymen, they all share it like crazy. Instagram can work just as well.

2. Influencers could help you spread your brand. Have you ever tried to work with travel bloggers, for example? How about trying to get in touch with some that have solid following, and offering them a free trip with your agency, in exchange for a review-like-post on their blog?

3. Targeted campaigns offering discounts. Setup a landing page that would offer a discount for a particular tour, for a limited period of time. Try to send some FB traffic to it, targeting people with travel interests. Or use the discount/coupon websites, most of them are heavily aimed at travel related discounts anyways. You won't make much $ from it, because the services ask for a big cut, but it could help you spread the brand further and earn you a few good reviews.

4. Travel aggregators, that's another option. We have a few big ones here again, they pull the offers from "all" travel agencies and list them on their website. Integrating with services like this would give you more exposure too.

5. PR articles... any major news media has travel sections, explore the opportunities of having a PR article posted. If handled properly, this can result into some sales.

All these activities should bring you some traffic that you can use to fine tune your LPs and once you are sure they are converting, it will be way easier to get independent affiliates.

I would also work on building an email list, you can offer some discount to those who signup for it. Something like : "Get notified when we launch a new tour and get 10% off of your first purchase". Build a follow up sequence and email these subscribers with interesting offers and try sell them a tour.

There is so much you can try

Originally Posted by baltictours

Hey,

Matuloo, you're the boss, huge thanks! Now it looks way easier to grow these things!

Eurosen, hi!

Thanks for the comments and for your opinion.
Already contacted with CJ managers about the situation and pushing us in their newsletter.

Maybe You interested in working with our traveling products? PM me, I'll give you more information as well.

Originally Posted by eurosen

First of all.. Just had a look at your website and I really like it! Its a very clear and easy to navigate website.

Have you contacted CJ to see what they think the issue might be? You can also ask them if they can push your program a bit more, for an example in their newsletter.