Public: advertisers // Difficulty: easy.
Affiliation is simple! Launch a program and wait for affiliates to relay. Not so simple, in fact… That’s why the hyper-personalization of affiliation makes so much sense.
Affiliation is an acquisition technique as old as the world of e-commerce! But this world is constantly changing, and so is affiliation! It first appeared in the early 2000s, and has since contributed to the development of the merchant web. Some 15 years later, where do we stand?
Affiliation is still very much a part of e-merchants’ acquisition levers, but it has to be said that it suffers from a somewhat blurred image. The multiplication of acquisition levers and their numerous interactions in the conversion chain have made the affiliation model less legible, prompting advertisers to consider it a mere adjustment variable when it comes to de-duplicating sales and investing in its development.
It has to be said that, all too often, affiliate campaigns are still conceived as monolithic levers, based on a single program to which all affiliates, in all their diversity, are forced to adhere. As a result, the vast majority of commissions are raked in by last-click specialists (couponers, cashback, etc.), to the detriment of thematic affiliates, content publishers, influencers, etc., who end up deserting the programs.
Hyper-personalization, a new era for affiliation
And yet, today, the tools, technologies and expertise exist to bring affiliation into a new era: that of hyper-customization. The aim is to meet the specific expectations of affiliates and the interests of the advertiser, by moving away from the historical logic of affiliation ” one program for all ” to an adaptive approach ” a protean program that adjusts to each individual “.
This is one of the main challenges of hyper-personalization in affiliation: to unite affiliates in all their diversity, so as to maintain an extensive network to attract Internet users, wherever they may be on the web, to our merchant sites.
It’s an approach that requires you to take the time to think through a few simple questions. So simple, in fact, that we often forget to ask them when we think about affiliation: who is my target customer? How do I want to reach them? What do I expect from the different levers?
Hyper-customization : tools and people
The hyper-personalization of affiliate marketing is based on a successful mix of technology, know-how and human relations that enable us to get to know our affiliates better, to better understand their needs and, ultimately, to better adapt our programs to their expectations.
At a time when the rise of programmatic advertising could lead us to believe that everything can be solved by data and algorithms, and that consumers are nothing more than standardized robot buyers, it seems that knowledge of the trade, experience and common sense are still the values that enable us to make the best use of technology to weave, develop and control a network of business introducers.
