Transcript:

Maximize Affiliate Impact

Diversify Partners  Across the Customer Journey

Melissa Weir: So welcome. Good afternoon. Good morning. Good evening. From wherever you’re joining us today for our session maximize, affiliate, impact, how to diversify your partners across the customer journey.

So a little bit of housekeeping before we get started into today’s session:

If you have any questions throughout the session, please write them into the Questions Field, and we’ll take time at the end for answers. 

The webinar is being recorded, and we will send it to all registrants within 24 hours of the session ending

Feel free to download any resources in the zoom interface as the session goes on. We’ll talk about a few that you can access in the chat panel.

And then, join in our poll during the presentation. This gives us a lot more insights into who’s on the call and where you’re at in your affiliate journey, so we can tailor the conversation and examples to where most of the audience is and where they are going.

So my name is Melissa Weir. I’m the director of Demand generation here at Refersion. And my goal is to bring you programming like this to help educate and scale your programs. So I’m thrilled to have you join us here today. I’ll let Eugenia introduce herself.

Eugenia Baidoo: Hi, everyone. I’m the Publisher Account Director at Refersion. I basically have been in the industry for over 7 years talking to publishers all day every day, so excited to be talking to you about some strategies and working with them.

Melissa Weir: Eugenia has a wealth of knowledge. I have learned a lot through putting this together with her, so thrilled to have you here.

So a little bit about Refersion. If you’re new to us I’ll give you some insights before we get into the session. But Refersion recognizes that it’s really complex to build, manage and track an affiliate program. And so with Refersion, we simplify what that means to actually manage and track so that you can manage all of those key components within one platform, from campaigns and management to advanced offer creation and customize commissions, attribution, and first party tracking to paying your affiliates that you work with, which is very important. Getting more data, insights on your program and making sure that you’re really aligning your program with your tech stack and other partners that you work with Refersion powers tracking for every type of affiliate you want to work with, including publishers, creators, influencers, ambassadors, and many more affiliate types that we’ll talk about in today’s session and also helps you recruit new partners through our referral marketplace.

So as you can imagine, managing all of this, all of these key components of your program within one place really helps you to manage your program, certainly. But then drive operational efficiencies, increasing your output. And so you can, you know, do more with less time investment. Which helps you to grow your program and really see also what’s working and what’s not. So you can kind of drill into areas of your program that maybe need a little bit more support and really optimize. And ultimately all this works together and is kind of a flywheel to help you drive more revenue for your program.

And here’s that growth by the stats. We work with thousands of merchants and some of our key stats that we’re really proud of, and that they are related to today’s session is that we have more than 6 million registered affiliates on our marketplace. We track over 300 million affiliate commissions. And we’re also tracking over 2 billion in affiliate revenue. So the growth is there and in the numbers and we’re trusted by, as I mentioned, thousands of e-commerce brands and online businesses, and we integrate directly with all leading e-commerce platforms.

We’ll give you an opportunity to learn a little bit more about Refersion after the session today. Thanks for being here!

So today’s topics are: what is affiliate diversification? And why are we having a session about it? Why should you focus on it? And why is it important for your program?

We’ll talk about common affiliate types and revenue models, and then how to align those types and revenue models across your customer journey for maximum impact.

And then how are you going to manage all these people? And then recruit new ideal, affiliate partners for each area of your customer journey? And then we’ll close out today’s session with the live QA.

Drum roll, please: Our first poll. How is your affiliate program currently managed? So go ahead and fill out that poll. We’ll give you a few minutes to do that, and then we’ll wrap it up.

Alright! We have a few folks in each bucket. But most of the respondents have a dedicated manager or team or manage when I or others have the time. So that’s great. If you’re in any of the other buckets, you’ll still get a lot of value out of today’s session.

Alright. So kick us off, Eugenia, what is affiliate diversification? And why do you need it?

