E-commerce is also booming: eMarketer expects it to account for 27% of UK retail sales in 2020 and online sales in June grew 33% year-on-year, a 12 year high.

That makes it all the more important for affiliates to get on advertisers’ radar early. With key events like Back To School ongoing and the all important Q4 period on the horizon, publishers need to understand what advertisers have on their wishlist.

Thanks to our experience working with over 50 affiliate networks and 48,500 advertisers we’re in a good position to advise what retailers are really after this quarter. 

Transparency on your commerce content performance 

Transparency has always been important to advertisers, but it is even more so now. 

Advertisers need to be able to prove the value of their affiliate program, demonstrate the potential ROI of any commerce content partnerships and be sure that if they do have a limited budget, which is now the case for many, they’re spending it in the best way possible. 

Primarily that boils down to showing what success will look like: What results can they expect from a partnership, how good are your ecommerce KPIs like average order value and conversion rate, and fundamentally what outcomes you can deliver. 

They’ll also want to understand the audience and demographic. Audience can make all the difference to success: While one brand might perform well with young women and therefore target a lifestyle magazine like Cosmopolitan, another might want to target parents for which a brand like Mumsnet makes more sense. Increasingly in our experience advertisers want dedicated profiles of publishers to get a feel for the affiliates they’re going to partner with. 

What exposure they can expect

For advertisers, a key advantage of affiliate marketing is the exposure without up front payment. Your products can be in front of audiences predisposed towards purchasing and you only pay when sales actually take place. 

But different kinds of exposure are more valuable than others. So affiliates need to be clear about what advertisers can expect. 

For events like Back To School, timely pieces can make sense, as they’ll have instant impact and raise brand exposure immediately during that relevant period. 

Equally evergreen content can be advantageous too: It may not have the instant impact but lifetime value can be higher, which for brands means a longtail of sales that stretches on after initial sales events take place. In our own network evergreen commerce content articles continue to earn 20% of their first quarter revenue in every subsequent revenue, so this can be a more attractive option for advertisers. 

Ultimately, affiliates need to be clear on the exposure they can deliver and what content options they have at their disposal. Affiliates in our network have found providing dedicated content plans for how to scale has helped make them a priority for target advertisers. 

Look ahead to Black Friday and beyond 

While Q3 is important with timely opportunities like Back To School, Back To University and (in ordinary years) Summer Holidays, it makes sense to look ahead to Q4 too when approaching advertisers for partnerships. 

Black Friday and Q4 as a whole is the most impactful time of year for brands. A survey of our managed portfolio of UK merchants found 100% of them expect an increase in sales year-on-year in 2020. 

Inclusion in the content can make a huge difference for advertisers and receiving priority placement in the articles will also help to drive sales for them. So affiliates should expect to have those discussions with advertisers and be mindful of what seasonal opportunities they can offer. 

Consistent promotion 

Advertisers want to understand how their brands will be promoted. 

This can be sensitivities to the content their brand appears alongside – e.g. controversial subject matters – and it can also be understanding how much an appearance in content will advance their aims. 

For example, if they partner with a publisher, will an article be promoted on the homepage? Or will it feature in social feeds? Or in newsletters?

Ideally affiliates want to offer all of those options to advertisers when they talk about partnerships. Brands are naturally now more thoughtful about where they spend budget and will be looking for the best promotional bang for their buck. 

We also advise affiliates to have insights to share around content performance: Time of day to publish content for higher yield, whether articles focused on single brands or multiple merchants perform better, and what level of order values generates highest conversion rates are all things advertisers are interested in. 

Discretion

A major concern for advertisers in their programs is the discretion of affiliates. 

Promotional information from product launches, to exclusive offers, to forthcoming sales all need to be handled confidentially. 

Advertisers are understandably anxious that if they share that information, they don’t want it getting out before it is ready and are therefore keen to partner with affiliates who value the importance of discretion.

With that in mind, affiliates need to be sensitive and flexible to advertisers wishes, and be willing to work with them confidentially. In many cases, our advertisers’ promotional calendars are now shared under NDAs, so affiliates need to be open to that kind of cooperation if they really want to get on an advertisers’ agenda in Q3. It can be worth it though: 60% of our managed merchants would preview promotional information under NDAs.  

Conclusion

In sum, advertisers have a long wish list and are only inclined to be more demanding in light of the strains the pandemic has placed upon them.

However, there are key priorities which affiliates can understand and adapt to, in order to ensure fruitful partnerships in Q3. 

Above all advertisers want: 

• Transparency on performance 
• Exposure for their brand
• Partners they can rely for Q3 and forward to Black Friday 
• The longevity of partnership, rather than single event focus 
• Consistent promotion 
• And discretion in partnerships 

The post The Advertiser Wishlist: How Affiliates Can Get on their Agenda in Q3 appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Publishers have seen record results from affiliate marketing powered commerce content – Hearst titles alone sold 1 million products in March – and merchants have seen a corresponding expansion in their online businesses. The IMRG reported online sales hit a ten-year high in April. And while there has been success for some, for others the pandemic has posed problems, particularly in affected sectors including travel and entertainment. 

