Tag Archives: Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing Foundations Exam

The exam can be used to test your knowledge of affiliate marketing 101.

60 points /100 is required for the test.

Happy Learning!

 

一、Multiple Choice(10*2 points)

1. How many steps for launching an affiliate program on  ShareASale? ( )

A.5       B. 6      C. 7     D. 8

 

2. Which is not an affiliate network? ( )

A. CJ   B. Awin  C. ShareASale  D. Skimlinks

 

3. Which is the largest deal site in the US? ( )

A. DealNews  B. BradsDeals  C. Slickdeals  D. TechBargains

 

4. Which is a cashback affiliate? ( )

A. Rakuten  B. Groupon  C. Salecyle  D. StudentBeans

 

5. Which is not a BNPL affiliate? ( )

A. Klarna B. QuadPay  C. Seezle   D. Acorns

 

6. Which market does ShareASale perform best in? ( )

A. US B. CA C. AU   D.UK

 

7. Which market does Commission Factory perform best in? ( )

A. US B. CA C. AU   D.UK

 

8. Which is not a must for CJ integration? ( )

A. Page Vist Tag  B. Conversion Page Tag  C. S2S  D. Master Tag

 

9. Which is the largest deal site in the UK? ( )

A. LatestDeals.co.uk B. Groupon UK   C. Vouchercloud  D. Hotukdeals

 

10. Which market does BuzzFeed not cover? ( )

A. US B. AU C. JP  D. Middle East

 

二、Checkboxes(10*3 points)

1. What are the roles in affiliate marketing? ( )

A. Advertiser  B. Affiliate Network  C. Publisher  D. OPM

 

2. What’s the price structure of Awin? ( )

A. Set up Fee   B. Monthly Fee   C. Network Fee  D. MMF

 

3. What are the creatives on ShareASale? ( )

A. Textlink  B. Banner   C. Deal/Coupon  D. Data Feed

 

4. Which websites belong to Ziff Media? ( )

A. Mashable  B. PCMag  C. RetailMeNot  D. TechBargains

 

5. Which websites belong to Pepper? ( )

A. hotukdeals  B. dealabs  C. mydealz  D. dealhack

 

6. Which promotion activities are affiliate fraud? ( )

A. TM Bidding without approval  B.Product Review   C. Cookie Stuffing  D. Credit Card Fraud

 

7. An Affiliate can also be called? ( )

A. Affiliate   B. Publisher C. Partner  D. Influencer

 

8. Which are affiliate tracking softwares or SaaS? ( )

A. Impact  B. Partnerize  C. Tune  D. TradeTracker

 

9. Which events are hosted by affiliate networks? ( )

A. CJU  B. ThinkTank  C. DealMaker  D. AffiliateSummit

 

10. Which events are hosted by PerformanceIN? ( )

A. PMA   B. Partnership Awards  C. Global PMA  D. PI Live

 

三、True or False(10*2 points)

1. It costs at least $650 to launch an affiliate program on ShareASale ( )

2. EPC is the key metric for affiliates。 ( )

3. Pay Per Call is one type of pricing in affiliate marketing。 ( )

4. The sale amount tracked on ShareASale includes the shipping fee. ( )

5. Last-Click is the only attribution model in affiliate marketing.  ( )

6. The more affiliate network advertisers use, the better results it will generate. ( )

7. Slickdeals requires positive reviews to list Amazon deals when working with advertisers. ( )

8.  LinkShare and  Ebates now are under the same company。( )

9.  The Strategist offers paid placement for affiliate partnerships. ( )

10.  Google Shopping Feed can be used for CJ.  ( )

 

四、Short Answer Questions(3*10 points)

  1. What happened from a customer clicks the affiliate link to an affiliate gets the commission?
  2. What will be the best affiliate network if you launch an affiliate program for a fashion brand?
  3. What’s the plan for de-duplication among affiliate networks and marketing channels?

