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Why Affiliate Marketing Causes Problems For Email Senders

Affiliates can cause all kinds of problems for an email sender or even any Internet based company, and if you have an affiliate program, you’re open to rogue affiliates spamming in your name. Sometimes it's not even that the affiliates are the problem, but rather unscrupulous marketers claiming that they don't tolerate their affiliates spamming, while looking the other way because they are getting good income from the affiliates' activities. Fortunately such double-dealing on the part of marketers is now illegal and actionable under the Federal CAN-SPAM law.

Affilliate marketing on the Internet is a system where a business pays money to affiliates who bring them customers. It can either be a percentage of sales (revenue sharing) or a fixed amount per lead or click (known as “cost per action” or “CPA”). Unfortunately, people signing up for affiliate programs include not only careful, legitimate affiliates, but also people ranging from overenthusiastic zealots out to sell your product for you, to wild cowboys and outright unscrupulous spammers. As a result, affiliate marketing accounts for a large percentage of spam, and has acquired a very bad rap. It also accounts for endless web pages offering nothing but links. Putting affiliate marketing links on blogs creates pings and fake trackbacks, and many bloggers have had to close down the comments sections of their blogs because there is so much affiliate blog spam.

Screen Affiliates Carefully!

Why bother screening affiliates?

ISPs have started lawsuits against alleged spammers, but they’re also now starting lawsuits against companies that hire spammers to promote their products. The FTC is bringing action against people who abuse affiliate marketing. As CAN-SPAM defines spammers as anyone who procures the services of a spammer, by signing a spammer up as an affiliate you’re wide open! You can defend against this by taking “reasonable action” to police your affiliates.

The use of affiliate programs to earn money is big business, as well. Don’t think just of that stay-at-home mom abusing your scheme, think professional spammer. Spammers have used email addresses for phishing, and then also used the same email addresses to spam in the name of legitimate affiliate program.

For these reasons it’s critical to weed out potentially problematic affiliates when they first apply to your affiliate program. Once they are in, it simply takes too long to detect them and close them out of your program – they’ve usually already made their money and gotten you into hot water by the time you get suspicious.

Just remember - one bad affiliate can impact the email deliverability of your entire company, as well as leading to your being sued - successfully - under the Federal anti-spam law for the actions of your affiliate.