Now as brands reactivate their affiliate programs, the challenge has become how to do so successfully and make a powerful comeback 

Working with 48,500 merchants has afforded us deep insights into the brands that paused programs, those that have reactivated and given us the opportunity to work closely on successful reactivations that help boost the yield from the get-go. Here’s our top advice: 

Reactive your program across all partners 

For advertisers that want their program to perform on relaunch, we advocate opening the program to all partners. The more publishers have access to your program, the more traffic you’ll receive and more sales as a result. 

Where a full reopening is not possible, communicate clearly on when you expect your program to be open in full. Publishers need to be able to plan their content calendar and to understand when they will be able to include your brand in articles to earn commissions. 

If your plan is phased, share the stages and thinking behind it, so publishers are well informed. If making a limited reactivation, we recommend activating across two content publishers from each vertical. 

In either scenario, also be mindful publishers will have likely redirected traffic to protect their commerce revenue. An added incentive, like a targeted CPA release or exclusive coupon, can help boost performance in the short term, to get your program back on track. Skimlinks’ Merchants that use coupons for example have a four times higher conversion rates than those with no offer at all. 

Respond to the trending news cycle 

Historically timeless evergreen content has played a key role in publisher’s commerce strategies. Since March that’s changed and now much commerce content creation is led by timely trending news items. 

Advertisers reactivating their affiliate programs need to have their eyes on the news cycle and be able to respond in kind to it. That means having prescient promotions and tying back any offers to the new trends where possible. This can mean pushing warm weather products during a heatwave as earlier in the spring, or altering to focus around travel with the relaxation in restrictions that came in early July. 

Face Masks have been predictably popular and have been the top trending product in our network during lockdown. Publishers change and update content quickly, with trending items included in new content, or updated in existing content, within 48 hours of recommendation. 

Advertisers should also be quick to communicate on any trending products in their network. Telling publishers about these trending items can increase the likelihood of coverage and help to turbocharge success, driving further traffic sales on the relevant products. 

Communicate, communicate, communicate 

If your program has been inactive for some time you’re going to need to rebuild bridges and communication is key to this. 

In the first place publishers need to be sure they can earn commission from directing traffic toward you and on top of this they also need to know about changes if any to commissions paid. In many cases, brands reactivating programs have been limited in the CPA rates they can offer and in some instances lowered them relative to what they would have paid at the start of the year. 

Publishers need to understand these changes, so they can make informed choices for their own commerce strategy. They’ll also need to understand the likelihood of the program being deactivated again in the future, as this can shape the content they create. If there is any risk, be up front about it and clear. 

The all important Q4 period is on the horizon and publishers want to get information on advertiser strategy for that season, across Black Friday and other events early, so if you can offer this it will help set you up for a longer term relationship. 

Lean in

We have seen first hand the increase in affiliate marketing performance: The revenue Skimlinks drives to merchants and publishers is up 50%. So if brands are able to lean in when they relaunch their affiliate programs they stand to see success. 

So that means firstly setting a competitive CPA. You want to set your rate at least 25% above competitors to get publishers attention, particularly if your program has been paused for a long time. 

Thinking about how much people are buying online, relevant offers also make sense. Free shipping for example can be a great converter: Merchants that offer it see a two times higher conversion rate than using no offer at all. With people buying everything online, free shipping can be a nice added bonus. 

In conversations with publishers, also be up front about your performance KPIs: The most advanced publishers, who are benefiting most from the increased interest in commerce content, want to know about your average order value and your earnings-per-click to understand the value you can bring to their commerce strategy. 

Stay flexible 

These are uncertain times and it goes without saying that flexibility will help with a successful relaunch. Publishers are feeling the pinch from the drop in display advertising revenue, so channels like commerce content where they can continue to generate revenues are becoming ever more vital. 

So where you’re able to accommodate their requests, tailor offers to them and provide exclusives that can help to sweeten the deal and forge meaningful partnerships with enterprise publishers. For many publishers deactivation of programs was a painful experience and can have compromised significant portions of their commerce revenue. So it’s important to be open to their requests to help re-establish good relations. 

If you can bring a range of options to the table when you relaunch your program, across rate increases, the promotions you can offer, new product launches and trending product updates all of that can help your program get back on its feet. 

Key takeaways

The first half of the year has been a challenge for advertisers, but as they reactivate there are levers they can pull to make an affiliate relaunch a success. 

In sum, we recommend advertisers:

• Reactive all partners at the same time on the program
• Tailor communications to the trending news cycle 
• Communicate proactively on offers, program updates and new product information 
• Lean in where possible to recover lost ground 
• And, remain flexible to publishers’ requests 

The post How to Successfully Relaunch Your Affiliate Program appeared first on PerformanceIN.