 

Answers for Reference

一、Multiple Choice

1.D 2.D 3.C 4.A 5.D 6.A 7.C 8.D 9.D 10.D

二、Checkboxes

1.ABCD 2.ABC 3.ABCD 4.ABCD 5.ABC

6.ACD 7.ABC 8.ABC 9ABC 10.ABCD

三、T or F

FTTFF  FTTFT

四、Short Answers

1)Key process includes

  • A customer clicks the affiliate link (the affiliate network gets the data such as affiliate id, click time…)
  •  A customer makes a purchase from the referral of affiliates(the conversion pixel is fired and the affiliate network gets the data such as sale amount, and coupon usage)
  •  The Affiliate network generates the report and gives credit to the relative affiliate for the order.
  •  The Advertiser reviews and approves the order and the affiliate gets the commission.

2)It is suggested to answer the questions from the perspective of website traffic ( online revenue), target market, marketing objectives, budget, and product to choose the best affiliate network for the advertiser.

3)Channel definition with  utm_source should be mentioned.

Affiliate Program Management Guide 2021

This article will give a detailed introduction to affiliate recruitment, activation, optimization, and everything about affiliate program management (especially working with content partners). Happy reading!

How to Recruit Affiliates

What is Affiliate Recruitment?

Affiliate recruitment is to search and identify good affiliates and invite them to join the affiliate program or to approve the application of affiliates if it is a good fit.

The value of recruiting new partners is to diversity the program and reduce the risk of cases where only a few affiliates drive the sales. It is an ongoing process and takes long-term efforts.

Ways to Recruit Affiliates

1.Update the program profile & Optimize your term of the agreement
You need to update your program bio and make it more attractive by highlighting your basic program info and advantages. Your program terms should include what affiliates can do and can’t such as PPC policy and commission incentive.

  • What-products you sell
  • Where-your top markets
  • How-keywords to search your program
  • Why-your commission, cookie window, EPC
  • Rule-Commission & Incentive,  PPC policy

2.Use recruitment tool on the network & Ask for help from affiliate managers

ShareASale recruitment tool
ShareASale recruitment tool

 

CJ recruitment tool
CJ recruitment tool

You can take advantage of the tool of affiliate networks to get more partners to join the programs.

Some publisher details such as EPC, Promotional Methods, and  Promotional Properties are key metrics to see whether the affiliate is a good fit.

Do not forget to ask the affiliate manager to recommend some top affiliates for your program. It is better to have your marketing goal and budget in mind.

Tips: If you use CJ, you can also use CJ Content Certificate Program to save more time. You can choose one of the verticals among Style | Tech | Lifestyle | Home | Business and set a higher commission for the term. In this way, you can get access automatic access to pre-qualified content publishers.

  • CJ Badges for merchants: Content Certification, Mobile Certification, Cross-device Tracking, Cookie-less Tracking
  • CJ Badges for affiliates: CJ Performers, New to Network,  Sub-Affiliate, Content Certified.

3. Take advantage of Affiliate Network Marketplace
Some affiliate networks offer marketingplaces where merchants can buy paid placements from affiliates directly.

And you are suggested to compare the prices of these placement opportunities for your brand and meet the marketing goal.

CJ placement marketplace
CJ placement marketplace

4. Use paid placement on affiliate networks or sub-networks
You can boost your program visibility by buying exposure such as banners and newsletters from affiliate networks or sub-networks.

Notes: some affiliate networks may not provide such client service.

ShareASale program boost
ShareASale program boost

FlexOffers paid placement

5. Find affiliates outside the affiliate networks
a) Competitive Analysis
It is important and useful to do a competitive analysis for your affiliate program.

For example, Google or Youtube  “Nike coupon” “Nike reviews”,
you can get a list of coupon affiliates and media/ content affiliates.

