When used effectively (as opposed to setting it and forgetting it) traditional affiliates such as voucher and cashback sites drive not only large volumes of sales, but also more new customers or increased frequency of purchase for existing customers, or more high margin purchases. These affiliates, however, have got different needs, from both technical and strategic perspective, to other types of partnerships. 

The term partnerships is important because it encompasses a much wider array of partner types. Affiliate is one of these types, but there’s a dozen others; brand-to-brand partnerships, influencers, software integrations, in-app, media houses, social responsibility – the list goes on. These different types of modern digital partnerships are all distinct and all provide a unique opportunity to create value for your business. 

Why does it matter?

You might be wondering why the labeling matters, or if indeed it does. Why can’t we just say media houses are a type of affiliate, or influencers or brand-to-brand partnerships? The reason why it matters is because these partnership types all have a separate and discrete set of needs. To bundle them together is to fail to recognise not only the different strategies required to achieve success with those partner types, but also the technological requirements. 

Imagine trying to work with influencers through an affiliate network. Are you going to wait for the most relevant influencer to your niche to sign up to that network independently so that you can find them in your network recruitment searches? Or should you instead use that platform integrated with Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and so on, so that you can seek out those influencers based on their vertical or their hashtags and then communicate with them in their own environment?

The same is true for each partnership type. Each necessitates a different form of outreach, a different form of remuneration, and a different strategy. A flexible technology platform is fundamental to achieving this. If your tech can’t keep up with the varied needs, you can’t execute the varied strategies required to make a success of each partnership type. 

There’s no denying the value of affiliate marketing and nor would we want to. The channel continues to grow around the world and help hundreds of thousands of brands achieve their goals. But affiliate marketing is just one arm of partner marketing, so make the most out of each type of partnership with their different needs, different audiences and enormous growth potential.

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All the same, partnership marketing remains an emerging, fast-evolving space, not a fixed and finalised set of processes. There is a lot to learn, and a lot more coming down the road, and that is why the explosion of the partnership economy has inevitably led to an appetite for partnership-driven events.

Responding to the call is Impact’s Partnerships Experience 2021, a first-of-its-kind virtual partnership conference series across four weeks, dedicated to sharing thought leadership and best practice for players in the burgeoning partnerships ecosystem.

Taking the form of a two-hour session every Thursday (EMEA and APAC) and every Wednesday (US) throughout the remainder of June, PX 2021 aims to arm attendees with the resources and connections to create productive partnerships, examining issues from trust to transparency, commerce to authenticity, and from content monetization to partnership growth guides for SME.

“This year is already shaping up to be a year of partnerships, for all sorts of reasons,” says Impact’s EMEA MD, Florian Gramshammer.  “Clearly people and brands all over the world have been driven into new habits by the events of 2020, but there is also a strong sense that conventional advertising has worn out its welcome and that data-driven targeting strategies are wearing thin.

“Partnerships really represent a human-focused, recommendation-driven alternative to those old ways of doing things, coupled with the advantages of cutting-edge technology, and there is an opportunity here to show people exactly how.”

The benefits of partnership marketing have never been as evident as they are now. The influencer market alone is projected to reach $15bn by 2022, and the most mature clients already use partnerships to drive more than 28% of their total company revenue.

“Partnership marketing channels, and particularly affiliates, have really helped us to show a human face and connect with people on a level that is appropriate to what has been going on in the world over the past year,” says Gramshammer.  “Like a lot of marketing disciplines, the basics are relatively easily mastered, given the right technology platform, but then there are levels of integration and sophistication that lie beyond that, and we’re always keen to find out more about what’s possible.”

Just as partnership marketing provides an umbrella for a whole family of channels, the returns are also numerous. In a recent survey of more than 400 partnership professionals, 55% judged increased revenue to be among the top benefits of partnerships, followed by increased brand awareness (50%), improved customer retention (42%), higher market share (37%) and enhanced conversion rates (35%).

“Maturity is a word you hear a lot,” says Alex Springer, Regional Vice President EMEA – Sales and Solutions Architects at Impact.

“Based on our experiences, we certainly get better results the more established our relationships become. What we have learned is that this isn’t just an alternative to conventional advertising but a completely new way of looking at how we grow our business, driving efficiencies and revenue, but also increasing profitability and a lot of other things.”

Alongside speakers from a long list of brands and media companies, Impact is also offering original, on-demand content, in which leading brands will relate their own success stories and share their methods.

“One thing I have found about partnership marketing is that there seems to be a real willingness among brands to share knowledge,” says Springer. “What’s interesting is that partnership marketing builds communities around your brand – of partners, influencers, other sympathetic brands and obviously consumers – and I think that makes it an unusually rich area for experiences, just because it extends that spirit of collaboration. We’re really looking forward to seeing what other brands have managed to build and letting that feed into our own plans.”