But despite these ideal conditions, perception is that publishers have been slower here than elsewhere in the world to take advantage of commerce content and harness e-commerce as a revenue stream for their businesses. Until now. 

As publishers from Australia to Taiwan and Malaysia scale commerce, Skimlinks has played a key role in many of their journeys, so we’ve put together the key levers they can pull to grow commerce revenue:

Time is of the essence 

Publishers in the UK and US are keenly focused on two commercial factors: commission rate and earnings-per-click. They want to know how many shares of a sale they’ll receive and how much they’ll make for every click they send to a merchant. 

In APAC there are different key priorities: Time to delivery and shipping charges. 

Shipping is key because as everywhere else people are becoming more impatient and want items quickly. In Australia for example, where shipping can sometimes take weeks, publishers will look to prioritise brands that can deliver items faster. Publishers are likely to see fewer conversions if the merchants they link to can’t deliver orders quickly. 

Charges are also key. Free shipping has appeals everywhere, but in APAC it is especially appealing for publishers because it remains a relatively rare promotion, in a huge market where deliveries often cost more and take longer. Where publishers can’t find free shipping offers, they will look to pick the merchants that offer cheaper rates to ship items and use that to inform the merchants they feature in commerce content. 

Use tailor-made expert editorial content 

Despite e-commerce’s advance across APAC, commerce content lags behind, but many publishers find syndicated editorial content an expedient way to scale. 

It helps them produce content without increasing direct headcount and enables them to rely on a regular stream of expert commerce content to publish. 

It takes time to make the business case to hire commerce editors. While publishers work to scale commerce, to prove its value and argue for investment in the channel, syndicated content helps them maintain momentum. 

The volume of articles produced plays a key role in publishers scaling commerce content. The more advice on products readers see, the more accustomed they become to using publisher recommendations to inform the purchases that they make. Skimlinks’ own editorial network has scaled to produce over 200 articles per quarter since the start of 2020. 

Our research shows a commerce editor needs to write 5 articles a day for commerce to scale. So if syndicated content can supply some or all of those articles for a publisher it will help them scale faster. It can also offer valuable insights publishers can benefit from early in their commerce journey. 

Commerce editors need to optimise the length of an article, number of links, number of merchants, when they publish content and many other factors. Bespoke commerce content, tailored editorial needs and informed by commerce expertise can make all the difference. 

Highlight international brands in your commerce content 

When we think about our top publishers in the UK and the US, they prefer to highlight domestic merchants. 

That is to say that in the UK publishers will typically write about British retailers like John Lewis, Argos and Marks & Spencer, while in the US publishers will favour brands like Walmart, Target and Wayfair. 

But in APAC there’s a much broader emphasis on international brands. 

This varies between the individual sub-markets. International fashion brands like Nike, for example, perform strongly in Australia, which is doubly interesting as many of the top performers failed when they attempted brick-and-mortar launches in Australia. 

Things look slightly different in South East Asian markets like Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Here international luxury brands like Net-A-Porter are the popular topic matter. 

In South-East Asia there’s a huge appetite for luxury merchants across all categories. These naturally shape the kind of commerce content created and provide a different emphasis, then might be expected on large regional players like Alibaba.

Attention to detail is all important  

Publishers in APAC really take the maxim one size does not fit all to heart. This is informed by their heavy emphasis on timeless or evergreen content. 

Their preference is to spend more time on a single piece of content, that has a longer lifetime value, rather than more disposable pieces linked to seasonal e-commerce events. 

A key focus area is product guides – for trainers or jeans for example – which they can update periodically to keep relevant. Attention to detail is arguably more vital here than elsewhere and that’s linked to cultural differences. For example publishers in Taiwan pay close attention to the individual colours of the item chosen, as different shades hold various deeper interpretations. 

Audiences are also more demanding, so for articles around items a celebrity is wearing, or outfits from a TV show, readers want the exact pieces from the exact retailer and will know if a publisher has gotten it wrong. 

Summary 

Ecommerce sales in Asia-Pacific and Australia grew to an estimated $2.3 trillion in 2019. 

We expect that growth to continue into 2020, driven in part by the continued growth of e-commerce, and by publishers who’ve focused on commerce, reaching maturity with their strategies in the next 12 months. 

For APAC publishers that want to grow commerce the path to scale is clear: 

• Prioritise merchants with shortest delivery windows and free shipping offers 
• Take advantage of editorial content from others 
• Highlight international brands in Australia, and luxury brands in South East Asia
• Attention to detail is all important 

As publishers face uncertain times, commerce remains a revenue stream that can provide a valuable service to readers and offer alternative revenue to intrusive advertising. In APAC, as elsewhere in the world, there’s huge room for publishers to scale it as a meaningful part of their business. 

The post The Key Levers Publishers in APAC Can Pull to Grow Commerce Revenue appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Commerce content is a key revenue stream for publishers: Top players can drive 25% of their revenue from it and publishers around the world are now keen to capitalise on it. 

