Rise acts as a strategic partner on behalf of our clients, helping to create, optimize, and manage affiliate programs every step of the way. Rise’s affiliate approach offers much more than traditional outsourced program management, focusing on four primary drivers: incrementality, relationships, technology, and innovation.
Incremental Value
At Rise, we don’t take a set it and forget it approach – we drive success by constantly optimizing programs at the most granular level. This starts with designing a unique, data-driven media plan that aligns with our clients’ business models and KPIs. Our in-house, custom-built reporting allows us to understand and measure performance on a detailed level, enabling us to exceed goals and optimize programs on a regular basis. For example, our Publisher Report Card enables us to create dynamic publisher commissions dependent on product margin, crediting logic, vanity code usage, leapfrog percentage, new vs. existing customer referrals, and other KPIs unique to each client. Our reporting also uncovers the true value of each paid placement, further arming our clients with data to drive smarter marketing investments. Insights such as these, coupled with our ability to leverage the right technology, create superior results for our clients.
Relationships
Rise believes that the right relationships with the right publishers can take an affiliate program to the next level. We align with our clients on vetting criteria and prioritize publishers on many data points taken from tools used across our company including brand alignment, paid search spend, Alexa traffic rank, reach, compliance, and website content. By using our in-house customer relationship management (CRM) platform and our technology partners’ publisher platforms, our team recruits quickly and efficiently, providing our clients a vast network of first-name-basis relationships. We communicate with publishers on a daily basis, whether it be keeping our clients top of mind, learning about new promotional opportunities, or helping alleviate pain points; and strive to create a beneficial relationship for both parties. Rise fosters these relationships offline as well by representing our clients at affiliate marketing conferences and seminars.
Technology
Not only is leveraging the right technology imperative for running a successful affiliate program, it enables us to provide attribution insights to show the incremental value of each publisher. Rise has strong partnerships with major affiliate networks, which allow us to negotiate the best rates and customize each client’s program to deliver results that are tailored to their unique goals. With a direct line to the networks’ product teams, we help shape network technologies to benefit our clients.
In many cases, migrating to a new affiliate network enables advertisers to drive incremental value and maximize profits. We begin by creating a thorough plan for moving a client program and its publishers to a new affiliate network. This includes helping assess the various aspects of switching to a new network and assisting with technical migration, communication, and support for all publishers, while closely monitoring that performance and tracking are not affected by the change.
Our team also develops a cohesive compliance strategy, manages compliance vendors, and monitors publishers daily. We identify any non-compliant publishers, contact them to explain the policy, work on a plan to resolve violations, and remove repeat offenders from the program.
Innovation
Rise is pioneering affiliate marketing’s reach outside of the traditional coupon-focused publishers. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, we maximize our clients’ opportunities through a number of specialized programs:
- Affiliate Influencer Marketing: Our team finds and recruits niche influencers to join our clients’ affiliate programs. Through education and training, we work with these influencers to create on-brand content that is in their own voice and targeted to their specific audience.
- Customer Affiliate Programs: These programs incentivize existing brand advocates to promote a client’s products within their personal networks, driving both awareness and revenue.
- Affiliate Mobile Download Marketing: By partnering with relevant publishers based on audience, interest, and demographics, we promote and drive downloads for our clients’ mobile apps, while also increasing search rank in the app stores.
- Affiliate Advertiser Partnerships: Rise researches, recommends, and joins merchant affiliate programs as a publisher on brands’ behalfs. This enables the client to host a merchant’s relevant products or services and gain an additional revenue stream.
Our unique and cutting-edge approach to affiliate marketing maximizes return for our partners and ensures their programs are delivering incremental value and are never running on autopilot.