Affiliate marketing is a hugely impactful type of marketing. Companies are more and more turning to affiliate marketing as at least a component of their marketing practice, especially because affiliate marketing can be very cost-effective and bring in new customers regularly.
However, on the back end, it’s as important that you keep your affiliates happy as that you keep your customers happy. How can you find the right affiliate marketing platform and create happier affiliate partners?
Here’s what you should know.
The Benefits of Better Affiliate Partnerships
First of all, what makes it such a good idea to hunt for better affiliate partnerships in the first place? Here are four critical reasons to try and create better affiliate partnerships.
- Trustworthy Relationship With Your Affiliates
A trustworthy affiliate relationship is everything in the world of affiliate marketing. If your affiliates don’t trust you, how can they convince customers to trust you as well? It’s not enough to just have a good product or a good brand image. You also need to have your affiliates trust you. This is one of the best ways to build long-lasting affiliate relationships, which are the types of relationships that will end up paying off the most.
- Better Sales Numbers
Affiliates do speculative work for you. All the work that goes into the advertising process is speculative for an affiliate because they only get paid when they actually make a sale. They’re more likely to work harder at their job if they know you’ll treat them well, which means more sales for you.
- Higher Conversion Rate
The work that your affiliates do may also transfer into a higher conversion rate. Conversion rate is an important part of your marketing process, as getting more eyes on your product doesn’t necessarily matter if you never convert those people into paying customers. The general conversion rate across industries is around 2.35%, and you want that number as high as possible. Better work before a customer clicks may create a higher likelihood that the customer makes a purchase.
- More Affiliates and, by Extension, More Customers
When you treat your affiliates well, word gets around. Think of it as an extension of the affiliate program itself; if a blogger who works with your affiliate program is going to recommend affiliate programs to a new blogger, how likely are they to recommend your program specifically? The larger your affiliate network, the more customers you can bring in.
What Do Your Affiliates Really Want?
Now that you understand the benefits of affiliates, it’s important to understand what they want. Their desires are really very simple, and it may surprise you how simple they are, in fact. Affiliates want three main things:
- On-Time Payments
On-time payment is extremely important. No affiliate wants to wonder when their paycheck will be, especially if affiliate marketing is a large source of income. In one survey by BloggingX, 65% of merchants responding said that they earned 5-20% of their annual revenue through affiliate marketing, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at, and they need to have that payment on time.
- Accurate Payments
Finally, even if it’s an accident, no one wants to have a company pay them less than they’ve earned. Think about how you might feel if your company made 100 sales of $100 each during a day, but at the end of the day, you had only made $8,000 instead of the $10,000 you knew you earned. Inaccurate payments can make it feel like a company is scamming or cheating an affiliate, even if it’s an accident.
- Consolidated Payouts
Affiliates often prefer consolidated payouts because they simplify their accounting processes. Instead of receiving multiple payouts for separate transactions from the same merchant, they receive one lump sum, making it easier to track their earnings and manage their finances. Additionally, consolidated payouts can reduce the fees associated with multiple transactions, ultimately increasing the affiliate’s earnings.
How Refersion’s Unified Payments Can Help You and Your Affiliates
So, how can Refersion’s Unified Payments help? There are a number of benefits to Unified Payments that can help you retain your affiliates and keep them for years to come. Here are the top three benefits:
1. Seamless, Automated Payments
A major advantage of Refersion’s Unified Payments is its automation of affiliate payments, ensuring you have sufficient funds for approved conversions each month. This removes the need for manual payment calculations and reduces the risk of funding shortfalls.
2. Payment Options Tailored to Affiliates’ Preferences
Unified Payments offers multiple payout options for affiliates, relieving you from the tedious and complex task of managing payments across different platforms. Available options include PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, and ACH/Bank transfer, though restrictions apply. By allowing affiliates to choose their preferred payment method, you can strengthen your relationships with them.
3. Cultivate Trust and Stand Out to VIP Affiliates
Unified Payments ensures your affiliates receive their commission payments reliably every month in one consolidated transfer. This consistent and dependable method has quickly become the preferred choice for affiliates, particularly VIP publishers, because it simplifies their accounting processes and ensures timely, hassle-free payments.
4. Streamline Taxes with Built-In Tax Documentation
Unified Payments can generate IRS 1099 forms for eligible affiliates which will help you eliminate the tedious task of manual tax document preparation and reduce errors.
The Bottom Line
Building high-quality affiliate marketing partnerships is key to your affiliate marketing success. If you don’t understand what affiliates want in a brand partner, then you’re not going to build good relationships, and that’s likely not going to pay off in the long run. With Unified Payments, however, you can optimize your affiliate marketing program for you and your affiliates, which will help you create high-value partnerships and earn more revenue.