Once publishers get started, the biggest question becomes, “how do I actually scale this revenue stream now?” This is the insight we want to share today. Working with over 60,000 publishers has allowed us to see, analyse, evaluate and conclude on a formula that helps publishers to reach half a million pounds in just over one year.  

Dedicate time, create content, hire a team 

The first step is dedicating time to commerce content. Publishers can earn from it passively, but to really scale the stream they have to carve out time for writers to actually create dedicated commerce content. Until publishers dedicate time, commerce won’t be a priority and it won’t be an active contributor to revenue either.

The next step is to either dedicate an existing staff member exclusively to commerce content or look at hiring. A full-time commerce editor can make a huge difference to commerce revenue: They know how to find the brands’ readers like, surface products they’ll react to and the right kind of article to attract people that are keen to make a purchase. 

From our experience, the best way to build out this team is to start with one editor who produces five pieces of content per day. From there publishers should aim to expand to a commerce team of five editors, that can contribute a further five articles per person per day over the course of 18 months. 

Prioritise different article types 

Publishers can also scale commerce content by focusing on different types of articles. 

For example, many publishers will focus on reviews written about a single product, as these typically attract shoppers that are specifically looking to buy that item and once they’ve read a positive review are more likely to convert. These kinds of articles have attractive success metrics behind them: Single-product reviews have an average order value (AOV) of £93 and an average earnings-per-click (EPC) of £0.17. 

However, multiple product articles out-perform them on a revenue-per-article (RPA) basis. Articles that featured more than one product have an average RPA 31% higher than single-product reviews.  

Evergreen articles also perform better than timely pieces. Half of the commerce revenue a typical publisher generates come from articles published more than 12 months ago. With that in mind, publishers should look to create evergreen content that will have higher lifetime value and continue to contribute to commerce revenue over a long period to scale. 

Include promotions in articles

Commerce content that includes a promotion or offer is more compelling. 

It adds an incentive for the reader to convert and helps shorten the shopping journey as it saves them the trouble of finding their own code elsewhere. 

Coupons, free shipping and sales are the main motivators that readers respond to. 

Coupons have an 8.5% conversion rate in our network and AOV of over £38. Free shipping has a 5.5% conversion rate and a higher AOV of almost £50, while Sales have a 4% conversion rate and an AOV of almost £66. 

Hot products like new smartphones or sellout dresses are also an entrancing option to include. The conversion rate and EPC is less enticing, but the AOV for hot products is higher than the others at almost £80. 

Not every article need include a promotion, but where possible adding an offer can make all the difference in encouraging a reader into converting and becoming a shopper. 

Take a device-by-device approach 

While it can be tempting to push the exact same content on desktop and on mobile or mobile platforms like AMP, it is better to optimise per device. 

Mobile now accounts for over 50% of traffic in our network, but it continues to lag behind desktop in terms of AOV and EPC. Desktop AOV and EPC are respectively 70% and 50% higher than mobile.

When you look at content and the kinds of things people buy on each device it is clear that people prefer to buy bigger ticket items on desktop. People are happy to buy lower-priced items direct from their smartphone but prefer desktop for larger purchases. So publishers should factor that in when scaling their commerce revenue and create content with products at different price points for each device. 

Content for particular platforms is important too. When thinking about mobile, many publishers make use of the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) platform. Publishers in our network have seen a more than 400% uplift in sales since installing Skimlinks’ dedicated solution to monetize that platform. So when publishers think about scaling, they should factor in tools they’ll need to monetise in different environments too. 

Participate in key seasonal e-commerce events to power performance 

As well as day-to-day content there are now dozens of established e-commerce opportunities throughout the year that are ideal ways to scale commerce revenue. 

Events including Black Friday and Valentine’s Day offer publishers events where readers are actively making higher consideration purchases: They want to get the right gifts for significant others and purchase the right things for themselves to make sure holidays go off without a hitch. 

Traffic is higher (in the UK traffic on Black Friday is 153% higher than during the rest of the holiday season), there are more people shopping than at other times of the year, and commerce content can provide a real service to them during their shopping journeys. 

Conclusion

To answer the question we started with, publishers will start to scale commerce content as a key revenue stream once they change their outlook on it from being a passive to an active part of revenue generation activities. Hiring an editor, building a commerce team, optimising the kind of articles that team writes, focusing on deals that will resonate with your audiences, pushing out content tailored for different devices and taking part in e-commerce events will all help to drive commerce growth. As publishers seek alternatives to advertising, commerce can become a lucrative part of their new diverse mix of revenue streams. 

The post How Publishers Can Scale Commerce Content into a Key Revenue Stream appeared first on PerformanceIN.

The Christmas season is big business for publishers: on average in our network, a publisher doubles their commerce revenue. 

Gift guides form the backbone of publishers’ commerce strategies in this time. In some instances, top publishers including BuzzFeed and The Verge, operate dedicated landing pages to collect their huge volume of gift guides together in one place. 

This is an important time of year for publishers, so they’re more selective than usual about the brands they include in their commerce content. 