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The company was no stranger to affiliate programmes when it joined forces with Impact and Scale Digital in January 2020, but it was certainly not familiar with the efficiency that the Partnership Cloud delivers.

The team felt they were missing some great opportunities with publishers. What’s more, transactions had to be validated manually, taking up considerable time and resource, with tracking and visibility not where they needed to be, and insufficient monitoring of performance. So the decision was made to develop partnerships which truly shared in the team’s ambitions, allowing them to innovate and build strong relationships with both partners and publications.

After moving its business over to Impact and Scale Digital, the benefits were evident immediately. A success team understood the requirements and worked through onboarding in such a way that these would be met, enabling the brand to launch its programme during the peak of the January sales – the best time for them – while also helping transition existing partners across and build a proactive relationship with relevant publishers. 

In Scale Digital and Impact’s Partnership Cloud, eve found a shared desire to improve business performance with transparency over what could be done with technical tracking, from the outset. “With Impact and Scale Digital, we saw massive improvement to our business in a very short time all thanks to us getting access to every aspect of their offering,” says eve’s Andy Boddy.

A huge uplift in profitability through partnerships

The partnership team at eve Sleep is clear that its work with Impact and Scale Digital has been one of the business’s key success stories of recent months, saying it has “fundamentally changed” the organisation. Partnerships has in fact become the biggest revenue-driving channel for the business, which was historically running a lot of business on a cost-per-click basis; with it now seeing its biggest traffic source coming through a CPA basis modelling performance. The level of profitability the company is now seeing can be attributed in no small part to the switch in how it acquires traffic and orders, with UK revenue up 114% YoY. 

Stephen Kerin, founder at Scale Digital adds: “It has been an absolute joy to run the eve affiliate programme. The range and quality of the eve products speak for themselves but the flexibility and understanding of the channel by the marketing team and their use of Impact technology both on site and with the partners has been the real driver that has resulted in this success.”

Automation frees up the team to drive performance

One of the most significant impacts of this collaboration, however, has proven to be the vast number of man-hours that are now saved through automation. Where eve previously spent the best part of a week validating transactions manually, team members are now free to concentrate on scaling the programme, building relationships and identifying new publishers.

By moving to Scale Digital and Impact, eve has been able to work with technology and partners to drive incremental sales and boost performance, with full transparency across the various parties involved. With visibility when running promotions, the team was empowered to ramp up appropriate promotions with key partners, including some partners who have seen triple digit revenue growth. Together, Scale Digital and the Partnership Cloud enabled eve to build a strong relationship with publishers and to have clear and fruitful conversations on performance and expectations. 

Andy Boddy, eve, concludes: “I cannot recommend Impact and Scale Digital highly enough to anyone looking to build a strong, effective, successful affiliate program. Their expertise has directly affected our business profitability – I only wish we’d known about them both sooner.”

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So here’s an essential round-up of the key takeaways for anyone who missed out:

The power of partnership automation

Impact kicked off proceedings on day one sharing three key trends on shifting consumer behaviours, the rise of content marketing and tactics for achieving enterprise growth. CEO David Yovanno delved into changes in consumer buying behaviour as they respond less to traditional advertising tactics and instead rely more on trusted recommendations from their peers. Yovanno spoke about businesses searching for the next wave of enterprise growth and revenue acquisition beyond Facebook and Google, which typically receives 90% of new digital ad spend. Hailing the rise of new content marketing opportunities, the Impact leader also discussed how consumers are turning to content recommendations from publishers and through the use of referral links, these publishers are now seeing up to 20% of their revenue coming from their content marketing campaigns. Stressing the power of partnership automation, Impact discussed findings from a report they commissioned with Forrester on high maturity companies who have reacted positively to these trends. The presentation shared that companies with high-maturity partnership programmes grow their businesses twice as fast as their peers and went on to explain trends in how those companies achieve such accelerated growth such as automated recruitment and dynamic contracting. 

Accelerating digital transformation and SAAS migration

A key topic covered in multiple sessions was tactics for accelerating digital transformation. From performance marketing to partnership automation, speakers described how technological advancements were driving business growth at scale. Leading brands including HelloFresh, TUI and Dyson made strong business cases for migrating from affiliate networks to Impact’s SaaS partnership solution. They discussed how digital transformation enables them to invent new ways of doing business effectively and the importance of leveraging partnership automation technologies to address changes in customer demand. Later we heard about automation for agencies as a solution for accelerating their affiliate offering. Unbundling, which refers to the separation of service from technology, was also a hot topic as it allows for complete autonomy for agencies looking for game-changing results.

Brand to brand partnership success

For brands still curious about the benefits of implementing a partnership programme, speakers from owow Beauty, Campsited and Videvo joined a roundtable discussion to share their success stories and practical advice for businesses new to the world of partnerships. Building on this was a deep dive into brand to brand partnership success illustrated with an example from Spotify and Ticketmaster who have collaborated to create a seamless user journey which fits natively into a consumer’s lifestyle and purchase habits. This theme echoes an evergreen truth about brand to brand partnerships, that they should not only create mutually beneficial value for the enterprises involved but increased value for the customer too. Whilst most industries can benefit from this B2B relationship, the travel industry, in particular, can leverage this trend to strengthen their brands despite the fallout from the pandemic. For example, an airline sending flight confirmation emails could feature special offers from retail brands selling beachwear to drive conversions whilst the customer is still in holiday mode. Indeed, Trafalgar Travel shared how having an agile brand attitude coupled with an innovative agency team, ultimately led to double-digit growth in visibility. Whether it was hyper-local ad campaigns promoting staycations or data-led campaigns based on search trends, it was clear that the travel industry was already identifying opportunities despite these challenging times.

The future of content commerce and curation

The intersection of content and commerce was a recurring theme, as publishers from Immediate Media, Conde Nast and BuzzFeed shared insights around improved methods of content monetisation for both publishers and advertisers. With consumers forced to spend more time at home, buying habits have shifted to indoor pursuits and that is reflected in the types of brands publishers choose to partner with. BuzzFeed called for increased content curation to ensure publishers are matching the right brands with consumers to serve audiences better. Tipser then presented attendees with an evolution of affiliate marketing; embedded e-commerce within content, highlighting the development of affiliate marketing technology towards a model where commerce will take place directly at the point of inspiration. As outbound and external shopping links become outdated, new technologies allow publishers to embed a purchase button within content for a frictionless and seamless customer journey that leads to higher commissions, no last-click attribution issues and increased engagement.

The evolving nature of influencer marketing

A key highlight was an engaging panel from business leaders at Cult Beauty, Crabtree & Evelyn and TikTok who provided attendees with a glimpse into the future of influencer marketing. Insights around creating strategies with clear KPIs for revenue, diversity and engagement were shared to ensure a positive ROI. Cult Beauty delved deeper into an interesting new trend called cohort analysis. This enabled the cosmetics newcomer to create customer cohorts based on the total sales different influencers drive, then analyse the cohort behaviours further down the line to identify who becomes long term customers. 

There was plenty of talk around looking beyond last-click attribution and rethinking what a conversion is outside of revenue, for example, newsletters subscriptions or website traffic. TikTok also demonstrated the value of their recently launched Creator Marketplace and Ads Manager service, enabling brands and advertisers to tap into influencers and creators to enhance their creative strategy. Impact echoed the importance of influencers by sharing nuggets about best practices for managing influencer relationships using technology. Impact also discussed the acquisition of influencer relationship management tool ACTIVATE, which helps advertisers go beyond spreadsheets with more organised and automated programmes.

Data-led insights in response to consumer behaviour

With physical stores having to shift their presence online in response to changing consumer buying behaviours, we heard from leading brands Gymshark, Bloom & Wild and Gousto as they discussed what traditional retailers can learn from DTC brands. There was a call for legacy brands to build a culture of testing while implementing more experimental and innovative campaigns. By replicating a data-first approach like their digital counterparts, traditional retailers can gain deeper insights into consumers buying habits and adapt to changing landscapes. The advice for legacy brands was to be as reactive as possible to consumer data and leverage trends like brand to brand partnerships.

With the conference’s content now in the rearview mirror, it’s fair to declare that PI Live Global 2020 was a success. The purely digital conference undeniably felt the absence of in-person interactions, as we perhaps all do at times like this, but the pivot to virtual lead to deeper engagement with this year’s content. From masterclasses and roundtable discussions to virtual networking and live entertainment, this year’s PI Live Global was a genuine borderless experience. We saw the resilience of the digital marketing industry in the face of a crisis and learnt how brands used this as an opportunity to be more responsive to changing consumer needs. Impact was thrilled to be an official content partner for PI Live Global 2020 and are excited to see what 2021 has in store for the digital advertising industry.

If you missed out or want to recap on the sessions, watch the replays of the content here.

The post Key Takeaways From the First PI LIVE Global appeared first on PerformanceIN.

In a recent study we conducted with Forrester Consulting into the partnership journeys of direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses, we found that around a third (29%) of DTC decision-makers estimated 20% YoY revenue growth in 2019 from their partnership channel sales. 