Or use SEO tools such as SEMrush/Ahrefs to get the backlinks of your competitors.

b) Free tools to find similar websites.
similarsitesearch or similarweb
If you get one good affiliate, you can find similar ones.

c) Paid tools
Some paid tools such as Publisher Discovery can help hunt for affiliates from different affiliate networks.

d) Paid ads
You can either use Facebook ads to expose your affiliate program or buy placement on affiliate forums. Or just post your program on LinkedIn.

e)Affiliate conference
If possible, you can join affiliate conferences to take a close look at the real affiliate industry. It is a great chance for networking.

Some affiliate conference you need to know:

  • Affiliate Summit
  • Affiliate World
  • DealMaker by Rakuten Marketing
  • Awin + ShareASale ThinkTank
  • CJU
  • Impact Growth
  • Performance Marketing Awards

Understand Different Type of Publishers

As a qualified affiliate manager, you need to understand how affiliates work and how they promote your products with which methods.

Types of Affiliates
Different affiliate networks have different categories but the traffic types are the same: search, social, email, content, display…

affiliate types
Types of affiliates

Here are some top affiliates.

Coupon RetailMeNot, Groupon (exclusive vanity code)
Loyalty Ebates, Topcashback (email, cashback)
Niche closetsamples.comcouponmon.com (blog, SNS)
Sub Network Skimlink, Viglink
Influencer Network Rewardstyle, Shopping Links
Cart Abandonment Yieldify, Salecycle (pixel )
Search  wickfire, JWEB (trademark + bidding, PPC)
Toolbar joinhoney, wikibuy (coupon toolbar)
Price Comparison pricerunner, pricespy, Idealo(data feed, CPC)
Student Discount Studentbeans, UNiDAYS
Media BuzzFeed, Business Insider

Affiliates and Consumer Journey

affiliate and consumer journey
Source: IAB Au Affiliate Marketing Handbook 2020

Generally, incentive traffic such as coupon/deal/cashback affiliates will perform better. But merchants/brands have been shifting focus from these traditional partners to content and tech partners to diversify the programs.

Build Recruitment Campaign and  Affiliate Communication Plan

Steps of building a recruitment campaign

  1. Set up your goal and identify your target affiliates partners
  2. Invite the affiliates fit for your program  or push the offers to them
  3. Communicate with the affiliates by sending personalized messages

For different marketing goals, you can work with different partners.
It is a good idea to group affiliates and sends related offers and customized emails.

communication strategy
source: CJ

Affiliate Reachouts
Just put yourself into the affiliate’s shoes: what kind of advertisers do you want to work with and what information do you need to promote the products?

The reach-out template for prospective and newly-joined affiliates always include

  • Who- who you are
  • What-what you want to do
  • Why-the reasons why partners choose you
  • How-the ways of collaborating with you

Hello [Contact Name Here],

My name is [YOUR NAME].  I am reaching out on behalf of [NAME OF COMPANY] regarding our interest in collaborating with you through CJ Affiliate.

Your recent blog post [BLOG TOPIC – SIMILAR TO YOUR INITIATIVE] really resonated with me because [WHAT YOU LIKED ABOUT IT].

Recently, our brand [BRAND STORY] and [MISSION STATEMENT].  I wanted to connect with you to discuss [OPPORTUNITY] further and see if we can work on something similar together.

We can offer [INCENTIVE] for your support between [TIMEFRAME]. Our primary goal is [GOAL] with a [SPECIFIC KPI TARGET].

If you are interested, we can set up a call this week to discuss starting a collaboration.

Thank you,

CJ email template
CJ email template

It is also important to track the process and follow up on time.

Learn more about how to recruit affiliate partners.

How to Activate Affiliates

Some affiliates join your program but they are not click-active or sale-active. In this case, you need to engage with these potential partners by offer incentives such as commission increases or bonuses.

These campaigns will help activate your inactive publishers and create new opportunities to drive program growth.