Eugenia Baidoo: Of course. Thank you, Melissa. So affiliate diversification is essentially making sure that you have at least one type of partner within your ecosystem, within your affiliate program as well. It helps you really to understand and reach new audiences that help to meet consumers at different stages of their buying journey. You can also get a return on your investment. Much higher in affiliate programs. 

If you’re working on being more open in terms of working with different partner types versus just working with one partner type – I’ve had brands that want to work with just influencers, or just want to work with certain types of publishers – but if they were to open up their program a little bit more and include a different type of partner in their mix, it can really help increase their return on the investment. And it also helps to mitigate risk from relying on just one type of partner’s performance with the ecosystem. With the economic situation that’s going on in the world its really important to ensure that you’re diversifying and working across many different stages of the buying journey.

Melissa Weir: And it sounds like it’s really about different types of partners. But you can still have that same rigor of making sure that the partner matches your niche right? So it’s not just like any partner. It’s like a partner that still matches. But they might serve different purposes. Is that right?

Eugenia Baidoo: That’s correct. So there’s different types of partner types that fit into different … I guess you would call stages. So essentially, if you’re trying to protect your brand equity, and you don’t want to work with specific coupon or cash-back sites, there are higher quality coupon cash back sites that other brands are working with. And you also want to be where your competition is also being posted up as well.

Melissa Weir: Great. Well, I think this is a great entrance into our next slide, which is, what are all of these affiliate partner types?

Eugenia Baidoo: Yes, that is perfect. So these are the top 8. There’s definitely more partner types out there. But these are the ones that we most commonly see. The ones that are more popular nowadays are in content. So within the content partner type are essentially websites, blogs like, you know, big publications, such as Conde Nast, Hearst, IGTV, and, like all those types of publisher sites, would be considered content.

So within the loyalty space they’re typically sites that allow you to gain some sort of points or some sort of award in order for you to get a certain percentage off your next purchase. And this is really important if you’re looking for repeat customers, because essentially they’re building that loyalty. They’re understanding your product. They’re going on a site that is offering them more incentives to come by and come back and buy again.

We also have Buy Now Pay Later, which is a pretty interesting partnership. And I think if you’re a retail merchant that has a higher price point for your products you might want to work with a BNPL partner like for Klarna, for example, where they’re they’ll have like pay-in-4 kind of payment method for you to also promote you on their app or on their site, and you get additional traffic like that as well.

Of course, coupon and cash back partners are partners that allow some sort of discount to their audience in order to get them to buy, and it can be very important if you’re looking to let some of your inventory go, or you’re looking to like, have some sort of sale or anything that’s coming up that aligns with those sale dates.

Melissa Weir: So it could be a great opportunity for post-holiday. Let’s say you have some extra inventory, and you wanna kind of, you know, refresh your inventory for the next season. That can be a great opportunity to do that.

Eugenia Baidoo: Exactly, and you can literally let them know like, Hey, this is the offer. Make it like nice, new, pretty and these coupon and cash buy partners do really well at converting those types of offers.

Melissa Weir: Alright. And let’s talk about how you actually work with those partners. What different types of revenue models are you seeing? And what’s most popular?

Eugenia Baidoo: Yes, so I’m actually seeing quite a couple of different revenue models as well. These are the 6 most common revenue models that you’ll generally see when you’re working with an affiliate. So what I’m starting to see a shift towards in the industry right now is cost per click. I thought that was also pretty interesting. Since I’m having conversations with some larger publications. They typically wanna get paid out on clicks. And you can also do a commission cap on it, or whatever the case may be. But if you’re looking for evergreen content, and they don’t necessarily want to work with you on a flat fee, or you can’t upfront that cost. You might want to work with them on a cost per click basis. 

We also have the most common one, which is the CPA, which is the cost per acquisition. So an affiliate gets paid when a conversion takes place. And obviously this is the most preferred method for the merchants, essentially because they’re paying out whenever a conversion has taken place. Lately it’s still popular, but they’re moving away from that essentially, with some of the partner types. Because they want a bit more of an up-front investment so that they can continue to promote your products.