Fortunately, our experience working with over 48,000 merchants means we’re well placed to help advertisers get featured in seasonal gift guides. 

Share your editorial calendar and offers plans in advance of key events 

Publishers plan their content for key events way in advance. 

In the case of the festive season, they’ll typically prepare in the summer and have most content in place by early autumn. This is driven by a focus on achieving preferential SEO ranking, to be able to take maximum advantage of higher search traffic volumes through Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the Christmas holidays. Traffic will start to increase sharply from November 1. 

To align with publishers, advertisers need to make information available as early as possible. Ideally share your editorial calendar, so publishers can understand when you’ll push your promotions and what offers will be available for the articles they’re writing. You can also share further product information, such as the top-selling product categories, best-selling items or exclusive collections, which will help make your case for content coverage. 

Few publishers update content during the Cyber weekend, so if you don’t have information with them beforehand, it is unlikely you’ll make an impact in gift guides. 

Embargos are standard practice with publishers that create commerce content, so there’s no danger of them spoiling your holiday plans early. 

Optimise with existing partners first 

When advertisers think about their Christmas strategy, their focus should be to reward existing partners first. Off the back of higher traffic November through January, these publishers are likely to drive even greater performance than normal. 

That’s not to say that brands can’t experiment, but to be sure of strong performance in this key season they should look to optimise with existing partners. This could mean offering established partners exclusive rates (15% for existing partners vs. 10% standard rate), or a bespoke offer (an exclusive discount code for a publisher). 

The key is to optimise with these trusted partners and make your offering more competitive relevant to peers in the same vertical. You should typically aim to have your commission rate be in the top 10% for your vertical. 

Be flexible to requests from publishers 

Publishers want flexibility from advertisers. 

At such a critical time of year, publishers want to make sure they put relevant content in front of their audience. Typically, publishers will know which types of offers their readers are more likely to respond to: Free shipping, for example, is popular with publishers because it has a 5.5% conversion rate. 

Other publishers will be looking for other kinds of offers – exclusive codes, discounts, buy one get one free etc. – so in an ideal world, the advertiser should bring a range of options to the table for publishers to consider.

Think about the Christmas season as an entire period and optimise accordingly 

The festive season has a wealth of e-commerce opportunities and publishers tend to approach them differently. 

During Black Friday, for example, many shoppers are actually looking to buy items for themselves rather than others. That shapes coverage as publishers write about big-ticket items people want to invest in before the festive season takes place. 

At Cyber Monday, technology products are traditionally the top performers, and most content focuses on this vertical. The event is starting to broaden out though  – three of the top ten performing Cyber Monday articles last year focused on fashion – so there’s an opportunity for brands to factor this into their promotional strategy. 

Content created for the Christmas season after Black Friday sees another shift towards gifts for others and decorations for the home. Publishers will publish content the whole way through to Christmas, ranging from gift guides for particular family members to guides on how to buy the perfect artificial Christmas tree. 

For Boxing Day, publishers will create content to cover the best sales in the market, which to the point about early warning is a key date for brands in the UK to communicate on.

Play the long game

Ultimately sustained the growth of an affiliate program is a long game. Publishers can help you scale, and drive great results in the holiday season, but in the past, we have seen brands who only optimise for the holiday season, then cut commission rates afterwards in Q1 lose out in the long term. In fact, short-term increases in our network typically result in an almost 5% decline in performance.

Publishers want to work with long-term partners that their audience will love. It provides a poor experience for publishers to constantly cycle through the partners that they work with. To be successful, have the right publishers writing the best level of content across the peak time of year, ensure your CPA increases are in place for at least six months. Merchants that increase commission rates can see an over 25% increase in order value year-on-year. 

So the best tip for gifting content is to increase your commission rates and maintain a higher rate over a longer period, so publishers have the opportunity to drive significant performance. 

To conclude 

In the festive season, publishers are well placed to help advertisers drive performance through gift guides. The name of the game for advertisers is to:

• Communicate proactively
• Think about current partners first
• Be open to publisher requests and 
• Look at the festive season as the gateway to long-term performance. 

This can be a mutually advantageous time of year and with these tips, advertisers will be well placed to get featured in gifting content. 

The post How to Get Your Affiliate Program Featured in Seasonal Gift Guides appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Affiliate marketing is on the advance.

An IAB report last year said spend on affiliate in the UK grew 6% and publishers have begun to reap the rewards of commerce content in earnest. 

The best in the market can generate up to 25% of their revenue from commerce content, in particular affiliate and publishers are becoming savvier about the advertisers they work with. 

Skimlinks is fortunate enough to work with almost 50,000 advertisers, so we’ve put together our top lessons on how advertisers can make their affiliate programs attractive to the editorial publishers they want to work with. 

How are your CPA rates vs the competition?

When publishers write commerce content, they look for brands their audience love, but they also look at the brands that can provide the best ROI too. 

For many, the starting point is the commission rate that advertisers offer. Advertisers with higher rates are obviously more attractive because the publisher can earn more for each sale their article inspires. 

