Now is the perfect time to regroup before marketers get sucked back into the daily hustle and bustle of managing partnership programs. For brands and agencies managing partnership channels, this moment is also a critical time to evaluate how well their partnerships have helped them in the 2023 big-spending season.
While total e-commerce sales continued to trend strongly in the right direction in 2023, the growth was not necessarily evenly distributed across the retail industry. To understand your brand's sales, it's important to not only look at overall sales, but also how each channel contributed to those sales. Did your partnership marketing channel meet your expectations? If not, how can you adjust for the new year based on what you learned? And even if your partnership channel delivered strong results during the holiday season? , is there an opportunity to do even more next time?
To help you assess questions like these and better plan your path into 2024, here are five key areas for marketers to evaluate.
1. Evaluate your partner mix
One of the biggest opportunities for refinement and improvement in the affiliate and partnership marketing space exists within a brand's partner mix. The diversity of potential partners has never been greater, and many marketers stuck in an over and over again cycle of affiliate-partner combinations would benefit greatly by diversifying their partnership types. can do.
Of course, it is important to note that diversification is not the end goal, but improved performance is. So when considering whether (or how) to diversify their partner mix, marketers need to start with their goals. What are you really trying to achieve within your partnership program? Does your current mix achieve that? Will new types of partnerships (content partners, buy-now-pay-later programs, retargeting partners, card-linked offers, etc.) help drive us towards these goals in a more efficient way? Partner mix Another factor to consider when evaluating is attribution, or how you decide to pay your partners. For example, we can evaluate the type of traffic our partners are driving and compensate them accordingly based on their position in the click path and impact on sales.
2. Evaluate spending allocation
Along with evaluating partner mix, it is important to consider spending allocation. This evaluation should be done through two different lenses:
- investment level based on partner and partner type, and
- Compensation models and rates for different partners and partner types
When it comes to spending allocation, you should also evaluate how much you're paying your partners for each action they drive. This means you need to leverage dynamic commissions to pay partners based on specific SKUs, categories, mobile purchases, attribution, and other things that matter to brands and advertisers.
Also consider whether your spending is allocated strategically. What were your investment levels in 2023? And where did they bring you the best returns? Similarly, consider where you fell short. Be sure to consider all of these questions based on your brand's specific goals related to basket size, mobile transactions, new customer acquisition, promotion of specific his/her SKUs, etc.
3. Evaluate your competitors
If your brand didn't exceed its sales goals for 2023, it may have something to do with how your competitors performed last year. Competitive analysis of the entire program, including but not limited to partnerships, will therefore be an important part of future planning for 2024.
Ask yourself what types of promotions your competitors are offering. How aggressively are they growing their market share? Are they gaining superior positions from people and organizations that are not affiliated with you? Understanding the competitive environment helps you improve your partnership. It is important to recalibrate your own approach to
Keep in mind that not everything your competitors are doing in terms of partnerships will be immediately apparent. However, there are many tools in the affiliate and partnership space that can help you assess the situation. Even simple research like visiting your competitors' affiliate program pages or researching them on loyalty cashback sites within your field can give you important insights into what's working. . Seeking feedback from partners is also something brands should do regularly.
4. Evaluate suitability and performance of existing partners
In addition to high-level partner composition and performance considerations, marketers should also drill down into individual partnerships to assess:
- Who is outperforming or underperforming based on benchmarks and year-over-year performance.
- Are current partnerships still aligned with the brand's programmatic goals?
- Whether a particular person or organization clearly does not exist.
The beginning of the year is a particularly good time to assess the performance of individual partners. In doing so, brands shouldn't be afraid to communicate directly with existing partners to discuss what's working, what's not, and what can be improved. Remember: Partners want to provide the greatest value possible to ensure the greatest return for themselves. Aligning goals and tactics is a win-win.
5. Evaluate tactical elements and technical roadmap
Finally, complete your partner program readiness assessment by digging into the nitty-gritty and looking to the future. For more information, look at your data to make sure you understand which products are selling best and where you need to move more SKUs. Refresh your communication and creativity. We provide strong collateral that allows our partners the tools they need to promote their brands. Evaluate commission rates and contract terms to stay abreast of the market.
When it comes to future plans, be sure to review any technical enhancements your team would like to make to your company's affiliate/partnership program and ensure they are reflected in next year's technology roadmap. Examples include dynamic commissioning settings that allow teams to adjust rates to drive new customer acquisition over repeat buyers, and retargeting partnerships that require technical work to enable. While you're here, it's also an ideal time to consider brand compliance by making sure your program policies are aligned with your goals and your goals are clear to your partners.
The new year offers marketers an opportunity to rest and regroup from the busy holiday season, while also evaluating whether a brand's partner program is ready for the best possible performance in the new year. It's also the time. Even if your 2023 holiday season was merry and bright, or just barely good enough, there's a huge opportunity to do even better in 2024.
Mandy O'Brien is Vice President of Customer Success at Partnerize.
