What are Some Affiliate Marketing Truths?

To truly understand the present state of the affiliate channel, where it’s headed and why it’s here to stay—firmly planted in any sophisticated marketers’ arsenal—we’ll leave you with some quick and insightful statistics:

Affiliate marketing programs are projected to continue to grow by 10% each year for the next two years.
Currently, the global affiliate industry is worth more than $12B.
Affiliate marketing now accounts for 15% of digital marketing revenue.
Affiliate programs generate an average of between 15% and 30% of all sales for advertisers.
In 2017, users clicked over five billion times, and worldwide, affiliate networks and platforms performed more than 170M transactions.
More than half of all affiliate-referred traffic originates with mobile devices.
Between December 2017 and June 2018, the search term “affiliate marketing” was used 44 percent more frequently than in the six months prior

How to Make Money Online With Affiliate Marketing

Over the past few years, affiliate has become an increasingly popular marketing strategy among many marketers who may have once considered it a ‘non-traditional’ marketing channel (at least in comparison to other paid channels like search and social). In fact, there isn’t even an absolute consensus on what marketers call the channel. Some refer to the channel as ‘affiliate’, while others call it, ‘commerce’, while still others know it as ‘brand partnerships’.

Naming conventions aside, there has also been an influx of what many of these marketers may consider ‘non-traditional’ publisher partners stepping into affiliate—taking best practices from the traditional publishers—and, of course, creating some new best practices of their own to generate the most revenue possible. But no matter what type of publisher partner you consider yourself to be, here are some quick tips to keep in mind as you ramp yourself up to becoming a revenue-generating affiliate publisher.

1. Know Your Audience

There is nothing more critical to your success as an affiliate publisher than knowing who your audience—and the brands you’re partnering with—are. Brands come to you because you offer something unique, something no other publisher can offer or deliver in quite the same way you can. Use this to your advantage and incorporate brands and products that you know your established audience is already interested in. Once you’re in sync with the makeup of your audience, and their demographics (think: age range, gender ratio, household income, etc..) as well as what they view, click on most, etc., you can offer them more relevant brands and more tailored products.

2. Communication is Key

There is a lot to be said about creating a direct line of communication with your brand partners. This is the best way for you both to foster a growing two-way partnership that drives mutual revenue. Proper communication lines also afford the opportunity to discuss what offers or new products are available to you and in return, let them know about new promotions you’re working on for your audience where they can be included or featured.

3. Be Proactive

Don’t wait for the most relevant brands, products and offers to come to you! Instead, take an active approach and seek them out to create purposeful, more meaningful partnerships. Many of the top performing partners (traditional and non-traditional) are creating interesting opportunities on their sites and apps and are proactively pitching brands.

4. Negotiate (& Re-negotiate) Commissions

Many brands set ‘base’ commission rates to get partnerships kicked off quickly. If you see that this partnership is going quite well (or even better than expected!) and generating solid revenue, ask to negotiate your commission rate(s). Most brands are very happy to reward high performing partners with better commission rates to keep the partnership growing strong. Where it makes sense, you can also ask to set opportunities to collect bonus payments if you hit certain revenue goals that the brand is looking to achieve.

Keeping these 4 quick tips in mind: knowing your audience, keeping lines of communication with your brand partners open, being proactive, and negotiating (and re-negotiating) commission rates, will help you ensure that you’re in demand and making money online as a publisher within the affiliate channel.

5 Reasons Why You Should Leverage Affiliate Marketing

If you’re considering incorporating affiliate marketing (also known as performance marketing) into the mix but still aren’t convinced that the impact will be worth the effort, then you’ve come to the right place. Forrester reports that performance marketing is currently a $4.2 billion industry expected to reach $6.8 billion by 2020. Moreover, Forrester estimates a compound annual growth of nearly 10% by 2020.

As brands begin to recognize that traditional forms of marketing are no longer working as well as they once did (hello, sign of the times!), performance marketing commands an increasingly larger slice of marketers’ budgets. Forrester also lends us insight into where marketers are looking to spend budgets citing over 80% of all marketers currently allocate 10% of their marketing budget to performance marketing. But what does this mean for your business?

When compared to more traditional marketing channels including: search, display, email and paid social, one key differentiator that sets affiliate marketing apart is its uncanny ability at relationship creation/optimization. When considering the value that affiliate can bring, it’s important to understand its strength, or what lies at its core. Above all else, affiliate marketing is rooted in the idea of creating and strengthening relationships. These relationships aren’t only between advertisers and partners, but they’re very much about the relationship that consumers have with partners and brands.

Read on to learn about the top 5 reasons why you should leverage an affiliate program now.

It touches all forms of marketing

And by design, this is a key differentiator in making affiliate marketing unique. Affiliate isn’t a channel that dwells in a silo—it touches much more than just the last click of a transaction, something it’s traditionally known for. Take for instance content sites, bloggers and influencers who may serve as the greatest point of impact in the buyer’s journey, yet, don’t receive the recognition they deserve. There are also instances where the affiliate channel doesn’t impact the first or that last-click models, yet still resides within the clickstream, still warranting credit. In affiliate marketing, a partner can leverage paid search and SEO tactics to monetize their content through affiliate links, making it unique to other channels. Knowing how affiliate marketing works in tandem with the other channels, is a critical component to your success with this channel.

It is a pay-for-performance channel that minimizes risk while maximizing returns

Proving the value of the affiliate channel brings us to our next point. Perhaps the most attractive aspect of affiliate marketing (at its face value) is that it’s a completely pay-for-performance channel. This is not to imply that it’s an effort-free channel, it’s simply bringing light to an often-overlooked perk of affiliate: partners or influencers only get paid a commission once they make a sale. Additionally, affiliate—despite whether a sale is made or not—still serves as free advertising or additional branding that brands wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Affiliate offers customization and connects you with your target audience

As mentioned earlier, one of affiliate marketing’s greatest strengths rests in its ability to create and nurture relationships. One of the most critical of these relationships lies between the partner and their audience. Partners spend considerable time creating quality content that they know their audience will connect with. Knowing what resonates best, enables partners to recommend campaign elements that brands may not have thought of, or perhaps put on the backburner including: certain product offerings to push, ad messaging, etc. Partners also understand well their audience demographics and, in some cases, can target subsets of these audiences to further tailor brand messaging. A great example of this is major apparel and accessories brand, Puma who didn’t realize that a famous pop star’s collection would be so wildly popular within the Asian market. However, top Asian partner, Dealmoon, knew otherwise and highlighted this collection to their primarily-Asian audience to great success! Doing so, skyrocketed the relationship between Puma and Dealmoon and together, they continue to achieve great success.

It builds brand credibility

Remember how we mentioned that partners know their audiences best? This knowledge evolves in large part from the trust that they’ve worked hard at building with them. This means that when audiences trust what partners say—especially about a product—they are far more likely to purchase the products they recommend, essentially building a brands’ credibility. Affiliate marketing is all about partners working diligently on a brands’ behalf to endorse products and services in a way that sounds natural and that resonates best with their established audience. They can bring a new perspective and level of credibility to a brand that the brand isn’t able to do on its own. If this all sounds a lot like third-party validation, it’s because that’s exactly what it is.

It encourages brand loyalty

While word-of-mouth has been one of the most effective methods of endorsing products or services since (basically) the dawn of commerce, it makes perfect sense that partner sites, bloggers and social media platforms would only intensify this means of marketing. From written reviews to live product demonstration, outlets like these are affording would-be consumers to see and “test” products like they’ve never been able to before. This isn’t the brand directly selling a product to them, but instead it’s someone they trust the opinion of endorsing the product on a brands’ behalf. The partners’ excitement transfers to the audience and with the help of all the proof points or the case they’ve built for why this product is best, consumers make purchases and more importantly, they make repeat purchases. This only strengthens their affinity towards a brand and ultimately, creates loyalty. Loyal consumers loyally spend on product because they can see the value, and affiliate marketing can serve as the catalyst in making this happen.

The affiliate channel just makes plain sense (and dollars)

Over the past 20 years, affiliate marketing has evolved, matured and grown into a well-developed, sophisticated form of marketing that in many ways has given more traditional channels a true run for their money. It’s the perfect low-risk, high-reward channel for both content and influencer marketing.

So, what are you waiting for? Let’s keep this conversation going by reaching out to us here.

4 Tactics to Improve Your Affiliate Channel Strategy

To set your brand up for success, consider these four key tactics to boost your ROI. Being well-versed in each will elevate your affiliate marketing plans and ensure they are your most profitable yet.

Leverage Advanced Attribution
Marketers should utilize attribution to award each publisher that played a role in the path to a purchase based on their value to the sale. Advanced attribution tools can provide you with insights into how, when and where publishers influence customers across devices and channels so that you know which to reward, and how much to pay them.
Incorporate Seamless Consumer Engagement
Engage consumers and increase conversion rates by offering multiple transaction types:
Mobile Applications
Geo-Targeting
Beacon Technology
Pay-Per-Call
Buy Online, Pick Up In Store
Push Notifications
Card Linked Offers
Online to In-Store Coupons
Customize Commission Rates
Not all influencers along the path to purchase are equal—so why would you reward them equally? Dynamic Commissioning enables marketers to define incrementality-based tracking to customize commission rates for:
- Transaction type
- SKUs
- Coupon Code
- New to File vs. Return Customers
- Device Type
- Category
Monetize Instagram
Publishers can now send their Instagram followers to advertisers’ product pages, driving high quality traffic and revenue through the affiliate channel. By taking advantage of our Curalate partnership, content publishers are able to monetize Instagram posts and make images shoppable.