But the bad news for any fledgling DTC businesses reading this and being blinded by dollar signs is that, according to our research, it is high-maturity partnership programmes that are likely to benefit most from this business model. Research shows again and again that companies with well-developed partnership programmes grow faster and outperform their low-maturity peers on a number of key business metrics.

Those new to partnerships, or in the early stages of progressing their business model beyond traditional affiliates, will not have the data-led experience to know which activities should be ramped up – and down – at each stage of the partnership life cycle.

Mix it up for more effective results

Thanks to our work with Forrester Consulting, brands and their agencies can now learn how to improve their partnership program, whether it’s adapting the partner mix, working out which idea to prioritise or even maturing their program from the middle ground in which they find themselves.

By looking at the experiences of some of the 454 partnership practitioners we surveyed, across all key verticals, other DTCs can ascertain exactly what makes for high-performance referral partnerships.

Leaders at the most mature companies we spoke to target partnerships that most closely connect with their target audience and align with their messaging and values. Less mature companies rely on trial and error, but learn from their failures and fail “fast and cheap.” But at the outset it’s less a case of the individual you partner with and more about the type of partnership you seek out.  

DTC partnerships: it’s a numbers game

One major trend that stood out in our 2020 study, compared to the 2019, was the ways in which different businesses use partnerships: high-maturity DTCs veer towards an average of 38 traditional affiliates, compared to around 27 dealer or agent partnerships. However low maturity companies use an average of 49 traditional affiliates and only eight dealer or agent partnerships. 

Traditional affiliates are defined as companies that specialise in driving traffic to owned channels, typically receiving a commission for leads and/or sales generated from that traffic, including coupons, cashbacks, deals, rewards, loyalty, and comparison sites.

Finding the right partner mix is perhaps the most critical element of the partnership journey, and one that needs reassessing at every phase. Different types of partners drive different types of results. Influencers, affiliates, and ambassadors can help brands reach their specific target audience but it must be at the most appropriate time. Partners that influence the buyer early in the journey may not influence renewals, retention, and expansion later in the cycle. 

An holistic view will win the day

When designing a partner ecosystem, channel managers must look at the entire buyer’s journey for each stage. Understanding the journey, including buyers’ behaviours and psychology, is crucial in determining whether their current channel partners will be the right ones going forward.

As we have seen, traditional affiliates are the most used partnership type across all maturity groups, but we see significant differences across maturity groups with managed service providers or integrators – who are category specialists that gain additional revenue by selling complimentary services. High-maturity companies only use an average of seven service providers/MSPs/integrators, compared to 14 for average maturity companies and four for low-maturity companies. 

Those brands looking to move from low to average maturity must begin by diversifying their

partner mix, with the aim of introducing a broader variety of partner types beyond just traditional affiliates. Once they have tested the waters with new partners they can refine their mix based on buyer type, geography, product, and market vertical. High maturity companies in our study still use numerous traditional affiliates and dealers/agents, but they also meet desired outcomes by using non-traditional affiliates and strategic partners.

Partnership decision makers undertake a long journey when building strong, future-proof partnership programs, so it is in the planning that the most work needs to be undertaken. 

The planning phase is not only crucial but, according to our study, it is one of the most challenging phases of the process for all companies, no matter their maturity. 

Planning includes forecasting, understanding routes to market, coverage mapping, and a business’s capacity plan and targets. Knowing if the organisation has channel capacity, or staff and budget in place to have a successful partnership, and being fully on board with the objectives of the relationship, is the key to making the plan a success.

Prioritise planning and the rest will follow

Defining a go-to-market strategy is the most important tactic for high-maturity businesses in the planning phase, with 58% of respondents ranking it in their top three most important planning tactics. This is the time businesses must ensure their partners understand their growth targets by buyer type, geography, product, and market vertical.

Taking a few key steps during planning can significantly improve a company’s maturity level. A business at low maturity must begin by defining their go-to-market strategy, ensuring it includes a clear definition of the end goals and has identified the desired targets for any partnership – after all, success cannot be measured if the success metrics that matter have not been defined. Those who fall in the average maturity group must focus on building coverage maps and capacity planning, knowing where their customers are and whether they are being reached at the right time and on the right channels. Building persona maps and profiles to gain deep customer understanding.

This is by no means the sum total of the to do list for any company aiming to improve their maturity level, but will provide them with a solid starting point. 

Partnerships can drive critical benefits such as increasing revenue, brand awareness, and customer retention. They can also drive customer influence early in the buying journey. To propel revenue growth, companies must carefully choose their partners based on desired business outcomes and target audience. 

By preparing the ground in a carefully considered way, implementing the findings from studies such as our work with Forrester, companies will find themselves gliding up the rankings with all the effectiveness and efficiency that their high-maturity peers are already enjoying.

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