There is a balance to be found here: Publishers won’t write about brands that won’t appeal to their audiences just because they have a high CPA rate, but certainly when they’re picking between similar brands in a vertical, having a more competitive rate than your rival can be compelling. 

Aim to be placed within the top 10% of your own vertical to stand out in front of the largest content publishers. 

Take their lead on what works

As publishers’ commerce strategies have matured so has their taste in who they work with. 

Advertisers that are more flexible and open to publisher requests in their affiliate programs tend to outperform their competition. 

Taking the publishers lead can mean a few different things; Some publishers look for an exclusive offer for their readers, knowing that will make a more compelling commercial proposition and help increase conversions off the back of a piece of commerce content. 

Others will expect a commission rate increase in return for sustained high performance. If a publisher is consistently able to drive traffic, new customers and sales to an affiliate program then they will expect to be better rewarded for the results they can drive. 

And others may want information about promotional calendars or upcoming sales. Where advertisers are open to publisher requests and responsive to them, they can expect that to help them grow their affiliate programs.

Inform, share and trust 

Publishers also look for partners that can give them information in advance that they can act upon.

When we asked our top 120 publishers around the world what excites them “outside of a commission rate increase” the majority said two things: new product releases and shipping offers. 

New product release information helps publishers write compelling timely commerce content. Publishers that have established commerce programs have audiences that use them to purchase inspiration as well as advice on purchases they’ve already decided to make. If publishers know that they can rely on you for frequent information about new products they’re more likely to feature your products. 

Likewise, offers are really important as well: They help encourage readers to convert, which is one of the main goals publishers are concerned with when they create commerce content. But not all offers work as well as others and free shipping is by far the most successful.

Metrics, metrics, metrics

This will vary depending on how mature a publisher’s commerce program is but the vast majority in the UK are now keenly focused on a number of ecommerce metrics when they consider who to work with. 

Two key metrics are the conversion rate and average order value. Publishers care about the former because it shows how often people make a purchase and the latter what the value of the average purchase is. It is a good way for Commerce Editors to quantify likely return they’ll see on writing about a brand in a piece of commerce content. 

They’ll also look at metrics like reversal rate, which reflects how often commissions paid out to publishers are reversed. Reversals can happen for a number of reasons, including people returning items, but is important for publishers to keep in mind. 

In a wider context, the publisher will also look at brands’ trusted review scores, to understand overall quality. 

Advertisers can influence all of these things and the customer experience on offer is key to all of them. Offer a great experience, customers will engage with your brand and that will give you as an advertiser healthy-looking metrics to further your appeal with publishers.

Flexibility is the name of the game 

When we think about successful affiliate programs, the best succeed because they are flexible and open to publishers. They offer higher commission rates for performance, ensure their metrics are healthy at all times, actively communicate product information to publishers and are receptive to requests. Deliver on all of those things as a brand and your affiliate program will be booming in no time at all. 

The post How to Make Your Affiliate Program Attractive to Publishers appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Affiliate marketing is on the move. In the US affiliate spend will rise to $6.8 billion in 2020 and in the UK it grew 6.2% in 2018. It is closely connected to the expansion of e-commerce: In markets where more and more retail sales happen online, affiliate advances. 

And from my experience – launching a network in APAC, leading publisher and advertiser-facing teams in the US and in EMEA, I’m aware that affiliate behaviours differ radically between markets. Across commerce strategy, the role data plays in shaping that strategy, and how publishers work with merchants approaches vary. 

If you look at how publishers use affiliate, commerce strategy is the first place you’ll see behaviours differ across markets. 

Where the US leads, the UK and Europe follow 

The US is the most mature affiliate market, which means their commerce strategy is likely the most advanced. Publishers can derive significant value from affiliate – the largest drive 25% of revenue from commerce – because they’ve invested in the channel and really see the value. 

It is a key part of the revenue mix for publishers in the US, with large dedicated teams of commerce editors and is so important that in certain cases publishers have launched dedicated commerce brands. These publishers exist purely to create commerce content monetised by affiliate marketing that can drive sales to retailers in high volumes. Editorial brands like New York Magazine’s The Strategist have only come into existence because of the maturity of the affiliate channel and appetite of publishers’ audience to buy products they read about in articles written by expert editors. 

UK commerce strategy is different. In terms of online share of retail sales, the UK is the world’s most advanced e-commerce market (16% of sales happen online), but there are fewer publishers and their commerce strategies are less evolved than their American counterparts. Affiliate is not so advanced that there are dedicated commerce brands for example. 

But the UK market being smaller does mean brands can afford to be more experimental and face less competition. For example, several large UK publishers have extensive native commerce operations that they run alongside affiliate efforts: Dennis Publishing, for example, was projected to drive 40% of revenue from car sales from the automotive websites they own. 

There are also publishers like Trinity Mirror that syndicate content from central teams right across local titles, using localization – focusing on local ticketed events for example – to drive results. 