Questions to Think before Activation Campaign

  • What is the goal?
    Drive awareness, clicks, sales, numbers of active affiliates, new customers
  • Who is the target?
    Publishers generate clicks but no sales or drive no traffic.
  • What is the timeline?
  • How to measure the campaign?
    Revenues, AOV, New Customers, Click, MOM growth,  performance of top affiliates

6 Steps for Affiliate Activation Campaign

  1. Select Publishers to Target and group them
  2. Determine Incentive
  3. Send Initial Campaign Newsletter (direct outreach or mass email)
  4. Send Mid-Campaign Newsletter to encourage affiliates
  5. Complete Post-Campaign Review
  6. Perform Post-Campaign Follow-Up

Types of inactive publishers to target

  • No Clicks, No Sales
  • High Clicks, No Sales
  • Low Clicks, No Sales
  • Newly Joined Affiliates
  • Inactive Affiliates with high EPC/traffic
  • Content affiliates

Types of Incentive

  • CPA Increase
  • Bonus
  • Exclusive offer
  • Flat fee for paid placement

Incentive Campaign Newsletter should include

  • Goal affiliates need to achieve
  • Timeframe (start date and end date)
  • What the incentive is and when and how it will be paid out.
  • Other requirements (screenshots, opt-ins, etc.)

CJ activation campaign email template

Dear [INSERT PUBLISHER’S NAME],​

As a valued partner of the [INSERT YOUR PROGRAM NAME] affiliate program we would like to offer you an opportunity to earn a [INSERT $XX BONUS/XX% COMMISSION INCREASE] for the month of [INSERT MONTH].​

In order to earn the [INSERT BONUS/COMMISSION INCREASE] you must:​

  • Reply to this email and opt-in​
  • Generate at least [INSERT XX SALES/LEADS] in the month of [MONTH]​

If you meet the goal your [INSERT BONUS/COMMISSION INCREASE] will be posted to your account in the following month’s payout.​

Please let us know if we may help in any way. We look forward to working with you!​

Thanks,​

[INSERT YOUR NAME]

Tips: make a campaign tracker and monitor the performance.

How to Optimize Affiliate Program

In terms of affiliate program optimization, we mean to optimize everything about the affiliate program from program bio, commission setting, to affiliate cooperation.

Considering the privacy policy and mobile phone use, you need to make your programs support cross-device tracking and cookie-less tracking and your website is mobile-friendly.

It is advised to do a competitive analysis. Is your commission attractive enough compared with your competitors?

Program Profile Optimization

  • Competitive commission
  • Cookie duration
  • Bestsellers and top markets
  • Program terms and agreement
  • Incentive commission
  • Affiliate team support

Affiliate Optimization

Analyze publisher performance reports and contact publishers for further cooperation.

Optimization the process
source: CJ

Top and Potential Publishers

Always pay attention to your top affiliates especially when their sales or traffic drops.

top publisher optimziation best practices
source: CJ

Schedule time to discuss what you can do to help potentional affiliates to increase their performance.

  • Publishers with high clicks & low sales (low CR)
  • Publishers with low clicks, but strong sales (high CR) or high AOV.
  • Publishers with high EPC or traffic but drive no or low clicks or sales.
optimization opportunies by peformance
source: CJ

You can also optimize publishers according to their promotional methods.

optimize by promotional model
source: CJ

Offer what publishers need such as coupon code, banners, data feed to help better promote your products.

Publisher Optimization Strategy
source: CJ

Paid Placements

You can try paid placement, especially during BF/CM sales.
These placements include

  • website banner: homepage/category page
  • sponsored articles/ deal post
  • social posts
  • newsletter
  • custom package

Usually, these paid placements charge a flat fee. But sometimes you can offer a commission increase, an exclusive offer, and free products or a hybrid of lower flat fee and CPA in exchange for the exposure.

Regarding paid placements, affiliates usually ask your budget and they can offer a proposal. However, you can require case studies for reference. For SMEs, it may be risky to try a flat fee but you can always start small and scale from there.

Always remember your marketing goals, KPIs, and metrics for success.

program and publisher optimziation best practice
source: CJ

How to Work with Content Affiliates

What is Content Affiliate

To make it simple, content affiliates mean those who use content to monetize traffic and earn commissions. They include bloggers, review sites, niche sites, influencers,  and even mass media.

 

content partners
source: CJ

Why Work with Content Partners

The answer is simple: Content is King.

Affiliate marketing trends
source: PILive 2020

More and more merchants and brands want to know work with content partners, make these paid or earned media a key part of their whole content strategy.

Traditional affiliates such as coupon and deals websites drive more conversion while content affiliates bring brand awareness, making the top of the funnel consistent with the bottom of the funnel.

content strategy
source: SEMrush

Before embarking on an influencer or media publisher collaboration, it’s important to be crystal clear on your goals, KPIs, investment, and content deliverables.

How to Work with Content Partners

Content Publisher outreach essentially comes down to building a long-term working partnership with influencers and/or media publishers through consistent communication, personalization, and brand insights.

You need to know how they work and match it with your marketing goal.

  • Magazine editorial: 1M+ UMV, strong brand recognization, large editorial staff
  • Commerce content: focus on new/unique products, best-of-web promotion
  • High-level influencer: 300K-1M UMV, small staff, and high engagement
  • Powe-middle: 100-300K UMV, small staff and high engagement
  • Individual blogger: Under 50K UMV, great content + photo
  • Niche: focused content, high conversion

The revenue model of content partners

  • sponsored content -flat fee, more control over content, timeline
  • product review, product, and possible payment (depends on media) required
  • affiliate post, organic placement in the form of product roundups or gift guide; some may require paid placement

Mass Media Publisher

Why Mass Media Do Affiliate Marketing

wirecutter affiliate
source: wirecutter

Mass media use affiliate marketing to increase their revenue streams. Successful examples are BuzzFeed, Ziff Media, WireCutter, and more.

All a publisher has to do is drop a link to a product into a piece of relevant content and wait for an interested consumer to come along and bite. Any sales lead to a small commission for the publisher without them having to lift a finger to package up and mail out whatever product they just helped sell.

Learn more:
https://junction.cj.com/video/why-big-media-is-thriving-with-performance-marketing

‘We’ve barely scratched the surface’: How publishers are thinking about affiliate commerce in 2021

What Mass Media Care

  • Reader first
  • Editorial integrity
  • Good products and user experience
  • High commission

Jacqueline Wladis from Condé Nast gives a clear picture of how commerce content works. Anyway, they want to serve their readers and monetize their content.

EPC-media
source: PILive Global 2020

3C from CNN Unscored team: Research, Reputation, Recommendation

How to Work with Mass Media
The flat fee model is always welcome.
If your products are attractive to their readers, the editor thinks it a good fit and may write something about it and add the affiliate links then,

BuzzFeed Affiliate
BuzzFeed Affiliate media kit

How to Contact Mass Media

Do your homework first and find related content within your brand.

You can contact their affiliate account manager who will forward your message to the editorial team. Or just email the eCommerce editors to see whether they are interested.

Editoral Content
via Jessica Spira from Ziff Media

If you have a budget for paid placement, it is easies to start with.

Summary

Hope you have a full understanding of the affiliate program management from affiliate recruitment, activation, and optimization.

Wish you great success with your affiliate program!

SEO Affiliate Marketing: The Definitive Guide

This post explains what is SEO, affiliate marketing, how to do affiliate marketing with SEO tactics both for merchants and affiliates, what are the best SEO software affiliate programs to earn commissions. Hope this guide can help merchants to recruit more high-quality content affiliates and publishers to succeed in affiliate marketing by taking advantage of SEO or other marketing channels.

What is SEO Affiliate Marketing?

