This is the fourth step in the 7 Steps To Upgrade Your Affiliate Program for 2021 series, providing actionable strategies to build a stronger affiliate program.
Check out the rest of the steps in the series:
Check out the rest of the steps in the series:
- Step #1: Monitor and Stop Coupon Poaching
- Step #2: Use First Touch Attribution for Content Publishers
- Step #3: Track Both Purchases And Events
- Step #5: Use QR Codes to Track Offline Affiliates & Partners
- Step #6: Drill Down Into Affiliate Placement Reporting
- Step #7: Catch More Fraud & Automate Prevention
Whether on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, or via livestream, these passionate individuals showcase their daily lives to inspire others and grow their careers.
When it comes to affiliate marketing, influencers play a deeper role in three key areas of campaign promotion:
- Direct Connection To Relevant Audiences: Brands can access consumers via sponsored or organic influencer content, promoting products and services to niche audiences.
- Capturing Attention Share: The average consumer sees between 4,000-10,000 ads per day (yikes!). Influencers get the consumer to focus on a single brand.
- Instilling Trust: When influencers show consumers exactly how something works and why it’s needed, consumers are likely to trust their recommendations.
Seemingly ideal sources for campaign promotion, only one thing stands in the way of making influencers one of the strongest partner types in any affiliate program: poor tracking.
Whether it’s a loss of a sale due to a messy link, or lack of credit for a sale due to improper attribution, influencers don’t have it easy.
Coupon codes and smarter coupon-related reporting, however, can be the remedies for tracking hazards that cause influencers to walk away from an affiliate program and take their strong revenue-generating capabilities with them.
Let’s dive into the first issue resulting in poor tracking: overcomplicated affiliate links...
Messy Affiliate Links Lead To Missed Opportunities
Standard affiliate links are effective for more affiliates, yet provide roadblocks for influencers.
Example #1:
A YouTuber promoting your supplement says, “For more info on this amazing product, visit mysite.com/proteinpower/?cid=1234&subid=1234 and pick up this protein powder.” Ouch, not even close to a smooth call-to-action.
Example #2:
A reality TV star is promoting your lip gloss via Instagram. She can change her bio link to a long campaign URL, add the link via a third-party tool like Linkin.bio, or post the link inside the post itself. These choices all present serious barriers to easy conversion.
The good news is that your partner marketing platform should be able to solve this linking issue via custom coupon codes and coupon code tracking URLs. Let’s walk through how this is done via Everflow.
Using Coupon Codes To Strengthen Influencer Sales Via Everflow
To prevent derailing the momentum on an influencer-generated sale, Everflow provides clients with the ability to generate custom coupon codes.
With these easily-shareable codes, influencers can promote your brand via video, podcast, live stream, or virtually any medium they have access to. Even offline promotion is possible!
Best of all, these codes are “clickless”, meaning that the consumer won’t have to click on an affiliate link to generate a sale. How easy is that?
To create a custom coupon code for one of your influencers, simply log into your Everflow dash and follow the instructions from this article.
The process entails providing some simple info about your code (shown below right) and then completing a few steps to return a coupon code parameter from your shopping cart.
BTW, if you’re using Shopify, coupon code functionality is automatically set up for you via the Everflow Shopify app.
After your code is created, the influencer will have a tool to easily promote your campaign across all channels, as well as an additional bonus -- a very sharable coupon code tracking URL.
Creating Coupon Code Tracking URLs With Everflow
Simply put, it’s way easier to share coupon code tracking URLs than standard affiliate links.
For example, you’re a Twitch streamer. Which URL sounds easier to mention to your subs?
- brandshop.com/insta1
- brandshop.com/product422/?cid=3773&affid=1222
Unless you’re getting paid per letter, option #1 (the Everflow Coupon Tracking Code URL) is the smarter option.
Not only is this URL easier to share, but it can also send consumers wherever you want to send them: either directly to your site, or to a custom landing page to drive the sale home.
As covered above, a coupon code tracking URL will be created for you when you create a new coupon code. Thus, essentially no extra action is needed on your end -- though we do recommend making a few customizations to suit your affiliate program’s goals.
You can get started today with steps to customize your coupon code tracking URLs here, or in this simple breakdown video by our marketing team.
Now that we’ve covered how to make sharing your products and services easier for your influencers, let’s dive into what you can do to optimize their performance via reporting.
First-Touch Attribution: Don’t Forget To Give Credit Where Credit Is Due
With their ability to introduce new audiences to products or services, influencers can drive high-intent consumers to take action. However, this prowess is a double-edged sword, with this scenario occurring often:
A consumer takes the recommendation of an influencer, looks for a deal, and then makes the purchase at a coupon site. The influencer is then left without credit for his or her efforts.
The solution for this scenario (known as coupon poaching) involves utilizing Everflow’s Click to Conversion Time Reports.
With Click to Conversion Time Reports, you’ll keep influencers happier and strengthen your affiliate program overall by:
- Ensuring Influencers Are Properly Attributed: Define a window during which conversions are valid to avoid t attribution for conversions that happen too quickly (e.g. within 30 seconds of visiting a site), or to give more time to credit the first-touch source of the conversion -- often an influencer.
- Discovering Traffic Drivers: Identify influencers who were not on your radar before, but can be key partners for your program solely through their traffic generation efforts.
- Maintaining Program Engagement: Reduce churn and retention costs by keeping more influencers excited to be a part of your program.
Learn more here on how you can use Click to Conversion Time Reports to ensure proper credit for your influencers.
Your New Approach To Influencer Tracking Begins Today!
Through the methods listed above, you’ll strengthen influencer efforts across your entire affiliate program. If you need anything, book a demo and we’ll be happy to walk you through all aspects of coupon code tracking and Click to Conversion Time Reporting.
Ready For Your Next Step In Upgrading Your Affiliate Program?
Check out Step 5: Use QR Codes to Track Offline Affiliates & Partners
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