CPL, which is typically a cost per lead. It’s like an affiliate. They get paid when a lead form is filled out, and it’s not as popular essentially, because you’re filling out lead forms so mainly in like in the insurance and finance basis, you’ll start to see a lot of CPL deals, but for the most part, for, like retail merchants, you’ll mainly see, like CPC, CPA, hybrid and flat fee. 

So with the hybrid model, which is also very popular in the content space for those of you that are looking to work with a lot more content, they’ll typically ask for a flat fee upfront, and then an additional CPA on top of whatever sales that they’re able to drive. And that flat fee is just for them to be able to go back to the editors and have them create content centered around your products. 

Melissa Weir: It’s kind of like a service fee.

Eugenia Baidoo: Basically, you can consider it a service fee. It’s more of a guarantee that your content is gonna get written. Yeah. And then the CPA afterwards is just to ensure that the content is getting rankings. SEO is being updated over time, so providing that additional layer of the CPA kind of helps you stay top of mind to them.

Melissa Weir: Awesome, cool. Alright, our next poll. So what type of affiliates are you currently working with today? We’ll give you a minute to fill that out before we kind of talk through how you align all these different partner types and revenue models to your customer journey.

Alright. So, seeing mostly influencers, mostly affiliates. So not a ton of publishers and ambassadors. So that’s good to know as we kind of launch into some of these examples.

Alright, thanks everyone.

So this is how we’re defining, for the sake of today’s session, the customer journey. And obviously there’s a little bit of nuance in every brand’s customer journey. But we broke this out into 3 separate categories. And so we’ll define these now for the rest of the conversation where Eugenia will go through and kind of map different examples to each of these. 

The Awareness piece is really about that education. Maybe someone’s passively looking at a site, and they don’t know about your product, and they learn about it. So that might be the first entry point to learning about your product or brand.

Consideration would be where they already have some awareness of your product. Now they’re considering buying it – understanding, you know, maybe some of the details, the product details and looking at some competitor sites about that same product or similar product.

And then Purchase, the buyer knows that they want to buy it, and they’re looking for the best deal. And so they’re having high intent and seeking out a place to purchase.

So hopefully that sets you up well, Eugenia, for the rest of today’s conversation, where we start out with awareness.

Eugenia Baidoo: Oh, yeah. So basically awareness, right? So similar to what Melissa was saying, the goal is mainly for education. Right? So as a customer, awareness is the stage where I’m saying I have a question. Right? So my question is, what are high frequency products, or what is high frequency in general? What are the benefits of it? And then I’m gonna be researching that, looking through those topics and trying to figure out exactly what that product is, or what those merchants that offer it are. 

So you might want to work with a content site in the beginning right? A Dotdash Meredith, or Hearst, or a Linkby which offers opportunities to work with high quality publishers. Essentially where you write high level content that describes exactly what your product is, and describes a bit more about where you’re where you’re standing in terms of your business. Right. You also might want to work with influencers and ambassadors such as LTK, Shopstyle, and Mavely – those are places where you can kind of provide an elevated CPA, and you can work with some influencers that are gonna start showing your product initially for people that are curious about it.

Melissa Weir: So I’m thinking, like for myself, right when I come across a product, I’m either scrolling on social media, and I maybe don’t know a product exists. Or maybe in reading an online publication, you know, I know that Buzzfeed, for example, has a lot of e-commerce driven content. Are those some of the examples where a consumer would come across one of these types of partners?

Eugenia Baidoo: Exactly. I can even go online and say, what’s the best skin care? And then there’ll be an article that talks about the benefits of different skin care products and all that. And through those articles I’m gonna start going through the rabbit hole and thinking what’s the best skincare product for me, right? So that’s all within the awareness stage, more so consuming the content and understanding exactly how it works before you make a buyers decision.

Melissa Weir: And so I imagine, once you do that search of what the best skincare is for your face, you probably start considering which products work best for you.