To answer the question, we need to know what is SEO and what is affiliate marketing.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

According to the latest IAB affiliate marketing handbook, affiliate marketing is defined as a performance-based channel in which an online advertiser pays a commission to an affiliate for any sales or
actions that were generated from their referrals.

There are three major roles: affiliates, advertisers, and affiliate networks.

what is affiliate marketing
Source: Google Image

Affiliates also called publishers or partners, are people or companies that will promote a product or service to their audience.

Advertisers, also known as merchants, retailers, or brands are the online companies that have this product or service to sell. 

Affiliate networks are the companies that help connect affiliates and advertisers and provide tracking and reporting services such as Awin, CJ, Rakuten (former LinkShare), Pepperjam, ShareASale., and Webgains.

( You may hear affiliate tracking software, that is for an in-house affiliate program, that is to say, the merchants use the tracking software such as Afftis, HasOffers by Tune. Radius by Impact, Partnerize to run their partner programs with full control. And affiliates usually use Voluum for tracking.)

How Affiliate Marketing Works?

How affiliate marketing works
Source: IAB Affiliate Marketing Handbook 2020
  • Affiliates promote a brand’s product or service on the website.
  • When a consumer clicks an affiliate link and then is taken to the advertiser’s website and finally makes a purchase.
  • The transaction was tracked through the affiliate network.
  • The affiliate is credited with the commission for the sales he/she drives for the advertiser.

Learn more about affiliate marketing.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic by optimizing websites so that they rank well through organic/natural search engine results.

Google is the most popular search engine, others include Baidu (China), Yandex (Russia), Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo…

In SEO, not all search engines are equal. Accord to StatCounter data of search engine market share, Google is 91.75%, Bing is 2.75%, Yahoo is 1.7%. So make sure to put more emphasis on Google.

search engine market share
Source: Statcounter

How Search Engine Works?

Search engines have three primary functions: crawl, index, and rank.

Google explains how it discovers, crawls, and serves web on Google search console help.

  1. Crawl: Scour the Internet for content, web crawlers(commonly known as search engine bots or spiders) look at data such as URLs, sitemaps, and code to discover the types of content being displayed
  2. Index: Store and organize the content found during the crawling process.
  3. Rank: Display the most relevant content that will best answer a searcher’s query

Here’s what Google says on “How search works” although it does not tell much about its algorithm.

Google ranking systems are designed to do just that: sort through hundreds of billions of webpages in our Search index to find the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second, and present them in a way that helps you find what you’re looking for.

To give you the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors, including the words of your query, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources and your location and settings. The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query.

In simple terms, SEO works by demonstrating to search engines that your content is the best fit for the search query. After all, all search engines are aimed to show the best, most relevant results to their users.

Generally, SEO includes on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. Because people spend more time on their mobile phones, mobile SEO is more and more important. Some business owners also use Google My Business to increase exposure, which is local SEO.

SEO Guide

SEO is just one part of digital marketing, it needs to be combined with other channels like social marketing, content marketing, and PPC/SEM, and so on.

Learn more about SEO fundamental

SEO and Affiliate  Marketing

So we come back to the original question: what is SEO affiliate marketing.

If you are a merchant, what you worry about is whether affiliate marketing harms your SEO efforts.

If you are an affiliate, what you concern about is how to use SEO to drive more traffic.

Do Affiliate Links Help SEO?

For the most part, affiliate links do not directly help or hurt your SEO.

Affiliate links through major program networks do not get followed from the search engine.and  will not pass any link equity to the receiving page. Even for the affiliate links which do not have this nofollow tag, full Affiliate network link URLs pass through a 302 redirect and shorthanded links pass through a 307 redirect. These are temporary redirects that are not followed by search engines and pass zero SEO value. Learn more from Awin Wiki.

Just think about how many merchants own the affiliate program, so do not worry about the affiliate link issue.

How  Affiliates do SEO?

First of all, always follow Google guidelines on the affiliate program to create websites with original content that adds value for users.

