Elements for a successful campaign launch
June 25th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger Posted in Affiliate management, All articles | No Comments »
I work as an affiliate manager as a day job, hence why my affiliate sites take a significant back seat. so I thought that, in addition to cataloging and writing about life as an affiliate I’d start pouring out my knowledge of affiliate management here as well, after all from the looks of things I’m a far better affiliate manager than I am an affiliate…
so here’s the first post on Affiliateblogger.co.uk about affiliate management.
Setting up a campaign for affiliate marketing might seem like a really easy process, in theory all you need is to install the tracking code and make sure that works. However what the networks don’t tell you is that there is a lot of support work that goes into setting up an affiliate program, especially if you want affiliates to actually promote it.
1. Tracking – obviously this is the most critical part of any affiliate program, you need to ensure your site has some sort of a user imput, even if its just an email address, this will allow the tracking to be triggered by that action, obviously you will need to consider the structure of your site, but you’ll also need to consider the quality of the user and how this relates to the tracking, for example if you are only tracking click, the affiliate program will be wide open to fraud, if you have the tracking at the end of a detailed checkout process, the quality of customers will be higher. Affiliate marketing can accomodate CPC, CPL and CPA activity but it is important to remember the purpose of affiliate marketing is to pay for actual completed transactions and thus is best used where a user has to place and order, including their billing information as part of the process.
2. datafeeds – The trend in True content affiliates at the moment is the use of datafeeds, this ultimately means affiliates can integrate an entire catalogue of client products within their site with relative ease, speeding up their setup process and ensuring that a wide range of client products are available, various tools such as the affiliate window shop window system or easy content unit allow for this functionality to be taken even further, and the majority of price comparison sites and larger affiliates need this as a prerequesit. In addition to producing a datafeed, the datafeed also needs to be fully optimised and automated and be in a format that can be used by the affiliate networks. It’s critical that this is setup correctly.
3. Site optimization – one aspect of affiliate marketing that is out of the affiliates control is the conversion rate, it’s ultimately a case of ‘you can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink’ – as a result, affiliate are highly averse to directing perfectly targeted traffic to sites that can’t allow them (affiliates) to convert into actual sales and therefore commissions. As a consequence, poor quality sites, will have poor conversion rates and will ultimately put affiliates off from promoting the affiliate program, this then leads to the affiliate program failing before its actually started.
Another aspect of the site optimization is to reduce leakage points, leakage points are essentially untracked sales channels, such as phone numbers or addresses, anything that isn’t tracked by the affiliate tracking, leakage points mean that the users directed to the client site may consequenty make a sale through the leakage point and the sale wouldn’t be attributable to the affiliate channel, resulting in lost commission, a big no-no for affiliates. From a marketing prespective this also has the effect of not allowing you to clearly see what traffic is converting best.
4. Discount codes – around 20% of affiliates work in the discount/incentive vertical, allowing users to gain discount codes or cash-back on their purchases, whilst for finance this may be frowned upon, for retail clients, this is an important source of both new sales and a high volume of traffic. There are a multitude of political problems associated with the use of discount codes, however these primarily exist as a result of affiliates competing with each other, and the best solution for any client is to issue a single generic discount code that doesn’t expire, along with the restriction that prevent the listing of any non-affiliate discount codes.
5. Commission- commission is why affiliates work, as there is no fixed fees affiliates rely on commissions as a means of pay, natrually the more commission awarded the more likely an affiliate will promote a product, assuming that conversion rates are the same. Commissions need to be competative with the going rates in the clients vertical, there’s no point launching a campaign that awads a commission less than half that of competitors, it simply won’t work. Commissions can be paid on a Fixed amount or as a % of sale, depending on the value of the product and its attractiveness to consumers, for affiliates a % of sale will always be far more attractive.
6. Banner creative – whilst most affiliates tend to use text links and datafeeds for marketing, there are an even wider range of affiliates who still rely on banners, as such banners, particularly those with seasonal incentives, calls to action and relevancy all help to increase sales and more importantly brand awareness, its the prescience of banner creative that allows affiliate marketing to be considered both a marketing and a sales channel.
7. Content – As I’ve previously mentioned for affiliates, relevant content is king, good content = better SEO ranking = more traffic = more loyal traffic = more sales = more commission, thus is a client is able to pass bespoke content it not only make my life as an affiliate easier, i’m more inclined to promote the client as its dead easy, further more, like banners, content acts as marketing copy, as such, it makes sense that its is in the clients best interest to provide at least generic content for affiliates.
8. Incentives – if conversion rates and commission for two indentical clients are the same, then incentives can flip affiliates from one client to the other, equally, its a motivating factor, allowing affiliates to really boost their performance in exchange for incentives, these can take the form of prizes, competitions or bonus commission, the idea is the reward those who perform well.
9. News – Like content, affiliates like fresh news, its catches the eye and allows them to create even more content, for an affiliate it provides more reason to contact affiliates rather than regurgitating the same information several times over, as such its in the clients best interest to provide regular updates to not only engage with affiliates but ultimately keep consumers informed of news.
10. Terms and conditions – its a prerequesit of most affiliate campaigns that there are clear terms and conditions – this forms a loose agreement with affiliates on how the campaign is promoted and how the brand is projected, its important that clients realize it is in the affiliates best interest to promote the client in a positive and constructive light, after all, thats what helps get conversions and commissions. Terms and conditions should be constructive and be used as a means of controlling the affiliate marketing channel in context of the wider marketing mix, rather than be used to restrict affiliates.
Ultimately, a good affiliate manager will understand these elements in great detail and be able to provide objective, impartial advice into the implications of each of these elements in context of a clients campaign and site requirements.
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