Eugenia Baidoo: Exactly so you learn, oh, my God, I have an oily-type face or a dry-type face. Okay, well, what are the top 5 products for oily skin? So now, I’m in the consideration phase, and the consideration phase to me is understanding exactly what different types of products are out there that can meet the needs for myself.

So you might want to work as a merchant with review sites, or additionally, with influencers coupled together. So review sites such as review.com, Top10, or maybe even Dealmoon are all sites that will compare all the products, with you right next to your competitor. And if you know that your product is the best, whether it’s price-wise, whether it’s ingredients-wise or whatever your stance is, you know that you have a higher chance of getting considered for that product and getting that conversion in. So the consideration phase is also really important. And it’s important to be represented among some of these sites. So that you understand that, like, you know, your user actually understands where you stand within those products that they’re comparing you against.

Melissa Weir: Right. And those are some really high-intent consumers, right? They were like, you know, I’m in the market for something you offer. And now, I just wanna understand how it stacks up against what else is available. So it sounds like that’s a pretty imperative place to be.

Eugenia Baidoo: Exactly. And you would notice when you look at certain review sites. There are a lot of brands that are represented, and sometimes they might even be your competitors. So if you’re not next to where your competitors are, you’re kind of losing traffic to them.

Melissa Weir: Right. And tell us a little bit more about how influencers play a role in this part of the buying cycle.

Eugenia Baidoo: Yeah, influencers do play a major role in this as well, especially within the consideration phase. I don’t know about you, but I watch a lot of influencers that are trying out different products and trying to see, like showing the differences in their skin, and having 2 different products side by side and showing, okay, this is a more expensive product. This is the cheaper product. Putting the Logos up on the videos or whatever the case may be, and then showing what the results are looking like. So you definitely want to be represented in that way as well under the consideration phase when you’re working with influencers.

Melissa Weir: Yeah. And then these logos here, these are kind of like companies that allow you to connect with those influencers. Right? And so you don’t have to solely rely on finding that micro influencer and then reaching out to them. Is that right?

Eugenia Baidoo: Exactly. That’s correct. So like, if you’re working like a Shopstyle, or LTK, or even a Mavely, some of them, of course, are gonna ask you for flat fees, because they’re gonna say their influencers are top tier, and they have hundreds and thousands of followers. But some of them are also willing to take a CPA increase. Just keep in mind that when you’re working with influencers they are gonna ask for top tier CPA percentages, just so that they can continue to create more content around your product. So just be prepared for that.

Melissa Weir: Great. And then maybe you already mentioned this, Eugenia, but I apologize if I missed it on the review sites. What are the most common revenue models associated with those?

Eugenia Baidoo: Yes. So review sites. Majority of them are gonna be CPA, some of them are gonna want CPC, and a hybrid sort of deal if you really want to be like, put next to a competitor. So it really just depends on which ones that you’re talking to. But I always like to encourage Merchants talking directly to these publishers. I love to do direct introductions and let them have the conversation from there, so that you can understand the different types of offerings that they can provide you just because it comes off like their review site doesn’t mean that they don’t offer other things in terms of like social media placements or different type of placements to get you in front of that audience.

Melissa Weir: Alright going into the final stage for today: Purchase.

Eugenia Baidoo: Yes. So like once I have decided that I wanna buy a specific product, and I’ve compared it against all the other competitors, I’m gonna see If there’s a little discount? Or is there a sale somewhere that I can basically take advantage of if I’m looking to buy now?

And that’s when coupon cash-back and loyalty sites really tend to come into play.  It’s that you’re offering maybe 2% off right? But that’s still something to people and customers, especially in this economy, that are looking for some sort of sale or some sort of deal that they feel like they’re getting from your product. So of course, this is like a very, very low funnel opportunity. Coupon sites drive a ton of sales for a lot of merchants, and there’s different types of coupon and cash-back sites that you can work with that will align with your brand. So, if you don’t want to work with a specific one because you feel like it’s not gonna align with your brand, there’s higher quality ones that you can work with. That will give you the sales that you’re looking for, as well as maintaining your brand equity.

