The average affiliate campaign we find today is simply substandard. Although the advertiser in question usually thinks that the channel is healthy, there is often still a lot of room for improvement. The channel is seen by many advertisers as the “less important” channel. As a result, insufficient attention is paid to it or left to its fate. When we ask advertisers about the performance and experiences with affiliate marketing, it is often said that it was once turned on and “it goes without saying”. Thanks to our years of experience with affiliate marketing, we know the importance of a good affiliate campaign and the added value it offers in the channel mix. However: for this, it must be optimally arranged. At Yellowgrape, we know better than anyone how to approach this, taking into account the interests of the customer.
The first step is to provide insight into how the current campaign conditions relate to the conditions of competitors in the market. Although this is comprehensive, we mainly refer to the cookie duration, commission structure, attribution and whether or not to allow different types of publishers: mail parties, cashback, etc.
Logically, it is important that these terms and conditions are at least the same, or rather more interesting, for publishers than those offered by the competition. If you do not do this, there is a good chance that the publishers in question will choose one or more of the similar other providers based on the terms alone.
Determining the conditions for your affiliate campaign is based on an extensive analysis. Our broad experience in the affiliate landscape enables us to set market conditions. This includes taking into account your brand identity, margins per category/collection and a healthy but attractive fee per segment.
Affiliate campaigns that have been around for a long time usually face additional challenges. Not only are the campaign conditions no longer accurate, the previously connected publisher file is also often out of date. Publishers have been disbanded, no longer active, or in some cases have even changed their focus in terms of subject matter.
Continuous monitoring of the connected publisher file is therefore vital. As an advertiser, you naturally want to prevent your promotional materials from ending up on websites that have little or no common ground with your webshop. Or, even worse, could have a negative impact on the appearance of your webshop. This includes, for example, publishers who link to your range of tools and DIY products on a website about the latest women's fashion.
However, this is a time-consuming process that consists of several steps. For example, it is first important to identify which affiliated publishers are still active at all. Inactive publishers can be removed from the publisher file in order to maintain an overview as an advertiser. On the other hand, there is also a good chance that there are publishers who, although they are an excellent fit for your webshop based on their target group, are simply inactive. For whatever reason. These are often publishers who just need a push in the right direction to (re) take up the promotion. The third element of this process involves identifying the relevant publishers in the network that have not yet signed up for the program. After all, it is a missed opportunity if these types of publishers can add value to your affiliate campaign but are not (yet) affiliated.
The growth of affiliate networks over the past few years has also meant that the cooperation between advertiser, network and publishers has changed. Although all networks promise to properly guide both publishers and advertisers in achieving their goals, it is simply not feasible for them to optimally guide every affiliate campaign in this regard. This comes at the expense of the speed with which, for example, you want to trade with publishers in the network with publishers, solve problems or modify advertising materials. Important activities that, logically, you can't always solve yourself.
However, Yellowgrape is active in the affiliate landscape for a large number of advertisers. As a result, the lines with the most relevant publishers in each segment are very short, allowing us to act very quickly in situations where this is necessary. So we both switch via the network with the relevant publishers, but we also have direct contact with various publishers.
This allows us to act much more flexibly in making agreements with publishers, which improves the quality of the promotion conducted. For example, we make agreements with publishers that do not apply to a single advertiser, but to our entire database. As a result, everyone benefits from, for example, a large-scale purchase of mailings or positions.
Through direct contacts with publishers, the complete dependence on the affiliate network disappears, which gives your campaign a big advantage over your competitors. This way, you won't miss out on any opportunities. Opportunities that, if you were fully dependent on an affiliate network, you might not even have been able to take advantage of. Yellowgrape is taking over the role of the network's dedicated account manager, as it were.
Without good campaign material, you are nowhere as an advertiser. And what do you base these materials on? Right: a marketing calendar. If you don't do this, you'll soon stay on track; a standard banner set, a handful of text links, and an XML product feed, directly from your CMS. Not distinctive from your competition and we think so.
In many cases, it is precisely the product feed that plays an important role in promotion. In recent years, it is unfortunately more the rule than the exception that affiliate campaigns have been active for years without a (well-designed) product feed. Missed opportunity! Many advertisers forget that some of the relevant publishers are unable to properly use the product feeds for advertisers if they are basically not properly set up. Perhaps not an easy job for advertisers themselves, but it's a breeze for us!
Publishers don't just want to promote you by sending their website visitors directly to your home page. It is precisely the category pages, best-selling products or specific landing pages for promotions or newsletter subscriptions that are interesting. A specific landing page increases the chance of conversion. Therefore, provide an extensive range of images.
