Building an Affiliate Flywheel: MarTech Stack #17

Greetings from San Francisco! 👋🌉

It's good to be back visiting clients, prospects, friends, and family.

As mentioned we're gonna deep dive on EACH PART of the Affiliate Flywheel so get ready for a great series, I hope it's valuable and if you have any questions please respond so we can dive deeper together!

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What you need to build a strong MarTech foundation? 🤔

1) Network Selection

2) Network Tracking Method

3) UTM Tracking

4) Influencer Tracking

5) Pro Partner Reciprocity

6) QA

7) Don't try to be perfect

It's a lot I know. But it's not that bad...let's hop on the old elevator and move through the list in detail.

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The Deets 🧠

1) Network Selection 🤝

Network is key to ensure quality tracking, provide ease of use for partners to promote your brand, have volume of partners utilizing it already (network effect), you need to be able to use it (or your agency, consultant, or affiliate manager), so you can make decisions to grow your affiliate program.

Key factors in network selection include but are not limited to:

• Pricing - competitive given level in agreement and volume usage - ideally this gets more efficient over time, not less.
• UX - is the dashboard readable and easy to navigate?
• Reporting - are their reporting features easy to review, download and gain insights from?
• Technology - modern tech stack, ability to see multi-touch view easily, ability to credit codes to respective partners and set rules for each promo code
• Dynamic Commissioning - commission based on product, margin, SKU, to maximize profit and aligned partner incentives
• Partner Recruitment Tools - this can be a big one especially if you do not have agency support to recruit partners
• Data feeds - ability to ingest data file formats (XML, CSV and TXT) enabling partners to show your various product SKUs. Applicable for Price comparison partners, paid search affiliates, content sites, and loyalty sites
• Fraud protection - most networks are actively removing and monitoring but I would ensure that this is frequent and what additional tools or resources they recommend for brands
• Customer service - are they known for helpful teams to answer questions especially during the integration or tracking set up phase? Is that available are your service level?
• Connection with your tag manager or e-commerce platform - this can prove very helpful in lowering your development and set up time as well as improving fidelty of data between your ecommerce platform e.g. Shopify

I highly recommend Impact.

They innovated in multi-touch view within the affiliate channel, have excellent tracking technology, and have landed some of the leading Fortune 500, DTC, and technology advertisers on their platform.

They have also acquired a number of complementary software companies that have allowed them to continue to innovate.

Keep in mind, network selection can be very unique for each brand, team, and situation, happy to counsel you on this.

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2) Network Tracking Method 🔦

Each network typically offers three tracking options to consider:

1. Batch processing - brand advertisers submit transaction daily. Some brands do this in combination with Pixel to ensure no tracking is missed.
2. Pixel - a snippet of code added to your site or tag manager that fires when a particular user action happens on your site e.g. purchase or lead submission
3. (Tag Manager solutions can be very helpful here such as Google Tag Manager, Tealium, or Adobe). To go deeper here you might also want to consider Segment (Twilio) technology which I have been a fan of for many years
4. Server to server
5. uses first party cookie connecting data between brand advertiser and affiliate network (Impact, CJ, AWIN, Rakuten, TUNE, etc.)
6. Servers communicating with servers as the name implies
7. Third-party tracking within the browser is coming to an end. Between Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP), and Google's Privacy Sandbox and continued (deadline extended pledge to mid 2024) to no longer allow third party cookies, savvy brands are reducing their reliance on them.
8. Mitigates the impact of ad blockers (current estimate is 27% use them in the US)

We prefer server-to-server to minimize fidelity loss and lag time between data import or cookie/pixel firing but we will regularly review your unique situation to make a custom recommendation.

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3) UTM Tracking 🔎

This is a far too often overlooked best practice for anyone working in performance marketing. 🙈

By setting up your network tracking links properly you still might not be employing UTMs in your links.

Handy little --> Google UTM builder.

By having accurate affiliate tracking links (e.g. impact) AND setting up UTM links with clear parameters, you can ensure that you will have higher tracking fidelity in Google Analytics, Adobe, or your brand's preferred Analytics provider.

This can provide an important sanity check between data reported by your affiliate network.

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4) Influencer Tracking 🕵️‍♂️

Brands that are employing influencer tools to source manage and track influencers as well can have an advantage for their internal teams and partners.

This does require some cost-benefit analysis to ensure your program is ROI positive and you are not overspending on software.

Given the explosion in influencer marketing in the last 5 years, we recommend a strong long at influencer tools as part of your MarTech stack.

We have been impressed with Aspire as well as the tooling offered by Impact.

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5) Pro Partner Reciprocity 🤗

Being pro partner has been a key theme of this newsletter. It matters in tracking as well. Sometimes tracking can break on either side.

It happens more than it should and more than many think. I recommend supporting partners and offering to make good if there is a loss of tracking fidelity to maintain trust in the partnership.

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6) QA 🛠

In the event there are major declines, gaps in data, or estimates that tracking or visibility is broken, you need to have a method or team in place to QA tracking.

This is something that I have been through a ton both in-house and as an agency.

Often we will look at a specific time period data set and limit data sources to get a clear read on tracking.

We will also run test transactions and get qualitative and quantitative validation from multiple parties.

But here's a little more detail...if you’re using pixel tracking you need to test that you have the correct pixel specified by your network and it’s firing correctly upon action : lead / purchase / etc.

You can run a test transaction to validate this.

Internal and external teams should run this test periodically and be prepared to QA as needed.

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7) Don't try to be perfect ❤️

There is no perfect tool or system. But you can have a well-documented checklist and suite of proven tools/software that is battled tested that work.

I see too many smart folks and brands trying to be perfect and can end up losing more in time and opportunity over the loss of fidelity.

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Why does this matter?

1. Confidence - If partners do not see that you are tracking accurately and playing fair they will not promote you.
2. Attribution - If your stack is not tracking properly you could be allocating funds to the wrong partner or channel which could be a very expensive problem.
3. QA in place - Having a regular QA system to ensure that tracking is set up properly.
4. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good - There is no perfect MarTech stack or tool.

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Bonus:

Some of the new attribution tools are all the rage. Why? They are first party, server side and they have direct integrations with e-commerce platforms like Shopify. I would look into the following.

1. TripleWhale
2. Northbeam
3. Rockerbox
4. LiftLab

Review and consider which is best for your business but know there needs to be a clear actionable plan of what to do with the insights they provide, what attribution model you will be applying and why, ensure platforms and channels are scored similarly.

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💥 Conclusion:

e-comm brands do not understand affiliate marketing MarTech stack options and optimal set up. If you have this and execute it well, you will be head of your competition.

Let me know if you have questions, comments! Always down to nerd out on affiliate marketing MarTech and help.

Is you were able to name each of the San Francisco films you earned a Barn Buck!

Have a great week!

Tye