Now, some of them, because they’re high quality, might also ask for an integration fee, or they might ask for a different type of fee that’s associated with it. But you know, everything is always up to negotiation when you’re talking to these publishers.

Melissa Weir: And what would be the reason why you would go for a cash-back site versus a coupon site? Or do you always recommend a combination of both?

Eugenia Baidoo: I always recommend a combination, but it also depends on the brand itself. So, like some people see cash-back as more of a higher tier than they see coupon. And cash-back is essentially like, okay, I rather prefer my customer make some money back versus getting a discount off of the products that I’m selling. So that also kind of works into play in terms of how you position yourself.

If they don’t want any cash back, you might want to consider working with a loyalty site. Like a Honey – they have a Honey Gold program in which if you’re offering a certain percentage, they

give it to the customer as points that they can use to earn towards a specific reward later on versus getting a discount per item. So there is definitely a bit of nuance to each one, and how they work. But they definitely do take your program to the next level if you incorporate them into your partner mix.

Melissa Weir: That makes sense. And, like you were saying earlier, too. You know you can use these different partners for different goals you have for your own business right? So like, if you are trying to get rid of some last season inventory, maybe that’s where you focus on those coupon sites, because, you know that inventory is maybe less valuable to you because you’re focused on the next wave. And that’s where the new inventory can go into the cash back sites or the loyalty programs. And so I guess it really depends on what your goals are for that season or quarter that you’re planning for.

Eugenia Baidoo: Exactly. You can even do it by SKU. You can have an offer that’s like free shipping. It doesn’t necessarily always have to be like a percentage off. Like if you’re offering free shipping, that’s something that a coupon, loyalty or cash-back site can use as an offer and present it on their site. It doesn’t necessarily always have to be a percentage off.

Melissa Weir: What a great tip!

Eugenia Baidoo: Yeah, buy one, get one. You know – any deals that you’re already gonna be offering? Just give it to your affiliates as well.

Melissa Weir: Yeah, that’s a great one. I’m gonna have to do my own searching on some of those sites.

Eugenia Baidoo: I’m telling you. It’s out here.

Melissa Weir: Yeah, you got all the pro tips. So this is obviously, you know, if you really kind of plan out your affiliate partnerships in each of these categories and think about all of your business goals as we discussed, that’s a lot of people and programs and offers to manage. So I’ll have you kick us off, Eugenia. What is really important from your perspective in a platform to help you manage all of these successfully?

Eugenia Baidoo: Yes, of course, you want a good management and tracking software to be able to understand exactly how your partner types are doing, based on each stage of the funnel that you’re at.

You also wanna provide customized offers and unique commission tiers. Sometimes I hear a lot from the merchants that say, Oh, I don’t wanna provide the same commission rate that I’m giving to one partner over the other. And we absolutely have that ability for you to be able to tier up the commissions that you wanna provide to each partner to type. So if you wanna give coupon or cash back or loyalty partners like 2 to 5, but give an elevated CPA to an influencer, you can definitely do that. And that’s something that’s actually like a strategy that I would encourage.

You can also provide customized offers like I mentioned before. If you have a free shipping offer, if you have offers that are a little bit out of the ordinary or a sale that’s coming around a certain time period, you can definitely send out an email blast over to the affiliates and have them promote that or put it right in the creative sections in our platform in order for them to be able to pull that information easily.

Melissa Weir: I was gonna say, well, it sounds like, you know, what’s really imperative is like flexibility right? And being able to really customize your offers with all of those different goals and types and models that we discussed. And so it’s really important to be able to have a platform that powers all of those considerations. 

