In part 1 of this guide, you learned the terminology used in the affiliate industry, what can add value and potentially cause a loss for your company, and how to forecast profitability.
In this part of the three-part series, you’re going to learn the following:
- Types of affiliates that you can work with.
- Tools they’ll need to succeed.
- Ways to onboard them.
- How to create a communications strategy.
Then, we get more advanced in part 3.
The Types Of Affiliates To Consider
There is no shortage of types of affiliates, and not all are equal. Someone handing out business cards with a coupon code or encouraging a QR code scan can be an affiliate.
Multi-payment solutions that you install in your own shopping cart may be charging you software fees and joining your affiliate program to take a commission without you knowing.
Pro-tip: Use your data to determine which types of affiliates are right for your affiliate program. You do not have to listen to the network, affiliate agency, or your affiliate manager. Your data determines which affiliates are adding value and which are not, and you are the one with your best interest in mind.
Not all affiliate practices will follow the laws where you live. Make sure to familiarize yourself with FTC disclosure, review, and endorsement laws (the EU and UK have similar), CANSPAM, etc.
Note from the author: My affiliate management agency, where we help manage other company’s affiliate programs, does not work with all of the types of affiliates below. I am listing them because the goal of this article is education, not how my company manages an affiliate program for our clients.
Here are the most common types of affiliates you’ll come across and a brief description of each:
Adware
Any type of software that displays an advertisement, forces a click, injects a coupon code, or engages with a user. This can include browser extensions for cash back, displaying logos on search engine results (including PPC ads you pay for or your own branded SEO results), pop-ups, pop-unders, etc.
Apps
Games, social networks, communities, events planning, and other device-based programs. They often run ads inside the app to your site or make in-app purchases, have incentives with bonuses in-game for shopping at your store or using your service, and offer push notifications to users with affiliate links or offers to users.
Bloggers
Content creators who produce articles about topics that can include personal stories, gift guides, product reviews, and how-to articles (recipes, crafts, fixing things, photography, etc.).
Browser Extensions
Software that is installed on a user’s browser where the goal is setting an affiliate cookie or tracking event.
Some intercept consumers at checkout, others right before they enter your website, overwriting your own tracking on your own newsletter subscribers, PPC ads you paid for, SEO results, or other affiliate clicks. Some can be high value and some low value.
Co-Branded Deals
Many times, you’ll find partnerships, perks, or co-branded promotions between two companies.
In some cases, the two companies are using affiliate links, or one company is doing an affiliate deal to test and see if it is a service their audience resonates with before they invest in launching it as a stand-alone offering.
Comparison Affiliates
When you come across a “vs.” post or video content that shows consumers how to choose between brands, products, services, or upgrades and downgrades, you’re likely seeing comparison affiliate content.
These sites optimize for mid-funnel phrases like “X brand vs. Y brand,” “Z brand alternatives,” and “Which company is better, D or E?”
Coupon Affiliates
Searching for a coupon online during the checkout process is when you most often come across a coupon affiliate.
Some pose as content or mass media websites but can be identified by the end-of-sale touchpoint. This exists in your affiliate analytics and may include the following:
- Traffic and sales patterns that match your overall company sales patterns. As you increase and decrease, they match almost identically (the same with some types of browser extensions).
- Higher conversion rates than top-funnel affiliates or your own website traffic.
- Very short click-to-close times.
- Multiple clicks before the sale because the consumer was clicking to reveal codes. Don’t count coupon sites out just yet!
- Coupon sites normally have large newsletter lists; some have engaged social media followings, and others can do SMS pushes. These can be top-of-funnels, and this is why it is important to use your data and determine if the sales being intercepted outweigh the revenue gain if you’re getting the top-funnel pushes, too.
Email Houses
Ever wonder why, where, or how you are getting so many promotional emails? You’ve likely been opted in, sold to, or engaged with an email house. They’re sending you offers via paid ads, sold lists, affiliate links, or any number of other options.
Major Media
Have you typed [best XYZ product] or [legit ABC service] into Google? The news and magazine major sites building shopping lists are monetizing through affiliate marketing using the trust and authority of their domains.
There are multiple benefits here including brand recognition and exposure, some drive their own non-SEO traffic to the lists, and you may be able to use their logo in your PR bar to build consumer trust on your website.
Media Buyers
These are companies or individuals who buy traffic from ad networks and sources and send the traffic to your website or funnel.
Monetization Tools (Also Known As Sub Networks)
These are normally JavaScripts or plugins that a webmaster can install on their website to turn direct links, or user clicks into affiliate links so the publisher, social media site, video producer, streamer, etc., can earn a commission.
Some work as backdoors for affiliates you’ve kicked out, and others allow prohibited partners in, so make sure you have full transparency when working with them, including referring URLs and the contact information for every partner that has access to your brand.
