The world of e-commerce and digital strategies evolves rapidly. This blog may contain insights that have since been surpassed by new developments. Curious about the latest trends and fresh perspectives? Dive into our most current articles on Insights.
Many advertisers have been running an affiliate program for some time. The premise is certainly attractive: no cure, no pay. Consequently, advertisers often enter affiliate marketing with a volume-first mentality: the more publishers signed up, the better.
After a few years, the result is often a massive collection of hundreds of registered affiliates, a large portion of which contribute very little. Furthermore, there are outdated banner materials floating around the internet and a handful of shady affiliates who, upon inspection, turn out to be purely piggybacking via last-click on traffic that would have converted anyway.
In other words: without periodically looking under the hood, it is difficult to determine whether you are dealing with a channel that offers qualitative added value or a parasitic channel where the majority of the revenue would have come in through other marketing channels regardless.
The question "How do you turn the affiliate channel into a performance channel with qualitative added value?" is therefore more important than ever. One thing is clear: affiliate marketing is anything but a plug-and-play channel.
But where do you start as an advertiser when it comes to optimization?
Adding quality starts with cleaning up the basics. As long as the affiliate channel is cluttered with defunct sites and affiliates pushing the boundaries of brand guidelines, one thing is certain: budget is leaking away unnecessarily.
Affiliates that haven't generated a click or conversion in 12 months and don't respond to tickets or emails clutter your data and increase the risk of outdated messaging. Without periodic maintenance of your affiliate program, it is highly likely that parties using parasitic tactics will slip through the cracks.
Think, for example, of affiliates secretly bidding on your brand name via Google Ads, or fake discount code sites purely aimed at placing their affiliate cookie on visitors who are already in the checkout process.
In addition, old banners, broken product feeds, and expired promotions contribute to both brand and conversion damage.
There is little more frustrating than chasing hundreds of different publishers, especially when not even half of them respond to a contact request.
In practice, the 80/20 rule often applies to affiliate marketing: 80% of the qualitative revenue from the affiliate channel comes from at most 20% of the connected publishers.
Instead of wasting energy flogging a dead horse, it is important to shift your focus to expanding collaborations with your A-players.
Identify valuable partners:
And is it possible to offer these specific publishers exclusive deals, unique content, or simply a higher commission in exchange for guaranteed, more extensive exposure on their platforms?
To this day, many advertisers use a ‘one-size-fits-all’ commission for all affiliates in their program. Without strict and clear campaign terms, such a model often encourages the wrong behavior.
For example, reward the acquisition of a new customer more highly than a repeat purchase from an existing one. It also pays to look beyond just the last click. Once you know who your A-players are, the next step is to ensure your commission structure rewards them for the right behavior.
Content blogs and research-oriented platforms may spark initial demand, but they often lose the conversion to a publisher later in the funnel based on last-click attribution.
Without an appropriate attribution or hybrid model, there is a high chance that valuable content creators will eventually decide it’s not worth it and stop promoting the campaign. This has a direct and strongly negative effect on the value of your affiliate program, because if you only pay commission to publishers who provide the proverbial final nudge, it is impossible for the affiliate channel to offer qualitative added value to your overall marketing mix.
Cleaning up your publisher base and optimizing commissions are just the first steps. But how do you apply this concretely to your specific situation?
How do you set up a watertight affiliate program and ensure qualitative added value without evaporating your margins?
To answer these questions (and more), Tjeerd de Vries is hosting an exclusive webinar:
“From Parasite to Growth Driver: How to increase the qualitative added value of your affiliate program.”
On August 27th, we will dive deep under the hood of affiliate marketing in about 45 minutes. No general theories, but concrete next steps, practical examples, and immediately applicable strategies.
What you will learn, among other things:
How to ensure a future-proof affiliate program that is a fully-fledged part of your marketing mix.