And I think another thing that we talked about, too, I hear a lot of brands are concerned about is, you know, that brand equity. Right? So it’s not only just about what partners you’re working with and what that says about your brand, but also, what do your links look like, where do your links go? And maintaining that brand equity from awareness all the way to purchase that they’re purchasing on your site. And so, you know, of course, Refersion allows for you to do all of these things here listed, but also something we really strongly believe in it is that first party tracking that allows you to maintain your your domain through all of your tracking links, so that you elevate your brand and and check out always on your site. Unless you’re working with one of these other partners that you check it on their site. But if you’re working with these links, it allows you to maintain that equity which is really important.

Eugenia Baidoo: Exactly.

Melissa Weir: Oh, and one thing I’ll mention here, too. When it comes to control, because brand equity is a lot about control, it’s not just about, you know… Eugenia talked a lot about different partner types that you can go and recruit, but it’s also great to have an opportunity to have affiliates come to you and apply for your program and maintain the control of who gets into your program and and who doesn’t. And so having an application process that you can review, approve, deny, is really important as you grow and more partners learn about you and your products and want to promote you. So another piece of maintaining that brand equity and control of your program.

Eugenia Baidoo: Yeah. And one more point, too, Melissa is that affiliates are all about testing and learning. So essentially when you’re starting off, you may not all get the results that you’re looking for. But you’re testing with new partner types, you’re testing with new partner relationships. Which everyone that’s doing well you’ll wanna keep and which ones that aren’t working you so well, you might wanna reach out to them and figure out other ways that you can optimize. And if it still doesn’t work out, you can always remove them from your program.

Melissa Weir: So true, so true. Yeah, you’re not. You’re not beholden. You always have that element of control. Yeah, great point.

And another part of control – and just like management, you know, as you can imagine, with all of these different partner types – there’s a ton of commissions to be calculated. So finding a platform that allows you to automate that work for you so you can easily and and correctly calculate commissions is really important for not only knowing what’s working in your program

with that tracking piece, but also being able to confidently pay out your affiliate partners so that they’re happy with the work that they’re doing for you, and it’s a strong relationship. 

So you know, one thing we hear a lot from our affiliate partners – and you know, Eugenia hears this more than anything – but you know, having seamless bulk payments right? So that the affiliate is receiving one payment, you know, monthly versus, you know, 5 or 6 throughout the month. It just makes the accounting (and for all of us who had to submit our taxes this month) for the tax piece,really easy. So automating and delivering those payments in a really seamless way will not only save you time, but also strengthen that relationship with your affiliates which, you know, is really fundamental to having a successful program and channel.

Eugenia Baidoo: Exactly.

Melissa Weir: Anything else, Eugenia? I just moved forward, but anything else on that?

Eugenia Baidoo: Oh, no, yeah, you answered that beautifully.

Melissa Weir: Alright? So yeah. So I mean, there’s obviously tons of opportunity out there to work with new partners. Eugenia, how do you advise that folks go about recruiting and maintaining these partnerships.

Eugenia Baidoo: Of course, Melissa. So the first step, I would always say, is to do your research. Like I would look at sites that your competitors are on that you’re not on. I would look at sites that you feel like your audience might be a fit for, like you might wanna test with. You wanna research different types of affiliates and what they do, where they’re positioning is at, and how they can also provide you an added value to your brand right? And once you have done that research, and you have an example of some ideal affiliates that you want to work with, we have recruitment templates available for you here at Refersion. So you can definitely reach out and say, hey, can I have a recruitment template? We can send it out to you as well just to help you put your best foot forward as you’re reaching out to these affiliates as well.

And of course, leverage the experts. Right? So I’m here managing relationships with publishers all day every day. If you have any questions in terms of how publishers work in terms of what you think would be a fit or any relationships that we have, we can definitely talk and discuss and see how we can help take your program to the next level. 

And of course the last part is consistent communication. I always, always, always encourage merchants to speak directly to their affiliates, especially their top performing ones. And just to understand, like, where you guys are in terms of performance – how you can optimize a little bit more, communicate and understand exactly where your traffic is coming from. Or, if anything was to happen, you understand exactly where your affiliates stand, where you stand, and whether or not you need to also be looking out for new and different types of relationships.