How to Start An Affiliate Program

Any e-commerce brand can utilize affiliate marketing, but the recipe for starting a successful affiliate program involves several ingredients. For starters, following an OGSM (objectives, goals, strategies and measures) model provides the necessary framework for identifying the overarching objective and the layers of support needed to develop a well-designed program. OGSM is a planning framework that specializes in helping people and organizations actualize their long-term outcomes and strategies by tying them to shorter-term goals, actions and measures. It enables progress tracking along the way so you can adjust course as necessary and is extremely effective at keeping focus on the tasks at hand.

When it comes to your affiliate program, establish the program’s objectives and goals then develop the strategies to support and the measures that need to be taken to ensure those strategies are executed successfully. For instance, when defining your objectives, you may want to consider whether your brand wants to use affiliate to ultimately gain more brand exposure or is the main focus more on revenue growth? It’s questions like these that help establish the appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) and allow you to develop the short-term strategies that map directly to achieving your overall objective. Setting these objectives and aligning on expectations in the beginning is critical as it allows all other initiatives to flow from this central starting point.

Next, it’s critical that your affiliate marketing efforts aren’t siloed but instead work in conjunction with other components of your digital marketing mix. This allows for cohesion when it comes to the brand’s messaging, promotes consistency and is essential to creating a symbiotic marketing campaign that will yield optimal results across the board. Coordinating your affiliate efforts across your broader digital marketing mix, is not to be outdone by another main ingredient: effective communication. Strong lines of communication across the broader affiliate team and partner themselves, is vital. If there’s one thing just about every affiliate marketer can agree upon it’s that a healthy and successful affiliate program is built on the shoulders of strong relationships with publisher partners. This includes leveraging relationships and ensuring fair commission rates so that publisher partners are incented to deliver quality traffic and coveted conversions.

Finally—and this a point that we believe strongly in as a key pillar to building a successful affiliate program—is establishing a diversified publisher partner base. Having a diverse publisher partner base will help your brand reach a broader audience, bolster brand exposure, drive new customer acquisition, and build meaningful customer lifetime value (CLTV). This means having a program that includes all the major publisher partner business models including loyalty, coupon, deal, content, shopping comparison (CSE), sub-affiliate networks, abandonment and Asian-focused. This robust base of publisher partners will help you create strategic value and reduce risk: a win-win for everyone.

The takeaway? Every brand has an important story to tell and affiliate marketing is the vehicle to deliver your brand into the hands of ready and waiting consumers. Following this simple yet effective recipe will help set you and your brand up for a successful, healthy and lasting affiliate marketing program.

The Affiliate Marketing Services Rule of Thumb

Affiliate marketing service practices should by just as unique as the affiliate marketer.

There is an old proverb claiming what is good for the goose is also good for the gander. It means simply that whatever treatment is appropriate for one case, is by default, appropriate for another case. This may be swell advice if affiliate marketers lived on farms but we know in digital marketing, the landscape is very different from a farm. In affiliate, figuring out what level of service a retailer marketer needs is just as unique as the marketers themselves and in many cases, the thought of managing an affiliate program in-house, is highly appealing. After all, in-house management allows brands to retain control of all the day-to-day aspects of program management. From strategy to execution—marketers remain in the driver’s seat.

This in-housing approach, in theory, may be appealing for others but the thought of hiring an experienced in-house affiliate marketer coupled with the internal stakeholders’ own limited knowledge of the channel, may make outsourcing affiliate program management likely the only viable option. Then again you may be a marketer who ultimately wants to insource affiliate management but needs to outsource temporarily while you acquire the education and skill set necessary to execute an affiliate program effectively.

No matter which type of marketer you are or which type of affiliate program you’re looking to manage, Partnerize has a perfectly balanced solution for you including a specialized track designed for the growth marketer looking for a guided and comprehensive affiliate management education with flexibility to move in-house—based on your timeline.

Learn more by downloading our quick guide to in-housing your affiliate program and discover the solution that’s right for you today.

Best Practices For Creating Affiliate Links

Building a library of accessible creative ensures that your publisher partners have access to the most relevant and accurate content to promote on behalf of your brand. Text links, or text hyperlinks, are one of the creative types you can create foryour publisher partners to promote your program in their placements, including store pages, category listings, newsletters, social media and more. Having a solid base of text links is a critical component to any successful affiliate program. Text links should include your brand name, new product lines, offers such as free shipping, coupons, % off discounts, and much more. All affiliate links should be in line with your marketing and promotional calendars therefore, it’s very important to refresh them regularly, so promotions are accurately updated, and brand guidelines are followed correctly.

To help keep you organized and prepared when it comes to text links, the following are some best practices to keep in mind, especially as we navigate through Q4 and the busy holiday shopping season:

Be mindful of the character limit
Text links are limited to 255 characters. This might sound like a lot but it it’s easy to go over when including offer details or branding information. Be as direct and as clear as possible to get attention and drive action.
Call out your brand
Your brand is the most important asset – it’s also the easiest to leave out when building text links. Make sure to lead (or close) by mentioning your brand name in the text link. This can be used as part of your call to action.
Call to action (CTA)
Every text link should include a call to action, or a prompt to complete a desired step. Links are interactive and the call to action reminds shoppers of this. It never hurts to include your brand in a call to action either (e.g. Shop MYSITE now!).
Make sure the link has a clear focus: product, category, collection, offer
Product or category-specific links are a simple way to draw your partners (and therefore your consumers) to a targeted item or collection on your site. Building these links is an effective motivator for partners and can draw attention to an item with extra inventory, a sale section or a new product launch just to name a few. Product and/or category-specific links and sitewide offers are useful in driving consumers exactly where you want them. You can also build sale messaging into these unique product links.
Sitewide links work well with high-level sales, free shipping offers or general updates (think free shipping thresholds, re-stocked best-sellers or new customer acquisition campaigns).
Considerations when building offer–based text links
Include a code, if necessary. We recommend capitalizing the code, so it clearly stands out and is used correctly, creating a better user experience.
Include offer duration in the link anchor text. Feel free to play around with this, by leaving out the end date to create a sense of urgency.
Drive to a specific landing page.Be aware if the page expires, the link will no longer provide a seamless user experience. Specific landing pages are generally not recommended for evergreen links for this reason.
Input date ranges to ensure links expire properly. By including a start and end date when creating the text link, the creative will automatically expire and negate the need to manually revisit your account for cleanup. This works best for sales, codes, seasonal collections or themed pages.
Public, Private and Exclusive Text Links
Public links are available to all publishers. These should reflect what is currently available on your site, to save publisher partners time when verifying valid offers.
Private offers are available to assigned publisher partners. These should be saved for unique publisher optimization opportunities.
Exclusive Codesare an Ascend™spend allocation tool that enables the assigned partner to receive the reward for each redemption, regardless of if they appear in the click stream. Because a click is not required for the partner to be rewarded, Exclusive Codes are valuable components for tracking campaigns in podcasts, print, radio, television and more. This spend allocation tool can be exchanged for additional or enhanced publisher placement opportunities, both online and offline.

Bonus tips for advertisers on Pepperjam’s Ascend™ Affiliate Cloud platform to keep in mind

Make sure to select a promotional type, so your text links have the correct details listed in Pepperjam’s offer feed. This gives your link the opportunity to be featured for publisher partners that leverage filtering logic in the platform.

Use description fields to describe the offer if you believe extra info is needed. Providing your publisher partners with additional information such as offer exclusions ensures that there is no confusion regarding what partners are promoting. If no extra details are needed, you can paste the anchor text in that field to simplify partner access.
Make sure to press ‘Save’. Text links do not autosave as you build them, so be sure to click save when you’ve entered all of the necessary details.
Bulk uploads are available by using .CSV files. This feature gives you the opportunity to quickly and easily add a group of text links to your account. Required fields for the CSV upload can be found in Ascend™ under Creative>Text>Upload Text Links.

Remember, building text affiliate links is one of the most practical and useful topics that you can be knowledgeable about to provide the best possible experience for both you and your partners. Additional help file on creating text links can be found here.

Affiliate Marketing 101

How Do They All Work Together?

Step 1: Pat wants to make some extra money.

“Hm… I blog about hats that I like. Maybe I can make some money while doing that.”

Step 2: Pat joins an affiliate network.

“I can add links to my blog and get paid for it. Now this is what I’m talking about!”

Step 3: Andy wants to get more business.

“Maybe I can get bloggers to promote my products for me.”

Step 4: Andy joins an affiliate network.

“Now I have an affiliate program and publishers will promote my store for me!”

Step 5: Pat joins Andy’s affiliate program.

“I can join this program & use the affiliate network’s tools to promote it.”

Step 6: Pat adds a banner to his blog.

“Now people will see this ad for Andy’s Hat Store and maybe they will shop there.”

Step 7: Sue reads Pat’s blog & sees the banner.

“Wow, I love Pat’s blog! Oh, Andy’s Hat Store? I think I will check this store out!”

Step 8: Sue clicks the ad & buys a hat.

“This is the cutest hat I have ever seen! I am going to buy it right now.”

Step 9: Andy sells a hat & Pat gets a commission.

“Thanks to Pat, I sold a hat! Now he will get a percentage of the sale.”

Step 10: The affiliate network pays Pat.

“Wow! I got a percentage of a sale from Andy’s Hat Store! That is super!”

What are Some Affiliate Marketing Truths?

What are Some Affiliate Marketing Truths?