And with banner sets alone, you're not there. You help publishers by providing them with a set of images that they can use to support their content. How nice when your product images finally shine among the written content, instead of your competitor's images!
Here's the following: the more input you offer publishers, the better. Offering a wide range of materials is an excellent way to differentiate your campaign from competitors in the same market segment. In addition, this allows you to gain the favor of publishers, so they will prefer promoting your campaign over promoting a competing campaign.
One part of the promotional material that is often overlooked by advertisers is the deep links. Simply put: you provide publisher tracking links to specific categories or products within your webshop. Although many programs offer very limited offerings, the widest range of these deep links as possible is an underestimated success factor.
It is therefore absolutely advisable to translate the webshop structure as completely as possible into the range of deep links. A good, extensive range of deep links has a significant effect on how the campaign can be found by publishers within the network.
Using email publishers within the affiliate channel is also an effective way to quickly bring your product offerings to the attention of a broad target group. However, arranging mailings with individual email publishers is a time-consuming activity. In addition, purchasing separate, stand-alone mailings can be quite a paperwork. It is therefore advisable to buy/reserve this quarterly or even for a longer period to take advantage of this. Analyzing the results pays off. Based on the results, you can buy or target even more sharply. At Yellowgrape, it is more the rule than the exception that we have a short line with the most renowned email publishers to support our affiliate campaigns at a good rate.
Whether or not an affiliate campaign succeeds depends largely on the set reward. A CPS (Cost Per Sale) fee that is lower than that of the competition, or simply not in line with the market, is often the main cause of a campaign not getting off the ground.
Thanks to our in-depth affiliate marketing knowledge, we are able to develop a competitive commission model using an extensive competitive analysis. Here, Yellowgrape knows which publishers thrive on publisher-specific remuneration. This is in order to strive for the maximum result from mutual cooperation. In addition, we know better than anyone: different business models require different forms of remuneration. Here, we are not limited to the most common form of a CPS, but we also look at CPL, fixed fees, scales, margins and more.
In this way, we identify the best publishers in the market segment, and then connect and activate them. This way, we generate full-funnel visibility.
A fast and smooth payout is just as important for publishers as a competitive commission structure. After all, you can expect publishers a high CPS commission, but if the payout is then six months away, this still makes the campaign less interesting for publishers to promote.
Publishers will be more likely to choose to promote a campaign with a slightly lower commission but a quick payout than a campaign with a higher commission but slow payout. The message is simple. By quickly inspecting the orders and then a quick payment of the commission, you ensure appreciation among publishers. As a result, they will also be more inclined to put extra effort into promoting your campaign.
One way to achieve this is by quickly approving the transactions. With new affiliate campaigns, we standardize this recurring job. In affiliate campaigns that we take over, we identify the first optimizations to improve this process, so that it benefits cooperation.
Starting a successful affiliate program is one thing, but good monitoring is two. Experience shows that many advertisers choose to start a program and then let it run and barely look back. This comes from the idea that, once an affiliate program is in place, performance follows automatically. However, it is very important to continuously monitor an affiliate campaign. This way, you prevent unnecessary costs or publishers from pushing the boundaries of cooperation.
When analysing and monitoring the campaign, we always look at the added value of the channel. After all, a well-coordinated affiliate channel is actually added value to the entire channel mix. Here, it is important to be aware that publishers, even if they are not awarded the order according to the tracking, can have a significant share in the realization of the order.
There are advertisers who choose to cancel orders that, according to tracking, were not made thanks to the affiliate channel. As a result, publishers often end up empty-handed. This demotivates publisher and actually kills the affiliate program. A counterproductive effect, a shame!
At Yellowgrape, we have our own vision of this, the added value of the affiliate channel and the importance of attribution that comes with it. Of course, the publishers themselves can't help being overwritten by other channels within the marketing mix. In fact, the added value of the affiliate channel lies in the cooperation with upper-funnel publishers such as content sites and blogs. Let it be the publishers who mainly play an informative role, stimulating consumer interest. By taking these publishers into account for attribution, by actually rewarding them for the contribution made, a qualitative, consistent collaboration can be built.
Our years of experience in the affiliate market enable us to develop and then apply a sophisticated strategy. The end result? A state-of-the-art affiliate program that actually adds value to your entire channel mix.
Do you want to take your affiliate campaigns to the next level and make them future-proof? Take especially contact with us. We would love to help you with it!
