Building Your Own Affiliate Program - Best Practices

Program Description

The program description is the outward facing portrayal of your brand, products, and affiliate program. This is important because affiliates will see this when deciding whether they want to promote your products or not. 

It’s important for your program description to have the following:

• An introduction of your brand and products

• Affiliate metrics (such as your commission rate, cookie window, AOV, CR, etc.)

• Best contact to reach out to

Having these three components in your program description will communicate to potential partners who you are, what you can offer them, what the expected revenue growth can be, and who to contact if they’d like to further the partnership through close communication and optimizations.

Links

Text links are one of the most crucial components of your affiliate program. Without links to pull, publishers will not be able to promote your brand on their site, which will result in fewer clicks and less revenue. 

To fully optimize your text link ads, it’s important to have the following links in your affiliate network:

• A generic homepage link that is clear, concise, and goes directly to the homepage

• A few category links that lead to high-converting pages. Example: “Shop our New Arrivals now!”

• A few promotional links. Example: “Get free shipping on orders $50+” or “Sign up for our email newsletter and get 10% off your purchase”

Publishers should be promoting the most up-to-date links, so it is crucial to not only start with these links listed, but to also update any promotional links when you are having promotions.

Product Feed

A product feed (or data feed) is a file made up of a list of products and attributes of those products organized so that each product can be displayed, advertised or compared in a unique way. A product feed typically contains a product image, title, product identifier, marketing copy, and product attributes.

It’s extremely important for brands to import their product feeds into the affiliate network. This way, publishers can find products that fit into developing editorial content, integrating product feeds into their website, finding all retailers for a specific product, and many other different ways to get your products on multiple websites. 

Each affiliate network has a different method on getting product feeds live and automatically updated. We recommend looking through your affiliate network’s website for more information on how to do so.

Ease of Communication

Having a direct contact who will manage your affiliate program is important so publishers know who to reach out to for questions and optimization opportunities. As mentioned above, it’s important to add the email address of the best contact within the program description. In addition to the description, it should also be in email responders.

Managing the affiliate network is, in essence, managing all your affiliate relationships. The more solid relationships you can create and maintain, the more opportunities will come for your brand’s affiliate channel. 

You can leverage affiliate newsletters within the network to communicate with all of your active affiliates at once. This is a great way to keep affiliates up-to-date on promotions, new product releases, and events.

Program Terms

It’s important to understand what other similar brands in your vertical are paying publishers. This way, you can choose a commission rate that is competitive but within your margins. You can view the average commission for your vertical in the Commission Recommendations report detailed above.

It is recommended to choose a default commission rate that is competitive but allows you some flexibility for optimization with publishers. Often, publishers will ask for temporary increases in commission in exchange for placements, reviews, or mentions. Having flexibility above your default rate will allow you to increase commissions without cutting too much into your margins.

Affiliate Applications

When an affiliate who wants to work with you applies to your program, their application will show as “Pending” in your affiliate network. Pending affiliates will not be able to access your program until they have been approved.

You can review all pending applications from your program’s dashboard and decide which publishers you want to work with from the list. You can accept the applications of affiliates you want to work with or decline their application to remove them from the pending applications list.

Staying up-to-date on affiliate applications in your network is important for program growth. Applications should be reviewed at least once a week to ensure all quality affiliate partners are quickly added to the program so they can start to promote your brand.

How to Engage with Affiliates

There are a number of different types of affiliates that you will interact with in your affiliate program, and the way in which you engage with them will vary depending on their primary promotional method, which is indicated by their classification.

Content & Comparison Affiliates: Are publishers whose primary promotional method involves written content such as product/brand reviews and informational articles. A great way to engage with these affiliates is to inquire about any upcoming article topics that may be a good fit for your brand or to ask for them to review some of your products. To incentivize such a partnership, it is helpful to offer an increased commission percentage (CPA) or free products to the affiliate in exchange for a placement. 

Loyalty/Rewards Affiliates: Are publishers whose primary promotional method involves offering their audience cashback or other loyalty perks for making purchases through their platform. Generally, the customer-facing cashback is calculated as a percentage (usually 50%) of the commission a brand offers them. A great way to engage with these affiliates is to work with them to build a store page for your brand where they promote any deals you are currently running, offering them an exclusive coupon code for their users, and offering them increased commissions for a higher customer-facing cashback and/or additional exposure across their platform such as category or homepage placements.