Melissa Weir: Awesome, and I believe our recruitment templates guide is in the chat. So go ahead and download that while you have it. We’ll also send it out after the session. But, Eugenia, you mentioned leveraging the experts, which, of course you are. What’s the best way for folks to get in touch with you?

Eugenia Baidoo: Yes. So if you’re looking to get in touch with me, you can email me at [email protected]. If you forget for any reason you can always email [email protected]. Say that you’re looking to talk to the publisher manager over there, and we can get something set up and see if we can get you some relationships coming through.

Melissa Weir: Awesome. Alright. And we’re gonna close out with our final poll. If you’d like to speak with a Refersion expert, you want to learn more about how Refersion can help you or what kinds of partners we work with, go ahead and fill out this poll, and we will be in touch. We will also continue to send you educational resources after this session related to this topic. But yeah, we’d love to know if if you want to raise your hand so I’ll give you a moment to fill that out

And while we’re doing that we also have a few sessions this week. So this is the first of a few live events we have available. We have a Refersion Live Demo this Thursday, and it’s also offered every other Thursday at 2 pm Eastern, and this is for folks who are maybe not ready to talk to a salesperson yet. But you wanna learn more about Refersion, this is the perfect opportunity for you. You can use the QR code or just go right to that landing page link. 

And then we also have a Refersion Live Q&A. So this is for folks, maybe you’ve already started your Refersion 14 day trial and you want to ask questions about getting set up. This is a great session for you. But basically come with your questions and get them answered during the session.

Alright. So I’ll leave this slide here. I’m gonna go ahead and look at some of the questions that we’ve got in. But if you haven’t asked your questions already. Now is the time.

First one: We sell pet products, and the value of our products are quite low around $15. What is the best way to structure the revenue model for influencers and affiliates? Great question.

Eugenia Baidoo: Yeah, that’s actually a really good question. So because your value products is low around $15, I would recommend that you work with… well, first of all, be open to working with as many affiliates as possible. Start off with the CPA model, have conversations with the top ones that are working really well for you, and then talk to those affiliates directly to see if there’s any additional optimizations that you can get from them. It’s always a trial and error as well, like I mentioned before. So you might want a little bit more in terms of like relationships that you feel would be beneficial to your brand.

Melissa Weir: All right. I hope that answered your questions.

Next one: Does Refersion support costs per click? We currently pay affiliates on conversion and acquisitions.

Eugenia Baidoo: That’s a good question. I believe we can support the cost per click model. I have to double check that for you, Clay, but if you have a chance, just send me a quick email, and I can definitely get back to you on that. But I would be surprised if we didn’t.

Melissa Weir: Alright! And I think this one may have already been answered in discussion, but I’ll go ahead and mention it in case other people have this question, too. But as a small brand with minimal budget, we currently use CPA for affiliates through Refersion. What other model types would you suggest for small businesses just starting out? And how would you go about reaching those audiences?

Eugenia Baidoo: That’s a good question. So essentially, you’re a small brand that doesn’t have as much budget. But you’re looking to also work with higher quality affiliates. And you want to go about reaching those audiences. I would suggest that you start off with CPA. You might wanna really do some research in terms of some affiliates that might make sense for you. So like, let’s say, you have an affiliate that is asking for $1,500. Right? You might want to ask them, What’s your return on investment with that spend, and what else are you going to be able to get for that $1,500 for example. 

Or you can change up your strategy where you can start working with loyalty and cash back sites. First get as much sales in as possible, and then use the investments – basically like the money that you’re making from those cash back coupon loyalty sites – to invest in content sites as well. So I know a lot of people that do that as well where they start really low.  Just like, first, let’s get the sales in. After you get the sales in, let’s see what we can take out and what else we can add in in terms of higher quality partner types like content.

Melissa Weir: Alright another question: We have a subscription, fast moving consumer goods, product that is sustainable hygiene paper. Does best practice say to pay per prescription cycle on first purchase only for affiliates?

