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August 13, 2021

The New Face of Partnership Marketing

Like my Dad used to say, “you don’t know what you don’t know, son.” I don’t think he realized his level of philosophical depth at that point, or maybe it’s taken me 15 years of life experience to grasp such a concept. Although affiliate partnerships and my Dad have close to nothing in common (I hope), they share this understanding, specifically when it relates to content affiliates (comparison & review sites, discovery site, content, blog, and multimedia sites, influencer networks, and social media influencers.)

Here at Advertise Purple, we experience this ignorance daily when assessing potential future clients. Whether their program was managed in-house or by a small agency that promised ‘more hours and more effort on recruitment,’ without global context, it’s nearly impossible for one affiliate manager to bring the best affiliate partners to the table, regardless of tenure.  

Why?  

The answer is simple: your experience is the sum of, well, your experience. