For several years now, some advertisers have perceived affiliation as a channel focused solely on conversion. Last click attribution rules and the emergence of conversion support levers such as Onsite Marketing, Cashback and Promotional Code Sites have largely contributed to this phenomenon. Indeed, being as close as possible to the sale has proved to be the best way to be profitable in a Performance logic.
Yet the affiliate market has never been so buoyant. In fact, tools for measuring contribution within brands have greatly increased awareness of the positive values of bringing traffic to affiliate programs.
What’s more, the arrival between 2014 and 2016 of social networking communities – influencers – has definitely set the scene for the years to come. Affiliation should no longer be seen as a single means of generating performance, but also as an opportunity to forge as many diverse partnerships as there are solutions on the digital acquisition market.
So can we now, by relying solely on these trends, claim new contributing partnerships within our program without any additional effort?
The answer is no, regardless of brand awareness. It’s important to follow a methodology for identifying and recruiting publishers to your affiliate program.
Effinity understands this key success factor. For over 25 years, we’ve been implementing simple, effective methodologies and tools to meet our customers’ objectives and help them expand their network of affiliate partners.
Effinity’s methodology for identifying publishers
“There’s no point in running, you’ve got to start on the right foot”. Before embarking on countless telephone prospecting sessions, it’s essential to define your objectives. Whether you’re looking to generate business, increase traffic and visibility, acquire new customers or position your brand, it’s essential to set your goals so that we can propose a reliable and appropriate plan of attack.
Audit of existing Effinity affiliates and referrals
Depending on the predefined objective, we carry out an audit of your existing base, with a view to identifying the Must Have missing from your current affiliate program. Effinity has a national and international publisher base, both BtoC and BtoB. All types of publishers are represented, from converters to influencers, as well as influencers from a wide variety of vertical markets (Fashion / Home / Lifestyle / Travel / Insurance, etc.).
Our in-house publisher audience identification tool enables us to offer you efficient partnerships right from the start of our collaboration. In fact, we’re able to tell you which publishers are not registered with your program, and yet have an audience that carries out actions on your website (visits, purchases, form validation, etc.).
Effinity’s non-referred affiliates, a program with an unlimited lifespan
Regardless of the number of affiliates in your existing program, we are constantly working to expand our publisher base. Effinity has external partnerships with technical solutions for identifying new sources of traffic:
- By analyzing your competitors’ traffic with SimilarWeb.
- By identifying publishers who use monetization solutions, SimilarTech.
- Using Publisher Discovery-type Affiliate Directory tools
Beyond these partnerships, let’s not forget that search engines remain an excellent means of identifying potential partners.
Publisher recruitment by Effinity
We identify two types of recruitment, “The Passive” and “The Active”. This essential stage should account for 80% of the time spent managing an affiliate program.
Passive recruitment
For publishers, there are different ways of getting in touch with them, largely represented by: merchant sites for 51% of them, search engines for 39%, and specialized directories for 38%.
Effinity provides its customers with a registration form. Once integrated, it enables publishers wishing to work with a brand or distributor to apply directly to the program via the advertiser’s website. There’s no need to spend hours searching for the right partner platform.
Your platform must also offer a website, a blog, and be present on social networks. This is the case with Effinity. Perhaps you’re reading this methodology on our blog dedicated to performance news? Or simply, this topic has caught your attention on social networks?
Finally, in terms of passive recruitment, it’s imperative to be relayed on affiliate program directories. Effinity is a partner of the market’s leading players, Webfrance and ClubAffiliation.
Of course, there are other ways to recruit passively, but here we’ll just mention the essentials of successful passive recruitment.
Active recruitment
This is unique to each platform on the market. In our opinion, this is the most important criterion when choosing a new affiliation platform. This criterion should never be underestimated.
Active recruitment needs to be qualified:
- Use the platform to expand and offer new publishers to its customers
- Realize for your brand through the platform to expand your partner network
Effinity’s platform recruitment techniques:
- SEA campaigns to get you listed on the major search engines
- We are present at various general trade shows (Connext, Emarketing, Ecommerce), as well as themed trade shows (maison-objet, parisretailweek, etc.), so that we are always as close as possible to the specialized players.
- Hosting conferences at various incubators (which are also proving to be an excellent way of providing a monetization solution for new startups on the market).
- Finally, we have a Business Unit which, after identifying the various players, is responsible for contacting, qualifying and supporting new publishers in their first affiliation campaigns.
Effinity’s program recruitment techniques
- Facebook Ads campaigns to make your program visible to the market’s leading publishers.
- Adwords campaign management by Effinity teams for your affiliate program.
- Push and highlight your program on the Publisher platform: news, participation in commercial events such as Valentine’s Day, display banners, popup, integration in the Welcome Pack, Effinity Newsletter, etc.
As you can see, there are a huge number of techniques for identifying and recruiting affiliates to your affiliate program. The current context favors the emergence of these new players: influencers, portals, themed shopping guides, social shopping, wishlists and start-ups of all kinds.
Seeing your affiliate marketing platform as a partnership gas pedal rather than a converter program is a prerequisite for diversifying your network. A precise methodology is strongly recommended to understand, monitor and analyze the evolution of your partner network. We can only invite you to select a platform that has the tools and methodologies you need to achieve your objectives (Effinity, for example!).
It’s no longer unusual to find advertisers who are extremely satisfied with the composition of their customer base (heterogeneous and responding to a wide variety of issues – New Customers / Sales / Traffic / Leads).
What about you? Does your current partner have the right identification tools and apply the right recruitment methodologies?
