Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an integral channel to add to your digital acquisition mix from a cost efficiency, brand awareness and ROI standpoint – which is why partnering with an industry-leading affiliate marketing agency will take your business to the next level.
At Embryo, we take time to understand our client’s needs, as well as the needs of their customers and from this, we create impactful affiliate strategies that are both engaging and lucrative. Whilst optimising the full funnel, we execute campaigns that drive traffic, boost brand awareness and convert site visitors into returning, loyal customers.
Whether you’re new to this niche and looking to expand your digital mix or looking for a new digital marketing agency to revamp and supercharge your affiliate channel, our award-winning team can help.
Let’s jump in.
Work With An Experienced Affiliate Marketing Agency, Embryo, Today.
Scale your business with impactful affiliate marketing campaigns. Our affiliate marketing team at Embryo are ready and waiting to help you.
Paid marketing channels are crucial to The Range’s online success so finding an agency that understood that and would have the tools in place to take it to a new level was critical. Not only are Embryo incredibly innovative and knowledgeable, but they used all that to tell a story about how their interpretation of PPC and paid social would be ideal for The Range.
So, What is Affiliate Marketing?
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is a performance-based channel in which a publisher is awarded a commission for their part in generating a sale for an advertiser.
Publishers promote brands, products and services using their unique tracking link, which sends traffic to the brand’s website. They are then rewarded a commission when a customer clicks through an affiliate link, goes to the advertiser’s website and performs the commissionable action.
- Advertiser – the brand or company being promoted
- Publisher – the person or company that promotes the advertiser’s products or services
- Customer – the consumer engaging with the affiliate links and making the purchase
- Network – a company that acts as a middle-man between advertisers and publishers. They provide a platform for tracking, reporting and recruitment of new partners
Stakeholders of the affiliate channel
Within the channel, there are four main stakeholders who each play a part in the success of campaigns.
Why should brands use Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing enables brands to effectively market a product or service, whilst reaching new audiences and growing brand recognition, building customer loyalty and lifetime value and creating a multi-channel approach to ultimately scale performance to new heights.
There are many benefits for brands to invest in the affiliate channel; firstly being that the channel is widely measured on a pay-for-performance basis, lowering the risk and initial cost output for brands.
Utilising the affiliate channel allows brands to target customers at each touchpoint of their journey, whether attracting attention at the top of the funnel with a compelling content piece or engaging an influencer campaign, or closing a conversion with an irresistible incentivised offer.
There is a huge pool of affiliates varying in promotional type, territory, size and audience that advertisers can work with, which lends itself to growth, expansion and scale of exposure.
Different publishers
One reason why the affiliate channel is so advantageous is the variety of publisher types, targeting customers at each touchpoint of their buying journey, that brands can work with.
For example, if new customer acquisition is your objective you would focus your energy and budget on upper funnel affiliates such as influencer and content sites to drive awareness and interest. Examples of sites like these include LTK and Metapic.
If your brand is struggling with the rate of conversion, mid-funnel shopping directories and comparison engines are there for customers in the consideration and evaluation stage. For example, Shareight and Redbrain.
Then towards the bottom of the funnel, to provide incentives and aid conversions, you would optimise with cashback and voucher sites and lastly, to build lifetime value and advocacy, you have loyalty platforms and closed user groups.
Measuring success
Measuring the success of affiliate campaigns is dependent on various factors; publisher type, use of creative, level of tenancy investment and how competitive the brand’s offering is.
For example, when measuring the success by publisher type, you may focus on the level of clicks generated from a content piece, conversion rate and revenue from voucher exposure, increased percentage of repeat customers from a loyalty platform and consistent sign-ups/leads from an email campaign.
Attribution models
Similar to other paid media channels, there are multiple attribution models that advertisers can use. Each model comes with pros and cons, and ultimately the best model is what suits you and your objectives.
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Last Click
The most commonly used is a last-click model. The last click attributes all of the credit to the last interaction the customer had before converting. This model is preferable for most advertisers due to its simplicity.
Attributing on a last-click basis does have some cons; it means that lower funnel affiliates (e.g voucher sites) are likely to receive the commission as there’s more of an incentive for customers to convert, whereas influencers and content sites are less likely to be awarded for their contribution in piquing the customer’s interest and beginning the buying journey.