Look at Europe and the picture is fragmented. That’s closely related to how advanced e-commerce is in each region. Where people buy less online, appetite for affiliate marketing is lower because there are fewer opportunities for publishers’ to monetise commerce content using it. 

In Western Europe – which is responsible for almost 70% of European e-commerce spend – publishers are focusing more and more on commerce strategy, especially in the past eighteen months. In France for example, newspaper Le Monde has started syndicating commerce content from The Wirecutter, and across different European markets, publishing houses like Conde Nast and Hearst have begun to roll out affiliate links on international titles. In those cases, publishing houses take learnings from US teams and apply them to scale in European markets. 

Differences over data 

Some markets are more data-driven than others too.

The US has a real evolved approach to affiliate, with a subset of metrics that publishers and advertisers use to make decisions. Typically US publishers use two metrics to figure out what content to create and who to write about: revenue per article (RPA) and earnings-per-click (EPC). It is how teams understand what can drive real value for their businesses and what will resonate best with readers. 

Likewise, advertisers take a similarly data-driven approach to figure out the cost-per-action (CPA) or cost-per-click (CPC) they offer to publishers. They aren’t only concerned with the content a publisher creates, but the platforms they publish on, the volume of new or repeat customers a publisher can drive, and whether their products appear in timely or timeless evergreen content. They have developed granular attribution models to understand the ROI they take from affiliate. 

The same metrics are in place in the UK, but across Europe, things are not as advanced. The lack of data to drive affiliate in these markets can explain why international publishing houses are more successfully pushing commerce. They can use data from more advanced markets to expand at regional titles. 

Increasing focus on revenue diversification 

The other major difference when we think about how publishers use affiliate is the way they think about merchants. 

In the US, data is a key decision-maker. The RPA and EPC they can drive from a particular merchant is a key factor in figuring out who they should write about. Publishers know the topics their readers care about, from there they apply the e-commerce metrics to understand the brands that will resonate best with their readers’ and drive the most commerce revenue. 

American publishers are also really focused on the need for a diverse portfolio of merchants. The original driver of affiliate growth in the US was Amazon and it continues to play an important role in publishers’ commerce strategies. However many are now wary of being too dependent on a single retailer and aware that they can offer a better experience to publishers when they write about a broader mix of merchants. Writing about many different merchants offers readers more choice and creates more opportunities for conversions: Articles that feature more than one product drive over 130% more revenue than single product articles. 

The key differentiator across regions in affiliate behaviours is maturity. American publishers are really strategic in the way they harness affiliate marketing to generate vast commerce revenues. The UK is on the right track, with the smaller size of the market lending itself to experimentation which can drive impressive results. While Europe is further behind, the past eighteen months have seen real progress, and we can expect they will start to imitate the behaviour in the US and the UK as e-commerce expands and more publishers begin to leverage affiliates to capitalise on commerce as a revenue stream. 

The post How Do Affiliate Behaviours Differ in Different Regions (US vs UK vs Europe) appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Update your evergreen content 

Publishers in our network drive 40% of their revenue from articles that are more than 60 days old. So we recommend you find your well-indexed content and take full advantage of it. Update links throughout the existing article, avoid tampering with the URL and you should increase traffic for much less work than writing a new piece of commerce content. 

Offer price and brand comparisons 

Shoppers want more than ever before: more brands to choose from and more price points to consider. So whenever you write about a product in an article, make sure you offer alternative items from different brands and at different price points. This gives your readers maximum choice and increases your chance of driving conversion, by enabling your content to inspire people of all budgets. Affiliate revenue can increase up to 300% when publishers use price comparison. 

Make your content mobile compatible

Mobile matters. It is the browsing channel of choice, but bad mobile experiences mean conversions lag far behind desktop: mobile conversion rate in our network on Black Friday is a third lower than desktop. A simple way around this is to deep-link wherever possible. Drive people direct to product pages and you vastly increase the chance of earning a commission. 

Use audience development teams 

If you expect commerce content to perform well, ensure you’ve passed it to social and email teams, who can amplify traffic by spreading it far and wide. Top publishers in our network leverage audience development to maximise traffic and commissions. Among the top earning articles of last year, we saw the same article URL appear three times, showing the social and email campaigns a publisher ran to promote the commerce content. 

Combine conversion and commission rate in your merchant choices

Pick merchants that convert and offer a high commission rate. Of course, ultimately, the merchants you write about must be an editorial decision. But, once you know the content your audience likes and the merchants they look at, optimize your selection further based on conversion data and commission rate information. 

Think beyond Black Friday/Thanksgiving

Sales start earlier and earlier, and Google Trends shows traffic picks up from August. There are commissions to be earned from then through to the start of the new year. For example, once Thanksgiving weekend ends, you can create content around the holiday season and secure commissions too. “Urgency” related content performs particularly well in the US with last-minute shoppers as shipping periods close between December 10 and December 15. 

