Affiliate Program Success: Achieving Balance through Publisher Diversification

As part of our affiliate program audit service, we were recently asked to audit an affiliate program for a direct-to-consumer brand in the outdoor industry that was stumped by its poor sales performance. Reports were showing strong participation (active and productive publishers) and healthy traffic, but a weak conversion rate (under 1%.)

As part of our audit service we look at publisher diversification. For those new to affiliate marketing, publishers operate under a variety of business models. Several examples include:

1. Content
2. Creators & Influencers
3. Deal & Discount
4. Loyalty
5. Sub-Affiliate Networks
6. Onsite & Email Retargeting
7. Paid Search

In this audit, we identified that this brand only allowed publishers in the Content and Creator business models to join its affiliate program. This is a common and understandable strategy, yet also very flawed.

Why Does My Brand Need a Balanced Affiliate Program?

A well-balanced affiliate program involves a robust content strategy that introduces new customers at the top of the funnel while providing continued engagement across a variety of publisher business models throughout the shopping journey. Here’s what we know about the average customer’s path to a single purchase:

• The number of steps a customer takes in the conversion path is 6+
• The number of marketing channels a customer interacts with in the conversion path is 3+
• The average number of Affiliate publishers a customer interacts with in the conversion path is 3+

This implies that customers are well-informed and very selective about where they spend their money. We can take this a step further, armed with data from network partners like Impact, to piece together the customer’s typical journey.

1. More times than not, the first customer touch point is directly to the brand/retail website or referral through organic search. This is what we call the Introducer Phase.
2. Once the customer has gathered information on the brand or product, they tend to use ‘best-of’ or ‘review-based’ keyword searches on Google to further educate themselves. They often find content publishers or creators who have written about the brand or product. This is what we call the Influencer Phase.
3. At this point, the customer has already interacted with the brand directly. They may next receive a retargeting email — therefore interacting with the Email marketing channel. They also may interact with other marketing channels like PLA (Google Shopping) or Paid Search. This is also the influencer phase, however, 20% of online customers may go on to purchase at this stage.
4. Most customers (80%) will search for the best deals, discounts, and rewards before ultimately purchasing. This is the Closer Phase.

The graphs below are from two real transactions from the affiliate program for one of our clients. While both of these transactions had different paths to the eventual purchase, the customer in each transaction visited multiple publishers and channels before making their purchase on our client’s website, and may not have come back if not for the information gathered from the various publisher sites.

Understanding customer buying behavior debunks the common thought that, “we would have gotten the sale anyway” when referring to Deal & Discount partnerships. Rather, this indicates if your brand isn’t present at this step (the Closer Phase) in the customer’s journey, they’re likely to choose another brand or retailer that carries your brand and does partner with this publisher business model.

The flaw in an all-content publisher affiliate program lies in not understanding how publishers (of all business models), marketing channels, and the brand/retailer all contribute to the customer’s path to purchase. Simply providing brand or product information is not enough to convince most customers to make a purchase.

Publisher diversification is the key to unlocking sales, higher conversion rates, and efficiency in your affiliate program. There are no limits to the number of content publishers and creators you allow into your program, but it’s important to also partner with select closers from business models like Deal & Discount, Loyalty, and Onsite/Email Retargeting.