If you want to ensure that your affiliate program is successful, you need to keep track of the visits, referrals, and conversion rates of your affiliates. To do this, go to the Affiliates tab in your program and search for the name of your primary affiliate. The unpaid earnings metric will give you an idea of their activity, but you should go deeper. By selecting Reports under the name of the affiliate, you can get more detailed information about their sales, visits, conversion rates, and more.
Using the drop-down menu, you can compare their performance over different periods of time. If you observe that their statistics are declining, contact them. To get a better understanding of the issue, log in to your Google Analytics account and check the conversion rate for different types of media. If the referral conversion rate is much lower than other media, you should ask yourself why.
To accurately measure the success of your affiliate program, you need to look at the conversion rate. This metric indicates what percentage of visitors that your affiliates direct to your website become customers. When the percentage of sales driven by affiliates is close to that of other marketing channels, it's a sign that your program is successful. To get a better understanding of how much value your affiliate channel generates, compare the Average Order Value (AOV) of your website with that of the affiliate channel.
Analyzing your affiliates can help them optimize their processes and give you insight into how well your program is performing. Generally speaking, 20% of your top affiliates will drive nearly 80% of the total affiliate channel growth. Managing an affiliate program is complex because there are many tasks involved. In affiliate marketing, commission reversal occurs when you have to cancel commissions earned from canceled sales.
To make sure that your program is as effective as possible, focus on these top affiliates. Your affiliate marketing software should provide comprehensive analytics so that you can get a full picture. When managing an affiliate program, it's normal for the overall conversion rate to fluctuate because new affiliates are recruited and different traffic sources are tested. If you notice that your affiliate traffic is decreasing, it's time to activate existing affiliates and recruit new ones.
Talk to your affiliate manager, consultant, or agency about recruitment initiatives and how they can be scaled up over time.