Keeping in mind the drastic rise of expenditure on affiliate marketing, as per a study done by Forrester Consulting, there is an estimated annual growth of 10% throughout 2020. There is no surprise about the fact that people have noticed this staggering growth in its popularity. Affiliate marketing is presently responsible for 18% of e-commerce sales thereby putting it at par with email marketing. Affiliate marketing is ahead of display advertising and social commerce as the main driver of e-commerce transactions. Read on to know how partnerships are vital for affiliate marketing and why they are considered as a magic ingredient.
Affiliate marketing – What is it?
Affiliate marketing is a famous model for marketing using third party websites to generate traffic to your website in lieu of a commission on the sales that is generated. This is probably a low risk investment since you just have to pay for sales (and not for clicks) apart from admin and set-up costs. You can set levels of commission which work with your margin to control the return on investment.
If you take into account a conventional view of the affiliate marketing industry, you can predict a pull-push exchange with the owners of the brand which create content and the affiliates work for promoting their assets through an affiliate network. However, it is being seen that smart money is partnering and affiliate is being seen as a strategic business partner with whom a long term relation can be built.
Why is it important to have partnerships?
Majority of the affiliates with a noteworthy number of visitors are running websites in the form of a full-time business. For them, whom they are working with and how seriously their partners consider them are of utmost importance. Suppose Brand A has not spoken to you since the time you joined the program and you just keep receiving their generic banners. On the other hand, the eCommerce Manager from Brand B mails you every week with special offers and trade updates. They call you at least once in a month to know what you’re up to and you’re doing your business.
Whom would you give more affiliate love to? Since this is not rocket science, you need to put in lot of care and effort to nurture the relationship. Hence, as we see, the power of affiliate marketing lies in working together for producing creative and compelling offers for your customers.
How to build partnerships
Any human relationship will depend on the ability to respond to the issues and opportunities when they arise and structuring your communication in such a manner will help you in managing the affiliate base. Here are few techniques.
- Send a monthly newsletter to the affiliate to keep them updated
- Send personal mails to the top affiliates
- Call each of them every month to know how they’re doing
- Produce campaign assets every month
- Run promotions
Hence, if you’re thinking of embracing partnership for your affiliate business, you can take into account the above mentioned points. Check out Nappsiesta to know more on partner relationship management.