John from Google suggests that rel=sponsored be used for affiliate links.

The differences between Google’s Nofollow, sponsored, and UGC link attributes are clear from the Moz chart. Learn more about the Nofollow link attribute change at Search Engine Roundtable.

Keep in mind these rules, you can start your blog to do affiliate marketing. The major process for SEO affiliate is:

  • Find a niche product that you are interested in or familiar with and can be profitable
  • Do competitor research and make a content plan
  • Creat quality content based on keyword research
  • Do on-page SEO include title, tag, description, image alt and so on
  • Promote your content on social networks like Youtube, Reddit, and Twitter…You can also try paid ads and email marketing.
  • Build your links and win more backlinks for your websites. Do Not Buy links.
  • Optimize, Test, Optimize, and Test… and Scale.

Best SEO Tool Affiliate Program

If you are an affiliate and have a basic knowledge of affiliate marketing, SEO, and digital marketing, it is a good choice to promote SEO affiliate programs or other SaaS affiliate programs. The advantage is that you use them and you know them.

SEMrush affiliate program seems popular while ahrefs and Moz, unfortunately closed their affiliate program.

Besides the SEO tools, other types of marketing SaaS are also worthy of consideration such as BigCommerce for e-commerce website building, Aweber for email marketing, and LeadPage / InstaPage for landing page design.

Affiliate Program Type Commission
SEMrush SEO/SEM up to 40%
Brightlocal SEO 15%
Mangools( kwfinder) SEO 30%
Serpstat SEO up to 30%
BigCommerce e-commerce up to $1,500
AWeber email marketing 30%
LeadPages landing page up to 50%
InstaPage landing page up to 50%
Sporutsocial social marketing $50
Hubspot CRM up to $1000
Crazyegg analytics no
Screamingfrog SEO no
majestic SEO no
Buzzsumo content marketing no
Similarweb analytics no but parter program
ahrefs SEO closed
Moz SEO closed

Conclusion

Hope this guide can help walk you through SEO affiliate marketing. No matter you are an advertiser eager to boost your affiliate program or you are an affiliate desiring for SEO traffic. Digital marketing is like an umbrella, it is wise to take all the channels-SEO, SEM, social, content, affiliate, EDM programmatic, mobile into consideration.

Affiliate Marketing Checklist 2021

From setting up a new program to messaging cohesion and optimizing partnerships, conducting regular affiliate audits ensure that your program is successful. Hope this checklist can help you effectively manage your affiliate program.

Account Audit

Is all your publisher-facing information up-to-date? Review the following information for reference.

General Network Account Information

  • Program description (bio)
  • Logo
  • Automated event emails (pending applications, acceptance into program, etc.)
  • Newsletter templates
  • Contact information
  • Affiliate page on your websites

Creative

  • Logo
  • Banners (seasonal and relevant)
  • Video
  • Textlink
  • Product Feed

Banner Size:

  • 300X250, 728X90, 60X600, 120X90, 125X125, 468X60
  • 300X600, 325X50 (mobile), 335X280

banner size

Commission Terms

  • Publisher groups and tags for easy reporting and newsletter outreach
  • Dynamic commission if necessary
  • PPC rules (brand safety)

Publisher Approvals

  • Avoid auto-approval because of quality over quantity

Pixel Implementation

Promotions/Shipping

Promotional Calendar

  • Understand drive times for specific products and categories
  • Based on prior performance and current availability, consider offering affiliate channel exclusives, affiliate semi-exclusives or true exclusives to key partners.
  • Get creative with promotional messaging, adding in seasonal wording where appropriate to create a sense of urgency and relevancy.

Free Shipping & Shipping Deadlines

  • Customers love free shipping.

