Affiliate Marketing Tactics to Increase Customer Retention and Conversions

In the world of affiliate marketing, if you retain your customers and increase their lifetime value, you’ll have a much better chance of boosting your conversion rates. (That means more money in your pocket as a business.) To help you increase retention and boost conversions, we’ve put together a list of our top four affiliate marketing tactics for growth. Let’s start off by discussing the power of choosing the right people to join your affiliate program.

According to Statistica, affiliate marketing spending is on the rise and the need for affiliate marketing doesn’t look like it’s winding down anytime soon. In fact, affiliate marketing spending is projected to reach $8 billion by 2022. That’s a lot!

So, how do you launch a successful affiliate marketing program? The answer is by choosing the right people. In order to have a thriving affiliate marketing program, you need to choose the right people to rally for your company and spread awareness of your products or services. (Your campaign will only grow if the people it attracts are excited to share it with their friends and fellow consumers.)
Fun fact: popular brands like Barnes & Noble, Blue Apron, and TurboTax all utilize affiliate marketing as a piece of their overall marketing strategy. Affiliate marketing also contributes to customer retention success and an increase in brand awareness amongst potential consumers.

Next, you want to make sure that you are offering rewards or promotions that your affiliates actually want. Here are a few examples of incentives that you can offer as part of your affiliate program:

• Gift Cards
• Branded Swag
• Discounts
• Reward Points
• Free Products or Services
• Commission

Not sure what incentives to offer? The only way you will find out is by asking! If you haven’t launched your affiliate marketing program yet, try running a poll on social media to see what your customers/followers prefer. By running a poll, you will create a sense of excitement around your future affiliate marketing program and get actionable insights to launch a successful affiliate program.

If you already have a program in place, survey your affiliates to see if they are satisfied with your current incentives or not. (You may be surprised by what you find out from the survey.)

Let’s look at an example of a company that offers a great incentive for its affiliates. Barnes & Noble affiliates will receive monthly commission checks when consumers purchase books or other products via their unique affiliate link. This is a win-win for both the company and the affiliate. Barnes & Noble will bring in more sales while the affiliate will receive a commission for their influence over someone else’s purchasing decision.

Did you know that Influencer marketing is expected to grow to be worth $13.8 billion in 2021? This is why it’s essential for influencers to be part of your affiliate strategy. By pre-selecting influencers that are industry thought leaders or in your specific niche, you will have a better likelihood of success.

Want to know what company does a great job at using influencers to further affiliate sales? FabFitFun. If you don’t know what FabFitFun is, FabFitFun is a subscription box service filled with makeup products, apparel, and more! If you type in “FabFitFun unboxing haul” in the YouTube search bar, you will see that many influencers have taken on the trend to create excitement around the subscription box in order to get discounts and other perks. Influencers will leave their affiliate link in the video description to make it easy for viewers to sign-up for the box. Rallying the help of influencers is one way to watch your affiliate program go viral. 

We all joke about how we think that advertisers are listening to our every move. One day you mention a certain product and then all of a sudden you get advertisements about that specific product all across various social media platforms and Google. What gives?

The culprit of this mystery is Pay-Per-Click Advertising or PPC advertising. This form of advertising is exactly what it sounds like it is — you pay the advertiser for every click you get on your ad. Because marketing can be a large expenditure for businesses, companies make it their mission to do extensive market research, so that they can launch ads that are catered to certain hyper-segmented audiences. And, you may be part of that audience.

Knowing this, how can you leverage the power of PPC advertising to spread the word about your affiliate program? You can use platforms like FaceBook, Instagram, Google, and more to ensure that your campaign is placed right in front of those who need to see it. You can also perform market research to ensure that your ad is designed and written with your end consumer in mind. This will lower your cost per click and increase your PPC ad viewability.

All in all, if you aren’t using these affiliate marketing tactics yet, you are missing out on the opportunity to drive more sales, increase customer retention, and boost conversions. What are you waiting for? It’s time to take the tactics we mentioned above and implement them into your affiliate marketing efforts.

Want to grow your business and skyrocket your sales with a powerful affiliate marketing program? Get started and request a demo today!