Newsletters
Unlike an email house, which may collect emails through multiple techniques, newsletter affiliates have engaged readers opting into their own lists to get specific types of content from them directly. You can be featured via affiliate links and cut hybrid deals with a media fee + commissions.
Podcasters
You’ll often hear brands being mentioned and have a custom deal or discount using the podcast’s or attendee’s names. Other times, there’s a link in the description.
These are ways podcasters can use affiliate marketing to make money when there are no sponsors or so they can earn from the products and services they mention.
PPC
Pay-per-click marketers may bid on your brand, variations, and extensions of your brand, or do generic PPC marketing.
You can find them on all search engines, from Yahoo to Yandex and Naver to Google, and in countries worldwide. It can be a great way to get a feel for foreign markets if you’re planning on expanding and to enhance your own PPC budget if you’re limited.
Remarketers
This technique can be abandonment emails or pop-ups on exit-intent users. The goal is to bring the person back or prevent them from abandoning. They require you to install their code or code snippets into your system and share your data with them.
Reviewers
Have you ever wanted to watch a review before shopping or seen video results pop up with “don’t shop until you watch this”? These are likely affiliates trying to get a mid-funnel click.
It is high converting because it is someone already in your shopping process, but not necessarily “low-value.” A better option is to boost ambassador content over the review affiliate content and no longer pay commissions on this touchpoint, saving your company money.
Shopping Cart Software
Sometimes, shopping cart plugins and multi-payment tools join affiliate programs.
As your own customers go to their site to make multiple payments, they may be exposed to an affiliate link, and now you pay a commission on that customer already checking out.
Other times, they may tag them with remarketing pixels and try to convert an abandonment that competes with or complements your own remarketing ads.
SMS
Like the email houses above, some affiliates send SMS texts to the masses.
Social Media Influencers
When sponsorships dry up, or there is a product the influencer loves, you may see them pushing affiliate links and affiliate tracking codes.
Just make sure you check the cashback and deal browser extensions as well as coupon websites showing up for your brand + coupons in Google to make sure it is the influencer driving sales and not a leaked vanity coupon code.
Streamers
As they mention consoles, controllers, snacks, fashion accessories, event tickets, and anything related to their niche, streamers are making money through affiliate links based on what they love, where they’ll be, and what their audience is asking for information on.
Technology Integrations And Widgets
If you’ve booked international travel and been asked if you need a passport or visa, this is almost always an affiliate play. The passports and visas you apply for are done through affiliate relationships.
Many destination sites like banks, travel booking sites, and service providers use these as they simplify the process, provide value for their users, and give them data on whether they should offer this.
Webmasters
From forums to destination sites, travel comparisons, communities, courses/classes, and educational resources, webmasters are the original type of affiliate and are still around.
YouTubers
For consumers researching something to do or a gift to buy, finding a hack in a video game, needing to repair something, creating a craft, or cooking a recipe, video content is packed with affiliate links. As the creator mentions a tracking code or you find links in their descriptions, you’re helping to support their channels by shopping through their affiliate links.
Collateral, Marketing Materials, And Assets
Your affiliates are only as effective as the materials you give them. This includes all touchpoints.
Segmenting your partners by niche, touchpoint, promotional strategy, and platform used to promote you makes you more effective. Here’s what many will be looking for.
Banners
Not just for websites, affiliates use social media ad platforms, groups, and apps.
That’s why the standards are no longer enough. Offer sizes for all types of advertising partners, from bloggers and forums to Facebook Groups, Pinterest Pinners, and apps.
At a bare minimum offer:
- 125 x 125.
- 160 x 600.
- 300 x 50 – mobile.
- 300 x 250.
- 428 x 60.
Make sure to offer general banners for your brand and themed ones for niches your affiliates are in.
Text Links
Chances are that you have multiple product lines and services and serve multiple types of customers. Make sure this is represented in your text links. I’ll use a t-shirt store as an example.
You can have a text link for the brand, which is your catchall, and then one each for blue, red, v-neck, and crew neck tees. Maybe you sell undershirts in white and black; have three here.
Do you offer graphic tees in both comedy and vintage?
Why not create a text link for “funny tshirts” and one for “vintage tees” pointing to those landing pages? The same applies to wicking t-shirts for athletes and super comfy for sleepwear.
Datafeeds
This is a fancy way to say you offer a product catalog. It can be created via an XML feed, a spreadsheet, or whatever type of input your affiliate tracking solution accepts.
Datafeeds let affiliates create product grids, insert products into emails, and have access to approved images and descriptions, as well as stock and price data to make promoting you easier.
They can often be automated through the shopping cart and via tools like GoDatafeed (I don’t have a paid relationship with them; I just really like their service and have been recommending it for 10+ years).
