Your Commerce Health Check

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing

Increase brand awareness and turn visitors into loyal customers.

Affiliate marketing not only increases brand awareness via a wide range of content spread across hundreds and thousands of relevant sites, but it can help to turn visitors into loyal customers all while keeping a low cost per lead.

When executed correctly, it can be a very profitable marketing channel for your businesses. It’s a great way to create a campaign to benefit from key retail dates such as Black Friday and Christmas and push your brand to a larger audience.

If you’re selling a product online, your affiliate campaign will work on a cost per acquisition (CPA) basis. So you will only pay a pre-arranged fee to the publisher if they refer a fully qualified purchase.

Affiliate marketing can also generate highly qualified leads through actions such as completing a form, calling a number and more.

This model is why affiliate marketing is a great channel for both Merchants, and Publishers who wish to monetise their site.

To get these results, effective affiliate marketing management is crucial and experience is needed to reach out to the right publishers for you.

We partner with trusted Merchants and reputable Publishers who will promote your products and services in the most effective way possible as well as manage technical integration and commission validation.

How affiliate marketing works

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy where your products and services are promoted on another website, known as a publisher. However, you only pay this publisher if they successfully generate a proven sale for your business. This gives you a measurable and affordable form of online marketing.

There are four main areas that make up affiliate marketing:

Merchant
You, your brand, your website.

Publisher
Aka the affiliate. The publisher that works to generate sales.

Network
The hub that tracks and connects the clicks between the merchant and the publisher.

Customer
The visitor that clicks through to the Merchant via the Publisher.

Affiliate marketing

The Network will promote the Merchant to Publishers that host relevant content. Publishers are also able to search the Merchant directory for Merchants in their niche.

Publishers will then create content using a special URL unique to them so the Merchant will be able to track when one is clicked and attribute that visit to the correct Publisher.

If a Customer visits the Merchant via the link and a successful sale is made, this sale is tracked on the Network.

A couple of weeks later, the affiliate manager (Remarkable Commerce) will check each order vs the Merchant and approve any orders that have been confirmed. Importantly, any that have been cancelled or refunded will be cancelled on the Network. This ensures no commission is paid if the Merchant has not benefited fully from the interaction.

The affiliate manager will also make regular spot checks on Publishers to ensure they are sticking to any set guidelines laid out by the Merchant.

Each month, the Merchant will pay the Network the total of all approved commissions and the Network will pay the individual Publishers.

Affiliate marketing strategy

The strategy is an ongoing process with recurring weekly and monthly tasks to ensure we are on top of any developments.

1
We will fully integrate the website with the Network. This will be tested thoroughly to make sure that all future clicks are tracked and attributed accordingly. We also make sure tracking is set up in Analytics so each click can be tracked for internal reporting.
2
We prepare to support the Publishers, working with the Merchant to provide resources and information so they have everything they need to produce content straight away. This will be in the form of banners, images and sales copy as well as key information about the Merchant.
3
We search the Network and identify high-quality publishers to work with on the campaign. This is based on their demographics, niche, reach and the quality of their website and content. This will be a mix of the larger well known sites as well as relevant niche, smaller up and coming Publishers.
4
Continuing support for Publishers, answering questions and providing solutions to any issues they may have. We also make sure Publishers are sticking to agreed rules from the content of their copy to PPC bidding guidelines.
5
Weekly, we look at the orders that have gone through the Network and check them against the sales report in the website admin. If the order number and value match and the order is confirmed as legitimate, we will authorise it on the Network to allow the Publisher to gain the commission.
If the order was cancelled, returned or even partially returned we will cancel the commission in the Network, or reduce the value of the partially refunded transaction. This will guarantee only legitimate interests sales to their full value are credited.
6
Ongoing search for new Publishers added to the Network, competitor affiliate marketing checkup and Publisher rules adherence. We also stay in ongoing communication with the Publishers to make sure they are happy and proactive.

Affiliate Commission

The average commission for an affiliate network will sit somewhere between 5 and 30% This of course depends on the individual Merchant and will always be an amount you are happy with. This could also be a flat fee but it of course depends on the Merchant.

This is not a fixed number and doesn’t really need to apply to all Publishers. You could offer a higher rate at certain times of year, or for specific Publishers during a particular promotion.

But the good thing here is that the Merchant is in full control and the way affiliate marketing is setup, will always see a return on any commission paid.