Q: What is the most important consideration for affiliate marketing and the software that powers those programs?

A: The important thing to consider with affiliate marketing is that it’s really performance-based marketing. If it’s performance-based marketing, what a retailer/merchant or affiliate needs in terms of software is the ability to see accurate information. Accurate information can be measured in terms of which affiliates are promoting, or how a banner is converting. This can also be keeping track of what affiliates are doing.

Q: How can merchants keep track of affiliates?

A: Usually in a program, there is a percentage of affiliates that are consistently producing very good traffic, and there can be other affiliates that are producing a volume of traffic, that may not be as high quality. Looking at the metrics of a program is very important, and that includes being able to track a campaign from the clicks, to the conversions to the retention of the customers.

Q: Why is the ability to look at historical trends so important?

A: When a merchant has access to historical trends, they can analyze trends over a period of time, from season to season, or trends that occur from year to year—and this is crucial information. Also, merchants can see what affiliates have done in the past, and what they’re doing currently, which is also a powerful activation tool. This is not necessarily on a granular level, but definitely on a trend level.
At the end of the day the most important features of software that merchants should look for are transparency, accuracy and reliability.

By keeping communication channels open with your affiliates, you can both keep them informed of your latest promotions and reassure them that your affiliate program is a priority for your business. Draw on your experience from other marketing channels and consider all communication channels available to you, such as email newsletter, telephone, instant messaging, forums, blogs, conferences, etc.

To better understand what your affiliates needs, get to know them as you would your target market demographic. Research and analyze who they are, how long they’ve been an affiliate, what they market, and what their conversions rates are. This will help you determine what resources you can offer to enhance their experience and improve your shared results.

You may also consider participating in the affiliate community. By joining forums and monitoring blogs, you can get an understanding of the more holistic issues and identify community leaders who are often super-affiliates themselves.

Although affiliate marketing may be just one of many acquisition channels that your business leverages, it’s important to consider that affiliate marketing is also an industry unto itself. And like any other industy, who you know can often open many doors. Paying close attention to your affiliate relationships and investing in them, then, can help increase the ROI of your affiliate program by raising its good reputation and generating greater interest in it.

This is the third of five installments of the video series that our team jostled me into doing. This clip is about affiliate marketing specifically, and in it, I discuss my thoughts on the merchant-affiliate relationship.

iPhone Version