Affiliate Marketing Programs

Affiliate marketing programs allow advertisers (also referred to as brands or merchants) to extend their marketing reach and distribution with the help of affiliates who advertise on the brand's behalf. Affiliates (also referred to as publishers or media partners) refer leads and customers to the brand and are typically paid on cost per action or cost per acquisition (CPA) basis.
Advertisers can run in-house affiliate marketing programs in which they directly manage their own affiliate relationships. They are responsible for vetting their affiliate partners, processing applications, managing commissions, and distributing offers.
Alternatively, advertisers can run affiliate marketing programs through a performance marketing agency or a performance marketing network. Both these options allow brands to work with affiliates without having to build out their own network of affiliates, or worry about tracking software.
When working with an agency, the agency typically handles everything so the brand only has to interface with the agency. There is less visibility and control from the brand's perspective, but it is easy and requires little from the brand's internal resources.
Affiliate marketing programs operate on a performance basis in which an advertiser pays an affiliate for referring leads or potential customers.
The affiliate uses their own advertising and promotional methods to drive traffic. Common advertising methods include search engine optimization (SEO), paid search and display, email marketing, content marketing, and offline advertising including radio and television.
The advertiser sets certain terms and conditions so the affiliate knows who to target, and what criteria the lead or prospect must meet in order for the affiliate to qualify for a commission. Typically advertisers do not want incentivized traffic ? people with no intent to purchase who want a reward for completing a specified action. They also may set conditions around the traffic's geographic location or demographic details. In other words, advertisers set terms and conditions to ensure they are receiving quality traffic and leads from the affiliate program.
In addition to referring digital leads and traffic, affiliate marketing programs can also be used to generate phone calls. This is called pay per call, and it can easily integrate with an existing affiliate marketing program through a technology or partner integration In this case, affiliates use digital or offline advertising methods to drive phone calls right to the brand's call center. To be commissionable, calls must meet certain quality standards which usually includes a minimum call duration.
Advertisers and brands benefit from increased marketing reach and distribution at scale. The core benefits include:
Extended Marketing Reach -Advertisers get in front of new audiences, across digital and offline media, without a huge drain on internal resources.
Cost Effectiveness - Since affiliate programs operate on a performance basis, advertisers can ensure a positive ROI with the right commission structure and quality controls.
Low Risk - Advertisers can test small and choose who they work with. If an affiliate isn't generating quality traffic, or the entire program is not profitable, they can shut if off.
Transparency - With digital tracking and pay per call analytics, advertisers have complete visibility into their traffic sources and quality.
Flexibility - Advertisers have total flexibility when it comes to who they work with, how much they pay out, and how much then invest in an affiliate marketing program.
Like advertisers, affiliates also stand to benefit from affiliate marketing program. The core benefits for affiliates include:
Low Risk - Affiliates can test small until they are sure they can be profitable. There is no commitment on their time or resources.
Profitability - For affiliates that know how to generate traffic, have influence among a niche audience, or are experts in media buying, ensuring profitability can be fairly simple and straightforward.
Focus on Advertising - Affiliates can put all their energy into advertising and generating leads as they don't have to worry about customer service, processing orders, etc.
Affiliate marketing programs, whether in-house, or run through a performance marketing agency or network, must use some type of affiliate tracking software in order to make sure affiliates are compensated for the traffic they generate. Affiliate tracking software usually works in real-time, and at its most basic level, it attaches an affiliate/publisher ID to a lead, conversion or sale, typically by appending a cookie or tracking value to the web visitor. This way when a lead reaches the advertiser's website, previous activity is captured and the conversion can be attributed back to the publisher.
For pay per call affiliate marketing programs, tracking software must be able to track the source of inbound phone calls. Invoca's pay per call platform allows advertisers to easily layer pay per call on to their affiliate program and track phone calls back to affiliates or their marketing source.
Advertisers can quickly generate a unique tracking phone number that is specific to a campaign and/or an affiliate. affiliate marketing coach This way, when a customer calls from that phone number, the advertiser know how to attribute the call.
By placing a small snippet of code on a website or landing page, unique tracking phone numbers are automatically populated on the page. When this phone number is called, the affiliate ID or referral source is captured along with any other parameter including:
Invoca's pay per call platform not only tracks phone calls but integrates with the major affiliate networks and affiliate tracking software so advertisers can easily use their performance marketing program to generate clicks and calls. Invoca offers complete campaign management, call attribution and analytics, and call automation, so advertisers can easily control call filtering, routing and overall treatment.
If you want to learn more about bringing the power of pay per call to your affiliate marketing program, download your copy of The Official Pay Per Call Playbook.
We're here to help. Call us and speak with a Voice Marketing Cloud Specialist.
See how you can improve your marketing and the customer experience with the Voice Marketing Cloud.