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First Click
Alternatively, brands can attribute on a first-click basis should they wish to. A first-click model attributes the sale to the publisher right at the beginning of the journey, which triggers the first interaction.
This model enables upper funnel affiliate types to be awarded fairly for leading a customer to the sale, however, it can be controversial as you could argue that without the incentivised aspect, the customer may not have converted.
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Linear
A linear attribution model places equal credit across each touchpoint in the customer’s journey.
This is the fairest model as it allows each publisher at every touchpoint to be credited a commission for their contribution to the sale. This model allows you to identify influential publishers and is great for smaller programmes during their infancy as it indicates where to optimise and invest the budget.
Whilst it is fair, this model is based on the assumption that each touchpoint was as effective as the others, which isn’t necessarily the case, therefore advertisers could be overspending on commissions to publishers that had little contribution.
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Time-decay
Lastly, there is the time-decay attribution model, whereby commission is split across each touchpoint, but not evenly. Commission split starts lowest at the beginning of the journey and increases closer to conversion; e.g. first click – 20%, second click – 20%, last click – 60%.
This model is a great way of relationship building, it allows advertisers to recognise and credit publishers’ efforts along the way, whilst still attributing the majority of commission to the last click partner.
Similarly to a linear approach, a time-decay model may give an inaccurate gauge of the value of each engagement, therefore it’s not as widely used.
What sets Embryo’s affiliate management apart?
With decades of combined experience in the world of digital marketing, the award-winning team here at Embryo are well-versed in creating and executing successful affiliate strategies, tailored to each client’s KPIs, goals and budgets.
Our affiliate team prides itself on their analytical approach, providing in-depth reporting, at the channel and campaign levels and continuously adapting strategies and campaign angles in accordance with account data.
Seeing what others don’t and always striving to go above and beyond for our clients, we pride ourselves on responsive and dynamic affiliate marketing strategies that align with industry trends and the ever-changing digital landscape.
Our bespoke approach focuses on full-funnel optimisation, implementing long-tail campaigns, nurturing strong publisher relationships and keeping ROI at the core of our strategies.
How do we do it?
We contribute to your business’s growth through affiliate marketing by identifying publishers with synergistic values to your brand, building strong relationships and then executing strong and engaging campaigns.
Our affiliate team conducts a thorough competitor analysis to identify any gaps or missed opportunities within your current strategy to effectively optimise your programme and ensure your brand is maintaining an equal presence amongst similar brands in the space.
We consistently monitor and analyse your affiliate programme data, KPIs and conversion metrics as part of our ongoing optimisation process. By doing this, we can be reactive by amending campaigns or implementing new strategies based on the data.
Specialising in Affiliates, PPC, Search (paid and organic), Social and PR, we’ve worked collaboratively with our clients since 2015 to put their products and/or services at the forefront of their customer’s buying journey.
If you’re looking for an affiliate marketing agency that focuses on delivering value, exceptional results and extensive industry knowledge, then get in touch to find out more.
FAQs on affiliate marketing
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What is an affiliate programme?
An affiliate programme is where your activity is tracked, commission levels are set, promotional materials are shared, product feeds are kept etc. It is essentially a hub for your brand, whereby publishers can access assets and offers to promote your brand. Affiliate programmes are run through an affiliate network e.g AWIN, Rakuten, Webgains, Partnerize etc.
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Why work with an affiliate marketing agency?
Hiring an agency to manage your affiliate channel provides access to a huge network of connections, experience and expertise needed to excel, whilst being a cost-effective solution versus creating an in-house team.
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What actions can you pay commission on?
A cost-per-acquisition model is the most common and well-established payment method for e-commerce brands, however B2B and subscription-led brands may choose to pay out on a cost-per-lead. Cost-per-click is also a recognised affiliate payment model but tends to be campaign/partner-specific.
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How are affiliate conversions tracked?
Every publisher has a unique ID that they can then layer into a brand’s programme’s tracking links, to enable activity to be tracked and recorded.
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How do you choose which network to work with?
Each affiliate network has different strengths and USPs, this is a decision we would support you with, based on your budgets, goals and preferences for the channel.
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Can you have an affiliate programme in multiple countries?
Of course, you can launch affiliate programmes in any territory that your brand operates in.
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What brands work well with affiliate marketing?
With the channel being so versatile, any business, whether it be B2C or B2B can utilise affiliate marketing.
Testimonials
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