There are multiple features that should be standard across all affiliate networks and platforms, but they aren’t. Some charge fees for them, some include them free, while others don’t have them because their tech stack is outdated. If these features are not on your platform, you’re likely disadvantaged to your competitors.
If you’re evaluating platforms, looking to improve and update your own affiliate program, or are a network and want feedback, here’s what I’m seeing as opportunities for the networks to improve.
Commissioning By URL Slug and Subdomain
Networks like Impact and PartnerStack make this easy. You can plug in a root domain and set a standard commission for any referral off of it. Then you can plug in subdomains and slugs or folders like “adamriemer.me/folder-here/blog-post-name-here” and assign unique commissions if the referral comes from this page only.
The benefits of this feature include:
- Applying 0% commissions and payouts if advertising disclosures are not in place or removed from certain pages, YouTube videos, etc… but not others.
- Websites that have multiple touch points including listcicles, reviews, comparisons, and coupons will let affiliate managers incentivize higher value traffic.
- Listcicle features and top-funnel leads – 20% commissions + $1 email sign up
- Comparisons – 15% commissions
- Reviews – 10% commissions
- Coupon pages – 2% commissions
- The rest of the website – 12%
- Subnetworks are incentivized to share the referring URL helping the manager to enforce program compliance through transparency.
- Managers can also incentivize specifical collaborators, influencers, and websites via the referring URL from the sub network.
One extra value here is that the partners can see these custom commissions. If they want to earn more, they can add you to these pages with higher payouts. You can also negotiate better commissions moving forward as the doors will open with them.
You as an affiliate manager can cut a deal to create a promotion or content with a theme and predetermined URL that will be used. Now you plug the URL into the system and set the custom commission in advance. Once it goes live, the affiliate now gets the increased payouts.
Note: There are ways to game this, but also ways to detect and prevent abusing it, so it isn’t as risky as it sounds.
Automated ID and Parameter Changes
Being able to create a shell similar to TinyURL, Pretty Link Pro, etc… where the affiliate can apply a standard affiliate link across multiple pages, videos, posts, etc… has ups and downs. When networks provide this, the affiliate can automatically change all broken affiliate links to working ones via the merchant and creative ID without needing to change the tracking parameters or each individual link.
Situations this helps include:
- A merchant closes their program and affiliates want a competitor on the same network.
- When creatives get deactivated, the affiliate can enter a new banner ID and the links work again.
- Affiliates change programs or want to test a new merchant on the same network, a replacement of the merchant and banner ID changes the links in seconds vs. spending hours making changes.
This is easier than the networks likely think it is to implement. Virtually all networks have a URL shortener, all they need to do is store the shortened URLs and let affiliates add a label. Now the affiliate can either unshorten the link and replace the merchant and banner ID, or enter the new ones into the system and the system replaces it before or during the redirect. Now the links automatically update.
Marketplace Join and Response Stats
Almost all affiliate networks have publisher marketplaces where you can invite affiliates to your program. These marketplaces get abused and recruitment emails mostly get ignored. What would be helpful is to share stats on both the merchants (companies with affiliate programs) and affiliates with their responses and engagements.
Affiliates
The following can help merchants get a better use of their time:
- Last login to the network and ideally the marketplace.
- How many invitations they accept vs ignore and reject.
- Their promotional methods, and requiring a verification to be accurate.
- Feedback scores from merchants like ShareASale had where merchants leave comments like “coupon site pretending to be content” or “trademark bidding” and where the affiliate can respond and defend themselves to be fair.
- Multiple merchants would say “no sales” and leave a negative score, that was not fair to do and these ones should have an option to be deleted.
Merchants
The partners could benefit by seeing:
- Uptime and downtime.
- PPC, browser extension, coupon site rules and TOS.
- Late payments and funding status (having a credit card on file or not).
- Feedback about tracking being broken, non-responsive managers, non-commissionable skus and categories the merchant doesn’t share publicly, etc… to help other affiliates avoid less than stellar programs.
Notes and Team Tagging on Partner Pages
I know AWIN built this in as a special request for us (thank you again for that), but all networks should have it and it should not be limited to small character counts like 300. The notes feature is available on a few networks, but not an industry standard.
By allowing the merchant to have a notes archive about the partner and on the partner page the affiliate team can:
- Leave notes about custom commissions, paid promotions, and what the deal was.
- Any results based on campaigns and performance to help with future decisions.
- Policy violations and corrective actions that are taken.
- Preferred contact information if the partner wants better communication.
- URLs and channels they have that are not listed in the account.
The issue with the networks that do have this is some limit the character amounts. Copying and pasting URLs in for two pieces of content eats up the character limits fast. We need at least 500 to leave an effective note. The same goes with character limits on the direct contact emails where you’re sending individually.
Tagging team members works like a CRM system for programs with multiple managers. The recruiter could tag the manager about the partner once recruited for someone that needs onboarding. The manager can tag customer support with questions or the company’s email team or SEO with questions and they can go directly to the partner page to see the note. Then these people (as long as they’re added to the network) can go in and respond to the manager. There’s no shortage of benefits to this feature.
Controlling Affiliate Accounts on Affiliate Pages
This one is shocking that more networks do not have. Customizing the relationship of the affiliate partner directly on their publisher page. Some networks (including the big ones) do not let you do the following on the individual affiliate page:
- Customize commissions.
- Tagging partners directly, you have to go to a separate tags page to tag and categorize them.
- Create triggered emails based on performance.
- A YouTuber would get a different message than a discord channel and a blogger would get another.
- Alerting merchants when traffic climbs or falls automatically by partner, especially when combined with tags like VIP, custom commission for sales minimum, etc…
Every company has technical debt and deals with dinosaur code bases. But these are features that should be standard as they make the merchant’s lives easier and can help generate more sales making the network more money. It’s one of the first things we look at when onboarding new clients for affiliate management, and something in house affiliate managers should have as part of their jobs each year. If you want more information on these, or are curious if your program’s tech stack is up to modern standards, feel free to reach out to me here.
