Creating Custom Affiliate Relationships
When managing affiliate programs, marketers tend to treat the majority of their affiliates homogeneously. However, creating custom partnerships enables you to show affiliates that you view them as true partners, and encourages them to invest more in your brand. In fact, we’ve recently seen a client achieve 17 times more conversions through custom affiliate agreements than through standard public insertion orders. If you’re not capitalizing on custom affiliate relationships, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to both show affiliates that you value them and to create custom structures that better align with your brand’s goals.
Define Campaign Objectives
As you work toward developing custom affiliate relationships and understanding the wide variety of possible solutions, it is important to first understand your campaign’s business objectives. Ask in-depth questions to establish where affiliates can add the most value:
- Is a certain type of conversion more valuable?
- How valuable is it to bring in new customers?
- How does affiliate fit into your broader marketing strategy?
Additionally, from the inception of your campaign, it is important to know the commission range that is profitable for your business. Having this understanding allows you to adeptly discuss possible commission structures with potential affiliates.
Leverage the Breadth of Platform Capabilities
Once you’ve identified your business needs, use platform capabilities to create custom affiliate relationships that are more beneficial to both your brand and the affiliate. When discussing forming a partnership with an affiliate, the following tactics may be used to create custom terms:
- Basing pay out on customer status
- Utilizing monthly performance bonuses
- Setting action or spend limits for running tests
- Setting pay outs at the SKU level
Establishing custom commission structures, along with employing other platform capabilities such as custom crediting logic, proves to affiliates that they are valued partners.
Add Value with Offerings
Once an initial agreement has been established between your brand and an affiliate, it is important to continue to work with them on an individual basis to prove that you recognize their importance in the program. Here are a few low-cost ways to help grow relationships with affiliates:
- Giving them bidding rights on non-branded search terms
- Sending them free products
- Co-creating content
- Creating custom vanity codes and unique offers
Although more time consuming to establish, custom relationships create partnerships in which affiliates are more invested in your brand. Once established, use data to optimize individual partnerships and foster their growth.
If you are interested in learning more about creating custom partnerships, reach out to the affiliate team at Rise