From 4 Pillars to 5: The Affiliate Program Principles That Drive Success
At Clique, our management process has always followed four key affiliate program principles for success in affiliate marketing:
- Recruitment
- Optimization
- Analytics
- Relationship-Building
Each pillar is backed by a strategy and workflow that’s always evolving in order to stay ahead in this dynamic industry.
Under Optimization we’ve always included the element element of Compliance, but Compliance has become such a critical component in modern affiliate marketing that we’ve now added it to our list of principles to make five:
- Recruitment
- Optimization
- Analytics
- Relationship-Building
- Compliance
Affiliate program compliance is the active enforcement of your program terms of service agreement. Monitoring needs to be consistent and have consequences for violations.
Every affiliate program needs a rock-solid TOS, it’s not just a nice-to-have – it’s essential.
Some agreements have 25 or more terms, but here are five policies that we (as an agency) actively enforce:
- Coupon Policy
- Sub Affiliate Networks Policy
- Paid Search Policy
- Compliance with FTC Disclosure Policy
- Product or Brand Exclusion Policy
If you have a firm handle on enforcing these policies, you can expect:
- Lower CAC in both Affiliate and other digital marketing channels (primarily Paid Search)
- A higher degree of transparency. Where are sales coming from and how can we optimize around this data.
- Reduced number of customer service inquiries (expired or non-existent coupon codes.)
- Brand integrity – either your brand or the brands sold on your website.
Curious about how Clique might be able to help your affiliate program? Check out our free audit service. We once found over $100,000 in cost savings for a client within 15 minutes!