Shopping/Deal Affiliates: Are publishers whose primary promotional method involves offering the latest coupon codes and deals available to their audience. A great way to engage with these affiliates is to work with them to build a store page for your brand where they promote any deals you are currently running, offering them an exclusive coupon code for their users, and offering them increased commissions for additional exposure across their platform such as category or homepage placements.

Sub-Affiliates: Are intermediaries between your affiliate network and affiliates. They work to connect publishers that may not have accounts in your affiliate network with your brand by offering them another way to access your promotions and earn a commission. Sub-affiliates have a large number of partners in their network, and these partners are paid a commission by the sub-affiliate after they drive a sale for your brand. A great way to engage with these affiliates is to offer them temporary increases in commission to secure additional exposure in their marketplace and make your offering more attractive to their network of publishers.

Tech Affiliates: Affiliates that offer tech-based solutions or services such as email retargeting, site/cart abandonment, on-site engagement, etc. These partners can vary in the solutions they offer, but a strong group of tech affiliates is key to a successful program. These affiliates can generally provide a demo of what they offer and recommend solutions based on your unique needs.

Influencers and Influencer Networks: Affiliates that promote brands primarily on a social network like Instagram or YouTube. Influencers can provide word-of-mouth exposure for your brand on their pages and are generally flexible in the packages they offer. Some may require flat fees while others will work on a commission-only basis. Influencer networks facilitate the relationship between a brand and the influencer, acting as their “agent.”

PPC Affiliates: Affiliates who specialize in Pay-Per-Click campaigns. These affiliates can offer expertise in PPC campaigns and can usually work on a commission-only basis. Most offer a range of solutions and can likely offer demonstrations on how they can add to any of your own efforts in this space.

TM+ Affiliates

TM+ Affiliates, who specialize in TM+ Bidding campaigns, are also a very important part of a successful program. 

TM+ Bidding is when an affiliate bids on your brand name plus shopping/promotional related search engine terms to direct traffic to your store pages. Even if you are running your own search campaign internally, this type of partner is important because they work to outbid your competitors and control the TM+ space to drive more traffic to your brand.

It is recommended to work closely with 1-2 affiliates who specialize in TM+ bidding to maximize success in this space. Here are some additional benefits that come with working with these partners:

• Provides control over what promotion or offer is being shown in search results and ensures that other promotions you may run don’t wind up on your store pages

• Can help you own more Google or other search engine real estate, which will in turn provide increased brand awareness and incremental lifts

• These partners are experts in the keyword bidding space and will leverage that experience to get you the best exposure

• Your competitors may be running TM+ campaigns using your brand name to direct traffic to their site over yours. A TM+ partner can work to prevent this

• By giving permission to TM+ bid, you may be able to secure additional placements with the affiliate that could otherwise cost thousands of dollars

• Your conversion rate may increase along with traffic. TM+ partners have an average conversion rate of 15%, 5x-10x higher than most programs

Benefits of Coupon & Loyalty Sites

Partnering with top coupon and loyalty sites can bring significant value, and it’s important to include them in your affiliate strategy for a well-rounded and competitive program. Here are just a few proven benefits of using these partners:

Google x Comscore Study

Comscore measured the effectiveness of exposure for affiliate online coupons and text links with a test panel of 2M+ consumers. Here were the results:

• 94% of consumers who purchased from a retailer were not already on their site prior to searching for a coupon

• 86% of coupon users completed two or more transactions compared to non-coupon users over a 6-month period

• Coupon users also spent 5% more than general shoppers over a 6-month period 

Staying Competitive

• The majority of brands are on these sites, which means that shoppers may be more incentivized to buy from your competitors if you are not

• Partnering with these sites allows access to future optimization strategies with them for additional exposure and traffic (i.e. newsletters, homepage placements, social media promotions, etc.)

• Having sites like these in the program increases EPC, making content sites more enticed to organically promote the brand

Top Shopping Affiliates Bring Top Funnel Traffic

• The top reward and shopping sites have loyal followings with millions of shoppers that directly begin their shopping journey on their sites. These sites have high volume, direct traffic, and relevant coverage

Provides Incrementality to the Shopping Journey

• Shopping affiliates add incrementality by acting as a touchpoint that influences consumers' shopping behavior and drives value by moving the needle to purchase

• AOVs are up to 57% higher for consumer shopping journeys that include more than one publisher, and the average first click to sale time is 9.3 days for the affiliate channel