Promotional Assets

  • coupon code
  • sweepstakes
  • gift card
  • flash sale
  • holiday sale

Newsletter Communication/Mass Outreach

  • promotional coupon, coupon code, duration, and any terms and conditions
  • plan to send reminders of peak promotions closer to the actual run dates
  • creat a list of top publisher contacts and send promotional updates and calendars directly to these contacts, as well as in-network newsletters.
  • creat a monthly newsletter schedule that coincides with your sites marketing calendar

Optimization

Top Publishers/ Coupons & Loyalty

  • communicate individually with these publishers, addressing any recent decrease and /or ways to continue increasing performance.
  • offer a tiered performance bonus to top partners for exceeding revenue goals.

Content Affiliates

  • Highlight relevant seasonal products, along with updated seasonal creative in communications to content-focused sites.
  • Incentivize content affiliates to post specific seasonal content and promotions.
  • Provide content suggestions  (keywords or best sellers) if possible.

Influencer Marketing

  • Mega, Macro, Micro or Nano influencers

Technology Affiliates

  • Retargeting can be helpful to optimize conversion rates.

Placement Buying

  • Ask for media kits and get the best fit for your budget during the holiday season.

Monitoring

Brand Safety & Fraud Traffic

  • Audit publisher sites to ensure they are not cheating and violating the program terms.

Placement Performance

  • Monitor publisher sites to ensure placements are running as scheduled with the proper messaging.

Budget  & KPI

  • Metrics: Clicks, Sales, ROAS, AOV, CR, New/Existing customer

Multi-Channel Marketing

  • Compare the data among different marketing channels

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Weekly Reading Picks| Volume 50

Bob’s Weekly Reading Picks

2019.12.22 volume 50

Content

  1. Content Marketing Hub by BackLinko
  2. 2019 – The Rakuten Marketing Year that Was
  3. PerformanceIN’s 2019 Top Performance Marketers List
  4. 2020 Calendar of Affiliate Marketing Conferences
  5. The 18 Most-Followed TikTok Brands and Influencers
  6. Companies should take California’s new data-privacy law seriously
  7. Designing Better Online Review Systems Continue reading Weekly Reading Picks| Volume 50

Weekly Reading Picks| Volume 48

Bob’s Weekly Reading Picks

2019.12.8 volume 48

Content

  1. PerformanceIN 2020 Predictions: Industry Comments (Part 1)
  2. Black Friday and Cyber Monday Online Retail Stats
  3. The Local Algorithm: Relevance, Proximity, and Prominence
  4. Neuromarketing: What You Need to Know
  5. A Day in the Life of a Digital Marketer
  6. The future of Google: Alphabet turns a Page and a Brin
  7. Amazon Turns to Cloud Hardware to Outrun Microsoft and Google Continue reading Weekly Reading Picks| Volume 48

Weekly Reading Picks| Volume 47

Bob’s Weekly Reading Picks

2019.12.1 volume 47

Content

  1. The Value of Coupon and Cashback Affiliates
  2. Retailer thoughts on Black Friday 2019
  3. What is Amazon Influencer Marketing, and Why is it Important?
  4. All About Fraggles (Fragment + Handle) – Whiteboard Friday
  5. The Practical Guide to Finding Anyone’s Email Address
  6. 中国互联网的2020:巨头之战与大交易、出海的时代
  7. The Best Books of 2019 Continue reading Weekly Reading Picks| Volume 47

Weekly Reading Picks| Volume 46

Bob’s Weekly Reading Picks

2019.11.24 volume 46

Content

  1. Affiliate Program Marketing Guide: How to Spread the Word About Yours
  2. An inside view on Singles’ Day 2019 and China’s e-commerce landscape
  3. The Definitive Guide To SEO In 2020
  4. Better Content Through NLP (Natural Language Processing) – Whiteboard Friday
  5. Brand bidding & PPC optimization: Reducing your competition
  6. Big Tech takes aim at the low-profit retail-banking industry
  7. Google Wants to Do Business With the Military—Many of Its Employees Don’t
    Continue reading Weekly Reading Picks| Volume 46