Implementing an affiliate programme

Thanks to Michael Boyink for prompting this post, asking about adding an affiliate programme to a site driven by the ExpressionEngine CMS.

Whilst the entire scope of a successful affiliate programme is well outside the scope of a single post, the following are a few pointers to anyone thinking of adding this to their ecommerce platform.

Affiliate Marketing in the online world works on a variant of the following process:

You persuade another site to mention your product/service, including a link to where this is sold on your site
The customer clicks a link which contains some sort of reference identifying where they have come from
When the sale is made, that reference is tagged to the sale, and you pay a commission to the referring site

Simple? Not so much.

Creating a successful affiliate marketing programme involves two skills, technology and relationship-building. Of these only the first should be set-it and forget it.

Affiliate Tracking Technology

Your affiliate tracking technology should allow for a few basic functions as a minimum:

Allow affiliates to sign up without fuss or need to talk to you (affiliates live in every time zone!)
Track which affiliate has referred each sale. This typically works by dropping a cookie as someone enters your site, then recording the referrer when the order page is reached.
Give the affiliate some visibility over their clicks, sales and earnings
Allow you to make, and record payments to each affiliate with a minimum of administration

More advanced systems will give you a place to add links, banner creative, and product data feed files, but for a small independent programme you maybe able to do without these.

There are four choices of technology for implementing an affiliate programme on your website:

In-house tracking, or tracking as part of an existing ecommerce platform
Affiliate tracking scripts - commercial software, usually hosted on your own server
Hosted, self-managed software. This resides on someone else's server but is a technology-only solution
Affiliate networks. Managed tracking and payment software from firms who also recruit affiliates to the network and can promote your offers to them.

Lets examine each one in turn.

In-house tracking, or tracking as part of an existing ecommerce platform

The most basic option, but good to cut your teeth on. This my be as simple as a place for each affiliate to pick up a URL with their reference and start using it straight away.

e.g. "use http://www.mysite.com?ref=12345 and gain 10% on every sale"

Affiliate tracking scripts - commercial software, usually hosted on your own server

This is probably the best bang for your buck for a small programme if you have the skills to install and run the program on your own servers. I've trialled iDevAffiliate in the past and this would be a good place to start

Hosted, self-managed software. This resides on someone else's server but is a technology-only solution

This is where most of the recent growth has been in recent years. Someone else manages the platform, you place the tracking tags on your order confirmation page and you're running.

HasOffers.com looks like a credible platform in this space, other older systems include DirectTrack and MyAffiliateProgram.com.

Some of the networks below also offer white-label solutions for Enterprise clients.

Affiliate networks. Managed tracking and payment software from firms who also recruit affiliates to the network and can promote your offers to them.

This is where most merchants decide to put their programs for the simple reason that a network comes with a ready-made community of affiliates ready to promote you. For a mass market proposition this is definitely the way forward as an in-house solution will mean a huge uphill battle in recruiting people to promote you. Remember these people only get paid when they make a sale, and a cheap solution sends out all the wrong messages about the support they will expect to get from you.

In the US, Commission Junction practically owns this market, although there are many smaller networks that may give smaller merchants better attention.

In the UK, your best bet is to get acquainted with the A4U forum, and pay attention to networks which have similar merchants too you being promoted.

Recruiting affiliates to your programme