Target shoppers based on time of the season

Write content with different holiday personas in mind. Start of the season you can target “early birds” who shop from November 1. End of the season? The “last-minute” shoppers who’ll purchase just before Christmas Day. During Black Friday? Self-gifters who invest in big-ticket items to improve their homes instead of gifts for family or friends. And after Christmas? Think about “sly shoppers” – people that use mobile to shop under the radar for replacements for unwanted gifts and avoid offending family members. 

Be responsive 

Be reactive to items that start trending in the holiday season. It might be a must-have toy, or a can’t be missed fashion deal. Whatever the trending opportunity, talk to your social media team and ensure they’re passing you the latest trends, so you can react to them and incorporate them in your holiday coverage. 

Honestly – don’t just write commerce content around Christmas 

People are savvy and see through you. If you’re trying to make a quick buck, you may have some success, but not nearly as much as if you’re writing commerce content all year round, understand your audience and their interests, and now the kinds of gifts their going to be looking for at the biggest gift-buying time of the year. The holidays are the high consideration purchasing period and it should be the time where quality commerce content publishers shine. But you can’t do that to the fullest extent if you haven’t done the groundwork in the first place.

The post Holiday Season: Top Tips to Maximising Your Traffic and Commissions appeared first on PerformanceIN.

APAC is an e-commerce market that’s bursting with opportunity for international brands. According to data from an eMarketer report, retail e-commerce sales in APAC grew over 30% in 2017 and China boasts the world’s largest e-commerce market. APAC is also a region with an increasingly outward-facing agenda, with 63% of Asia-Pacific CEOs reporting they expect their global footprint to expand in the next three years, according to a survey carried out by PwC.

It is also a complex region, and although many international brands want a slice of the action, many make mistakes on entry that cost them their best shot at seizing the region’s e-commerce opportunities. Here are five common mistakes, which brands can avoid if they take the right precautions before entry.

Thinking about APAC as one region

APAC may be a useful geographic umbrella term but it has little use beyond that. Depending on the definition, the region can encompass anywhere from 28 to 60 nations, each with its own culture and differing needs from international brands.

That brings with it practical problems: different languages, time zones and cultural outlooks. In addition, there are legal problems for region-wide business practices; multi-channel communication, for example, is complicated because approved marketing activities alter depending on where you are in the region.

Brands also need to appreciate the distances involved. In the time it takes to fly from one side of Europe to the other, you might only have flown between individual states in APAC. That also has knock-on implications for supply chains and shipping. Things don’t move as fast and because of the greater distances, costs are much higher.

Believing every market has the same tech maturity

As well as logistical differences, technological advances vary across markets. On paper, mobile commerce is huge in APAC but in reality, China drives the vast majority of mobile transactions and multichannel digital marketing strategy lags behind. In markets like Indonesia, because of mobile immaturity, the point of sale is often offline and alternative options like cash-on-delivery can be offered by over 50% of merchants.

Performance also doesn’t necessarily indicate how advanced an economy is: Vietnam had the top conversion rate in South East Asia (30% above average) but is not an advanced market from a digital marketing perspective.  

Traditionally Australia has seen a lack of investment in search and in affiliate – advertisers have typically operated private programmes open to select publishers, rather than the broader open programmes that are common in the UK and US.

Before entry, brands need to think about how their approach will differ based on the markets they are most interested in and what channels or tools will be open to them depending on tech maturity.

Expecting linear decision making

Decision-making is led by culture and varies widely across Asia Pacific. A particular characteristic is that it tends to be “circular” rather than “linear”. In some markets like Australia that will mean less urgency – in others, it means allowing more time for decisions to be taken as all the factors are taken into account.

What that means for international brands entering APAC is that they should not plan on decisions happening as rapidly as elsewhere in the world and instead, more time needs building into plans than less.

This may also be connected to the amount of data available to an executive. A SAP and CFO Research survey of Singapore, China, Australia, Hong Kong, India and Japan found that only 17% of finance execs believe they have business insights at their disposal to make informed decisions.

Not partnering locally

With reference to the importance of local culture and differences between markets, having a local partner on the ground is a no-brainer. Without it, international brands face navigating a minefield of languages, cultures, logistics, processes and decision making without any insight. APAC is incredibly fragmented and a network of contacts in key locations is critical to pulling off entry in the region.

Local partners also have the added benefit of immediate trust with local customers and the infrastructure to enable rapid expansion. Brands can throw bodies at APAC but without local expertise, they’re unlikely to succeed on their own.

Lacking international recognition

Having spoken about the importance of local expertise, international reputation matters a huge deal too. New brands enter APAC all the time but the ones that gain traction and drive proper awareness like fashion retailer Zara have an international brand recognition behind them. If you look at brands that have entered the region successfully in recent years, the most successful have had an international brand behind them that is established and known across the key target markets.

In conclusion, APAC is a region bursting with e-commerce opportunities for international brands but success depends on getting entry right the first time.

The post Five Mistakes Brands Make When Entering APAC appeared first on PerformanceIN.