There are many exciting developments in digital marketing these days. The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in quite a number of changes in consumer behavior and how we work. With that came an acceleration in many trends that we were seeing prior to the pandemic.
Things like:
- unique tracking technologies in the affiliate community
- more shopping online, and ship to store options
- tracking
- the integration of affiliate marketing and public relations
If you are in the PR world and reading this, you may want to read about how affiliate marketing can help the speed of public relations.
Affiliate marketing offers some very unique ways to track and report on the success of any PR campaigns that have been unavailable to the channel in the past. All of these tracking methods are available through the major affiliate networks and platforms. Contact JEBCommerce at gethelp@jebcommerce.com to get a run down of all the options available to you.
How Affiliate Marketing Tracking Works
First of all, affiliate tracking allows you to track sales from these campaigns and all partners. Whether it is tracking through a link or cookieless tracking through an offer, coupon or code, you’ll be able to see sales from your placements.
And let’s talk about the more unique ways you can track. Most affiliate marketing tracking is done through cookies and a link. If you have been following privacy issues over the last 10 years, you know that following and tracking consumers through cookies is slowly going away. Outside of that, many of the platforms and networks have more creative ways to track consumer data. Most important to PR practitioners would be the coupon tracking available through several networks. LinkConnector has some great technology that allows you to assign a coupon or offer to a particular publishing partner, content creator or affiliate and no matter how or where that coupon is promoted or redeemed, credit always goes back to the partner and is rolled up into your channel reporting. These offers, codes, and coupons can be used in videos, podcasts, radio ads, written content, or anything else you can imagine. When they are redeemed, those KPIs are tracked.
Speaking of KPIs, read more about the changing KPIs when PR and Affiliate Marketing meet.
Changing in Ad Tracking – Goodbye Cookies
One of the big problems in tracking is the use of cookies and the privacy issues mentioned before. Affiliate publishers have always been at the forefront of solving just about every single digital marketing problem since ecommerce began, and this issue is no different. Not only can you track through offers, but many affiliates that we have great partnerships with, offer card-linked offers. This means they can track via credit/debit card and provide you with a world of information you currently don’t have.
Many advertisers who are active both in PR and in affiliate marketing are looking to increase on a specific KPI: New Customer Acquisition. This is also labeled as a New to File percentage. How many customers coming through a particular campaign, offer, or partner are new to the brand? Tracking through the affiliate channel allows you to see this by partner with very little technical integration. This allows any campaign to not only be measured by exposure, eyeballs, impressions, or clicks, but also revenue and new customers!
How PR Teams Can Benefit from Affiliate Marketing Tracking Technologies
Beyond those most important tracking opportunities, affiliate marketing allows you to also:
- Track a user and the publisher’s performance across devices. When a user starts their experience on mobile and finishes on their laptop, it’s tracked.
- Online to store tracking. More consumers every day are starting their purchase journey online but finishing in the store. This can be tracked as well.
- Coupon and offer protection. This ensures that offers are not used by non-participating affiliates.
Not only do you get many tracking options, but you get many incentivization options through affiliate marketing. Many programs pay out as a percentage of sales. But there are many other ways to incentivize your partners:
- Flat fees
- New Customer commissions only
- Bounties on leads
- Different rates on different products or lines
- And much more
The tracking capabilities the affiliate channel offers the PR community are extensive and impressive. If you’d like to find out what tracking options will work best for you. Reach out to the JEBCommerce team today.
