Affiliate Team Lead Zachary will tell us more about key accounting and how it increases your profit.
Hi, I’m Zachary and I lead the team of affiliate managers at Alfaleads. In this article, I’d like to share with you an important aspect of my work that has become more prominent recently. I’m talking about a system of key accounts and what it can bring to our partners.
Who is a key account manager, and what is their job?
Individual approach is one of the major reasons why affiliate marketers value Alfaleads. Key accounting helps us to establish the most effective relations with partners.
A key account manager (KAM) is responsible for building and maintaining close and efficient relationships with the company’s key clients.
For example, banks usually work with the key accounting approach, so I will draw up a comparison to give you some perspective:
| Alfaleads key account manager | Bank key account manager |
| Works with a limited pool of partners and can concentrate their efforts for better results | |
| ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Works only with the biggest clients and can operate big budgets | |
| ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Knows the client well enough to know about the most significant events in their life and, for instance, find a suitable gift, whether it’s a TV or nitrous oxide (more on this later) | |
| ✔️ | ❌ |
| Conducts regular brainstorming sessions together with the client maps out the development process | |
| ✔️ | ❌ |
At Alfaleads, key account managers work with the most challenging and demanding teams, dedicating their time to each affiliate. It’s a job where you can’t postpone your duties till tomorrow: face to face meetings and ASAP answers even after hours are a must.
A good KAM also has to be a talented negotiator, analyze the situation well, be a natural leader, and know the ins and outs of financing and affiliate marketing.
Every key account manager at Alfaleads is an independent professional with good hard and soft skills.
Their tasks involve detailed traffic analysis, finding the best ways to monetize an offer and communicating it to the client, negotiating better caps with the advertiser, etc. Together with the client, key account managers set quarterly goals, brainstorm ideas, develop a strategy and campaign flows for new products, depending on the performance and organic traffic flow to a given brand.
Must-haves to be a key account manager
They must have depth expertise and be ready for regular business trips. A key account manager must know everything about traffic and its monetization, be able to pick relevant offers that will bring profit to the media buyer. You also need to understand the specifics of advertisers and their products, understand which traffic sources and landers will perform well and which are better to avoid. And, of course, each key account manager should have their own effective approach to the clients.
Individual approach and achieving goals
At Alfaleads, we have a great experience with the approach “account manager + advertiser/marketer”. For example, one of the managers in my team was able to bring his client to the top tier in just 4 months. We have developed a special payout schedule and negotiated increased payout rates specifically for this client and held regular traffic analytics. At the moment, this client continues scaling ad campaigns on several products. You can read more about this story here.
Not just business, but meaningful interaction
At Alfaleads, we value relationships with our partners and always find time to send our best wishes on important events or find a suitable present. A good key account manager always knows how to make their client happy, even if the gift may seem odd to others.
For example, I remember sending a baby cot to one of my clients, while another partner refused any gift for himself and asked us to send a TV for his grandmother – and we gladly did. We also had a couple of clients who were really passionate about automobiles: so we sent them nitrous oxide for the engine. Among other unusual gifts, I remember a football uniform, a motorcycle, and a gold ingot.
How to become a key client
Now we have both solo affiliates and big media buying teams among our key accounts. We don’t have an entry threshold per se, it’s all very individual.
Some key clients have a turnover of several million dollars, while others make 100K dollars. No boundaries — means that Alfaleads stays flexible. If we see a promising team, we assign a key account manager.
What our affiliates have to say about it
We run a quarterly assessment of clients’ satisfaction, as well as a separate check-up to calculate our affiliates’ “happiness index”. Based on this feedback, our affiliates are happy with our job, and this is why key account managers are so important. I often see our clients sending their thanks to one manager or another, and I always feel joy because of it.
In the future, I plan to develop the key accounting system further by including a business development specialist in the scheme. I think it will allow us to develop even further.
In a word, the job of a key account manager can be challenging and complex, but it is very rewarding. If you feel ready to level up and work with a KAM, make sure to contact me @zakhar_alfa! I’m sure that we have a pro who will find the perfect key to your heart and unlock your full potential.
Comments