Eugenia Baidoo: That’s an interesting question. And honestly, that’s up to you to decide that. But I have seen some payment models that are like, Okay, we’ll pay for the first customer that’s acquired, even though it’s a subscription model. And then there’s others that pay on the lifetime of the customer. So it’s like, you know, 10% for the first time you acquire a new customer that’s subscribing to the product and 2% on the lifetime of the customer as long as they maintain a custom with us.

That kind of like, depends on how you want to use that strategy. But for content partners or partners that are creating some sort of web traffic for you, it might be beneficial to pay them on the lifetime, because then it encourages them to create more content around you to create more, basically more buzz around your product. So it really depends on where you want your strategy to be first.

Melissa Weir: Yeah. And you can also set up those commission structures differently, right, for those different partners so it could be one for, you know, one channel and one for the other, which is good to remember. That’s a great point.

Eugenia Baidoo: Yeah, so you can do like influencers for a one time purchase and then keep the lifetime. But, like for content publications or other ones that are gonna live on the site forever, do a lifetime.

Melissa Weir: Right right. And I think this is mentioned too. But you know it depends also on the price of your subscription. What is that value? Right? And how much? Yeah, you want to make sure you’re saving in terms of profit. So yeah, lots to consider. But what a great question.

Eugenia Baidoo: We have one more.

Melissa Weir: We’re getting fire questions! I’m so impressed. This is fun. Alright! Hannah has one more question. I’m wondering how often other merchants coupon codes to affiliates… We have a big issue with our personalized codes we give to affiliates. We find typically they end up on other third party sites that we’re not affiliated with so ultimately the coupon code connected to their affiliate link, they’re getting commission, basically on other sites. Do you see this often, and how do you protect yourself? If you have any tips, Eugina.

Eugenia Baidoo: Yes, so coupon sites definitely do that where the codes would leak, and then you’d end up finding it on other sites. Some of the biggest suggestions that I’ve gotten when I’m talking to other coupon sites that are like, you know, more of, like a different tier is to give them exclusive codes. So when you give an exclusive code to them and you do it through our platform, they will only get paid out via that exclusive code. So if any other sites were to use the same code, they would not get paid out on that exclusive code. So definitely reach out to me and let’s talk more about different ways that maybe if you do want to give out a code, you can go about it, and we can figure out some alternative solutions as well.

Melissa Weir: Yeah, that’s a great point. And also it seems like what might happen is, the code goes to the influencer, and the influencer is passing it to other sites. And so they’re kinda juking their stats. So yeah, I think it’s a great question, Hannah, and feel free to reach out to have a direct convo for some strategies.

Melissa Weir: Yeah, she said Awesome. Thanks so much. We’ll reach out! Great, cool. Any other questions? We’ll give everyone another minute or so.

Really appreciate everyone’s contribution.

Eugenia Baidoo: Yeah. And one other thing I would say, if you are doing codes, too, is that you might want to offer them to a closed user group versus, like a larger coupon site. For example, we have publishers that are like employee discounts or employee perks where, like, they have to be verified as an employee of a company to take part in that like exclusive discount. Or for doctors, nurses we have publishers that will verify that they are who they are, and then you can provide them with an exclusive code instead. And if your product aligns with students or anything like that, you know we do work with Unidays, which is now known as Pion, where, if you give them an exclusive code, you know, is only going to be sent out and verified by students.

Melissa Weir: Awesome! Hot with the pro tips. I gotta say, I learned a ton from you, Eugenia, going through this session with you. It was great. And if anyone has any more questions, feel free to email us at helpme at Refersion.com. And you’ll be hearing from us within the next 24 hours, with the recording and some links to some of the other sessions we have this week and the recruiting templates. But thank you so much for joining us today, and we really appreciate it and hope to hear from you soon.

Eugenia Baidoo: Perfect talk to you guys soon.

Melissa Weir: Alright! Have a good one.

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