Video
Do you have product demos and explanations of how to do things? Let your affiliates access these!
Many platforms allow you to upload video content and place links to your store as products and accessories are mentioned.
Affiliates can use these within their own guides to demonstrate a technique and enhance their content.
Email Swipes And Creative
Newsletter blasts can make and break months.
Provide your partners with blurbs, full emails, and copy-and-paste banners at 600px wide. Make sure to use the wording that converts best for your audience and provide options based on demographic skews.
If people in their 40s click through and purchase more on the word free, label this on the template. And if people in their 20s like shorter content with bullet points and slang, let your affiliates know.
The more data you can give them based on what works using age, location, income, etc., the better they can promote your company, and everyone will make more money.
Vanity Coupons
Vanity coupons are codes that match the branding of the website or influencer. However, there are massive risks associated with them.
If you distribute the code to an influencer and commission them when it’s used, but a cashback browser extension picks it up, the influencer may start earning commissions on sales they did not refer, as the browser extension inserts it into your coupon box at checkout.
And the same goes if it gets submitted to a coupon website that shows up on Google for your “brand + coupon.”
Vanity codes have a purpose and place, but patrol and monitor vanity and affiliate coupon codes for attribution purposes. In many cases, they may not actually move the needle and, in some cases, cause damage to your attribution and revenue.
And always set a life on them based on the lifespan of the promotional method. Instagram promotions fade off in a few days, whereas LinkedIn can last for a few months.
If partners do not take them down, have a plan in your program’s TOS for taking action when they post invalid and non-approved coupon codes.
Other
There’s no shortage of tools you can provide to your partners. There are HTML and JavaScript-based widgets, c0-branded landing pages, and more. Some of the affiliate programs we manage have accountants, lawyers, and consultants as active partners.
For them, we send plaques and awards once they hit certain numbers as a display on their desk. This builds trust and familiarity with the brand when their clients are introduced to our clients’ brands.
If you can think of it and it makes the partner’s life easier, try it.
Onboarding Marketing Series
An affiliate program is a hands-on channel and needs a personal touch. This is where your onboarding experience can help.
Here’s a checklist of things to provide:
- A bonus incentive for their first 30 or 60 days that includes copy and paste links.
- Welcome series that encourages activation and shares strategies for evergreen traffic and success.
- Personalized welcome emails from the affiliate manager that include one or two specific places on their platforms where your company is a fit.
- An activation or re-activation series once an affiliate has stopped sending traffic or has joined your program, but not sent any traffic or sales.
- Tips on increasing conversions, including wording to use, calls to action, and where to place links by space, promotional method, and channel.
And you’re not limited to email for onboarding. You can share:
- Video recordings with demos on getting links, optimizing content, setting up newsletters, etc.
- Powerpoint presentations demonstrating strategies and introducing the brand.
- A company blog where you share promotions, program updates, and ideas on how to make money with your products and services.
- Private groups for top performers to network and share ideas on how to grow together.
One of the most important things to do is provide the affiliate manager’s name and contact information.
If you want the program to succeed, there must be a human being and a face to the name. This builds trust, and that is vital for this channel.
Newsletters And Proactive Management
Sending promo codes, sales, and coupons is not an affiliate newsletter strategy. Your content, YouTube, and value-adding partners don’t need these.
Strategies that grow the affiliates’ businesses benefit an affiliate program, and as their businesses grow, they have a larger audience to send to you.
From time to time, you could send a deal or a promo, but make it link-based and share the deal with content for social media, email swipe copy, and other tools the affiliates can use directly from the email.
When you teach your partners how to grow, you build their loyalty, and they may be more inclined to create new content for your company, too. Here are some topics and newsletters you may want to try:
- 5 SEO phrases that convert over X% and have at least Y,000 monthly searches.
- 3 YouTube topics that convert at X% and have at least Y,000 monthly searches.
- 2 Copy and paste newsletters for X and Y audiences.
- Create an optimized piece of content by ABC and get $XYZ.
- Increase sales by XY% this month and get double commissions next month.
This is only for established partners or up and coming that are already performing.
Your only limitation is your creativity. I survey partners a couple of times each year and track their motivators.
From there, I run promotions based on what motivates them to do more. But keep in mind that not all of these topics make sense for all partners.
If the partner is an Instagrammer or TikTok creator, they may not have a newsletter list. YouTubers may not have blogs, and bloggers have no use for a coupon code unless they become a coupon and deals site, but a Facebook group likely will.
Congrats on making it through part 2!
In the last section of this guide, you’ll learn the myths and facts about affiliate programs, common pitfalls to avoid, and some professional tips that our agency uses to help our clients succeed.
Click here to read part 1 and part 3.
More resources:
Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock