(Wait? Did I just say, collective? Yup, more on that later.) 

It’s time to take ownership of your best relationships. Own the relationships directly (through an in-house program, for example) or indirectly (via a network) — it doesn’t matter. But be a relationship steward, not a control freak. Provide your partners with the tools and data to give them autonomy, but build in shared accountability. These special partners are the pick of your portfolio. Set them up for success. 

In this type of arrangement, you and your partner own the outcomes together, end-to-end. Sure, the alignment of incentives is technically what affiliate marketing is all about, but it doesn’t always look that way in practice. Why do it? A smaller group of high-quality partnerships can lead to greater audience insight and more profitable campaigns for brands — and more targeted and personalised offers for consumers. 

Here’s how to make one-to-one partnerships work for you.

Owning the strategy together: collective thinking

The collective customer

The first step is to create a truly shared understanding of your collective customer. Given that the partner is responsible for helping you source this customer, you have to come to terms with the fact that this is a customer you share with your partner. Maybe not forever, but perhaps so — it’s up to the customer. 

If you are all-in, you’ve already bought into the notion that the partnership drives incremental value. (Otherwise, why bother?) That value originates in the information gaps that a consumer simply cannot fill through you (or your website) alone. These gaps could be a comparison against your competitors, or an unbiased assessment of your product or service, or a recommendation from a friend. Letting go of the question of “whose customer” he or she may be frees you to work together for the collective customer. 

Once you confirm your ideal collective customers with your partners, they should share some of their most insightful data about those customers, like the qualities that indicate a repeat buyer, or signs that point to a subscription renewal. If they’re good, your partners will know more about what it takes to land these consumers than you do. They may know which types of users increasingly invest in your products or services, which advocate your brand to their friends, which go to your competitors, and even what incentives are most effective in generating interest for different personas. Think about all of the ways you can use this valuable information to improve your profitability. 

Moments of truth

With that collective knowledge, you should work backwards, together. This means asking your partners: 

• Where do you find audiences?
• What keywords do you use?
• What were these customers looking for?
• What offers ‘sealed the deal’?
• Where can you find more that look like them? 
• And, most importantly, “What was the ‘moment of truth’ that caused them to seek out your site?” 

If you have a great relationship with your partner, these questions can reveal learnings that you otherwise wouldn’t find. Expect to have these conversations often, and not with the intention to steal your partner’s secret sauce, but rather to work harder to help them find you more customers, faster. 

While you’re at it, look at the profitability of acquiring different types of customers through this partner. Can you provide them with enough offers and data to enable them to serve the right offer at the moment of truth? Consider working together on a test plan to see which offers resonate best with which audiences, looking at trends such as user behavior, user motivation, and media consumption. 

Your commitments

With the true collective customer in mind, sit down with your partner and set objectives and KPIs for acquiring them. This means treating your partner as an extension of your business, sharing your business goals, and being transparent about what you need from them. How do you make it worth your partner’s while to invest their time and energy into achieving your goals? A good place to start is explaining the tactics you’re already using to attract these customers and what a successful partnership means to you. 

Policy busters

Once plans are established, think about the barriers that could stand in the way of your top partners and their ability to achieve your goals. Ask yourself, “For my top partners, do the policies I have in place work in concert or in opposition with their practices?” Not saying to redefine your moral compass, but to take a good hard look in the mirror and assess what rules you are asking your top partners to work around. Consider what it would mean to remove some of that friction. 

When I ran a network (a few years back), we used to call this exercise “policy-busters.” I recommend you try a similar exercise in a whiteboard session with your team. Some policies are relics because no one took the time to periodically review them or question them. For the top partners who are working hard for you, can you find marketing policies, customer service policies, and pricing policies that need a second look? 

Incentives

Speaking of policies, take a good look at your pricing policies and payout structures to make sure your rewards are commensurate with the actions your partners are asked to take. The harder the task, the higher the pay. For example, are they willing to create custom experiences and integrations with your site? If you need net-new customers, can you double the payout? If you are looking to reward loyalty, can you set up a payout that incentivizes quality or product adoption? 

