At the recent IAB Affiliate Council meeting we debated how merchants can gain increased transparency over what affiliates are doing, and at the same time sell themselves to merchants/agencies/networks to reduce the chance of being rejected from their campaign.
Therefore I thought it would be useful to write a quick post on what we look for when approving affiliates to the campaigns that we run.
Where will you promote them
Brands like to have control over where they appear, and in other channels go to great lengths to ensure that they know exactly where they will be represented. This is not just to be able to differentiate between cashback sites, voucher sites etc, but to ensure that their brands are not featured next to content that is likely to reflect badly on their brand. I think it is key that we increase transparency, and of course, as discussed elsewhere in our IAB meeting, this transparency must go both ways.
How you will promote them
As I’ve written about previously there are many different types of affiliates, requiring different approaches. As more merchants are beginning to realise this, more of them will wish to segment affiliates by type. By default we do this for all merchants on any i-level campaign now. This is vital when attempting to understand how your affiliate campaign is working. I’m sure we’d all agree that a campaign where 80% of sales are coming from voucher code and cashback sites is not a healthy campaign.
So it is key that affiliates are open in demonstrating to merchants how they are driving traffic. Personally I would like to see different accounts for voucher code activity, cashback activity, email and any brand PPC allowed but I appreciate that this isn’t feasible.
Again this goes both ways. Numerous times on the forum affiliates complain about the amount of communication they receive and how they miss important information because of the volume of email they get. Differentiating your activity would allow a merchant to target communication more effectively. It would also allow merchants to more accurately measure the value of different channels, therefore ending the assumptions about how cashback and voucher codes are cannibalising other channels that have been made without people being in full possession of the facts.
What works well for you?
In my time managing campaigns, it is very seldom that any affiliates have come to me and suggested ways that they can increase sales. Maybe the communication channels haven’t existed before or up and coming affiliates don’t feel confident enough to make these suggestions. I know, however, that if I’m managing an account and an affiliate were to approach me and say that something has worked with another merchant, is there room to try it, I’d be more than opening to discussing it.
How do we do this?
I fully appreciate that a lot of this is the job of the affliate manager> They should take the time to build up a relationship with their affiliates and get to know and understand what they do and how they do it. Realistically though, this isn’t always feasible so what’s stopping affiliates taking a lead on this? There are clearly benefits to affiliates as merchants will work more closely with those displaying transparency and coming up with ideas.
I’m afraid I don’t have any answers on how this should be facilitated. Communicating individually with every merchant is obviously draining on an affiliates precious time. Maybe this is something that networks can champion? One idea that has been put forward is that affiliates operating in different sectors put together a portfolio site, that can be offered up to a merchant to explain their business methods within the network interfaces.
I’m sure plenty of debate will follow on how transparent affiliates need to be, but I would like to emphasise again that I completely agree that this transparency should be two-way and if merchants are not approving affiliates then the reason should be clearly communicated – article to follow…
