Using the "same store" concept from retail in affiliate marketing

retailOne of the things I learned from working at and with several large, national, multi channel retailers, was the concept of same store sales.  Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a complex metric that I came up with, it’s only something I have found useful when managing affiliate programs.  Whether retail programs, lead gen programs, business-to-business programs or others, it comes in quite handy.

Same-store performance is a concept used by retailers and investors to evaluate a retail company’s performance.  It compares sales of stores that have been open for at least a year in that organization.  From investopedia:

This statistic allows investors to determine what portion of new sales has come from sales growth and what portion from the opening of new stores. This analysis is important because, although new stores are good, a saturation point–where future sales growth is determined by same store sales growth – eventually occurs.

So why should you care?  As an affiliate manager it is important for you to know where your sales are coming from, how your current partners are performing and what percentage of your sales growth comes from new partnerships.  And like the description above, at some point, your program’s sales growth will be coming from your current affiliates as your program becomes saturated with all the appropriate affiliates.

You need to be able to measure if your program is growing by new partners, or existing partners.  Your plans, promotions, offers and strategy will be dependent on this measurement and will change as you move from new partner growth to current partner performance growth.