Owning the execution: tools and data

If you go all-in with a partner, you have to ensure you provide the necessary tools and data to help them personalise an offer at the moment of truth. This is not an easy one to solve. 

For example, if partners are going to target customers in real time, what information do they need to make to serve a distinct ad live. What kinds of pipes (e.g., APIs, integrations) are required to help your partners segment their audiences for you (e.g., new vs. existing customers)? What is required to test offers? What data do they need to create custom audiences? This kind of personalisation is only possible when you are collectively owning the process of growing customers with your partners. 

Owning the optimisation: operating rhythm mentality

And lastly, it is about a commitment to change. With great data comes great responsibility. As in a commitment to ask the right questions and figure out what is working, what is not, and iterating. This is what it’s all about. 

Think about how often you will review the data. And think about holding each other accountable to taking actions that move the relationship forward on a quarterly basis. Carve out the time, commit to an operating rhythm, and invest in each other’s success. That’s how one-to-one partnerships are done. 

The post Affiliate Program Partnership: Go All-In, Get More Personal and Own It All the Way appeared first on PerformanceIN.

In February, we went out on a limb at Affiliate Summit West 2020 to make this point. For the industry to grow and succeed, the entire ecosystem must be focused on helping marketers succeed. From the marketer’s standpoint, that success may mean working directly with a publisher via a SaaS platform. It may also mean working with a network that has great relationships with their affiliates. Either way, it means the same thing for the technology providers and the networks: more inclusivity, more interoperability, and doing whatever it takes to help marketers leverage as many traffic sources as possible while nurturing close relationships with their partners. 

In this post, we’ll show you why we think this is the way to go by walking through some of the benefits of discovering and owning your relationships.

Benefits of discovering your partners

Unique partnerships 

When you go out and find your own partnerships, you can recruit affiliates directly into your program. They could be up-and-coming influencers, new to your market or audience, or just getting started — it’s up to you. They may even be the next big thing or something completely new to the game. 

Customer and market insights 

When you do your own research to find new affiliates, you’re often doing exactly what your customers are: looking for expert advice. Going through the same motions as your customers may reveal learnings about how they move through your funnel, and where and how your affiliate partners help them along. It may also provide some unexpected benefits, like giving you a new perspective on — and appreciation for — on how your partners promote your brand. 

Untapped affiliates and audiences 

Most affiliate programs follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of conversions are driven by 20% of the partners. That 20% represents your most valuable relationships, as those are the affiliates who spend a majority of their time promoting your offers. 

When you’re just starting your program, you want to find small- to medium-size affiliates who aren’t working with many other advertisers. When you’re the only brand they work with, or one of only a few, your partners have plenty of time and motivation to make your offers work. In addition, these untapped affiliates offer similarly untapped audiences: followers who haven’t already been exposed to lots of promotions for similar products and services. 

Competitive intelligence 

One of the best ways to find new partners is to check out the competition. (For example: Are there affiliates who are working with your top rivals, who are also missing from your program?) Doing some competitive research now and then can also benefit your marketing game. Regular checkups not only keep you informed but also provide insight into the trends and topics your competitors find important. 

Filling program gaps 

If you’re looking to fill holes in your current affiliate list, you want a little finesse. That means hand-picking the exact partners you need to succeed. That’s not a problem when you take discovery and management into your own hands, as that enables you to choose and work with whomever you like. 

Benefits of owning your relationships

Personalisation 

When you find and own your relationships, your world is up to you. You can create custom deals and offers, set your own commission structures, and pay whenever it works best for you and your partners. And the beauty is, you can change any of it at any time! 

Direct communication 

A lot of communication in the affiliate marketing industry is consolidated or standardised. This practice makes communication like newsletters easy to scale and share. It can also make it difficult for advertisers to stand out. When you use a technology solution to communicate directly with affiliates, however, you know they’re getting your messages. That’s huge, especially for important information like terms and conditions, policy changes, and offer deadlines. Keeping your communication separate gives it greater weight. 

