Affiliate program
Noun
[ah-fill-ee-it pro-gram]
An affiliate program is an organized system that enables affiliate partners to drive traffic to your properties through tracked links and earn a cut when that traffic converts. Affiliates come in many different forms and they can include influencers, content creators, publications, membership associations, and technology vendors.
In an affiliate program, an online merchant pays affiliates to send them traffic. There is a payout to the affiliate for that traffic, and then if the traffic buys the product, the affiliate receives a commission. An affiliate program is a cost-effective marketing strategy that works for both B2B and B2C brands.
Example: Lisa runs a popular software blog. Loop, a software brand, pays Lisa to place an affiliate link on her blog. When someone buys Loop's software through the link, Lisa gets a payout. Yay!
Critical Points of Trust Within Your Ecosystem
Noun
[aye-jen-see part-nur]
An agency partner is a powerful partner, typically an agency who either send you leads or closes business on your behalf. They may also run a client's program on your software and charge them for services. Agency partnerships can increase marketing reach and earn additional referral revenue. They can help you reach new potential clients and add more value for current clients. They may also collect payments and maintain customer relationships on your behalf.
Agency partners work within the same industry between companies with aligned values and goals and they can provide significant improvement on ROI for businesses that utilize them.
Also see: Value added resellers (VARs).
Example: Louis was up to his elbows with current customers and didn't have time to source new leads, so he signed with an agency partner who found him new customers, nurtured his current relationships, and took over some marketing and payment efforts. Louis saw a positive impact on his revenue, and he decided to work even more closely with his agency partner for more efforts in the future.
Noun
[ah-fil-ee-it trak-ing]
Affiliate tracking is technology used to track the traffic, referrals, and/or sales that come through a specific partner. The purpose of affiliate tracking is so that a company knows which affiliates drive favorable business outcomes (in other words, attribution), and can reward these individuals accordingly. UTM links are the most common mechanism for affiliate tracking.
Affiliate tracking can also be achieved using promo codes. For example, if an influencer can offer his or her audience 10% off a 1-year software subscription with the promo code PERCY10, this allows the company to track precisely how many sales Percy drives. This then enables the company to determine which partnerships are most lucrative and invest in building these relationships and enabling them to do their best work.
Example: Through affiliate tracking, Partner Marketing Manager Lisa identified five partners who were driving 60% of PekoeCorp’s partner-sourced sales each year. She decided to send them each a gift basket of PekoeCorp swag, fancy chocolates, and red wine.
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