More effective budgets and commissions 

When you use a SaaS solution to manage partner relationships, you usually pay a set amount for the technology you’re using, and that’s it. The rest of your budget is free to go toward campaigns and partners (and any other marketing activities). What’s more, without variable partner marketing costs, your view of overall marketing spend will be clearer and more consistent. And less stress for you and your finance team is always a good thing. 

Control, control, control 

If there’s one area where it seems OK — even accepted — to be a control freak, it’s partnerships. Increasingly, brands are turning to solutions that offer a high level of control over their marketing relationships. And why not? When you run your own program, you get to make the rules. You control everything. For example, with the right partner marketing technology, you can: 

• Hand-pick your partners (and keep those relationships exclusive) 
• Determine marketing policies and compliance rules 
• Enforce your policies and rules how you see fit 
• Build or integrate specialised tools 
• Customise features, dashboards, reports, and more 
• Choose and configure every detail of your program (pricing models, tracking methods, conversion windows, payout structures, fraud prevention measures, etc.) 

Competitive differentiation 

Finally, running your own program sets you apart from everyone else. You don’t have to choose from a set group of partners. Your program doesn’t have to look like everyone else’s. You don’t have to offer the same types of commission rates or pricing models. That freedom to differentiate is a major advantage, and it may be all you need to stay a step ahead of your competitors. 

How to find out more 

While discovering and owning your relationships may seem like a lot to handle, there are resources available to help you out. For starters, check out the TUNE Blog, where you’ll find informative articles on affiliate programs and performance marketing. You can also reach out to one of our agency partners, who can fill you in on how they help run programs for brands like yours. 

And if you’re ready to take control of discovering and owning your partnerships, get started now with a free trial of TUNE. 

The post Benefits of Discovering and Owning Your Marketing Relationships appeared first on PerformanceIN.

You’re an established affiliate program: you know your top partnerships inside and out, have tapped into everything your network has to offer, and are now ready to venture out on your own. You want your own branded program, technology and direct relationships. It’s time to graduate to an independent program (aka Indie). Here are the benefits and risks to consider as you go.

The formula for migration success

If you have already made your decision on the partner marketing platform that will power your program, congratulations! Next step is to move the program. 

As a general rule, migration risk can be thought of as a function of three variables: (1) technology fit, (2) program management support (in-house, OPM, or agency), and (3) internal preparedness.  For you math buffs, consider this formula:

Note that by increasing your preparedness, you exponentially improve your chances for success.

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll assume you already have tech and program resources squared away.  Now, let’s discuss how you can be well prepared on Day One.

Migration prep: a trip around “The Dial”   

When moving your program, consider this adage: a solid flight plan makes the journey seamless.  With a network, you have been employing the pilot to fly a commercial plane.  With a partner marketing platform, you are the pilot of your own private jet; the controls are now yours.  In a migration, your job is to take off, navigate the headwinds, and set the wheels down successfully.  Like a successful flight, a successful transition should feel uneventful.  Prepare yours with a plan that includes the three phases of successful partner programs: strategising, operationalising, and optimising.

Strategise

Priority one should be migrating historical program data so that you start with a strong fact base.  Second should be maintaining competitive benchmarks to preserve a strong value proposition.  Policy development will also shift to you, so keep good counsel nearby. 

Operationalise

Once strategising is complete, your next priority should be adding the right partners, offers, payout structures, and policies to your new platform before launching.  Communication is key here. 

Optimise

After the transition, revisit your original program assumptions.  Program management is a big cycle, and greater granularity is now in your hands.  Make sure you have the discipline, skills, and personnel required to evaluate and improve with a regular cadence. 

In closing

When you unbundle services and technologies from a traditional affiliate network, it is critical to replace them with a strong technology foundation and program management resources.  Transition is merely the first step.  The more you can prepare your internal team, partners, and executives for the move, the more successful you will be for this event and your new life as an independent program. 

The post Going Indie? Risks & Benefits of Moving Your Program Off a Traditional Affiliate Network appeared first on PerformanceIN.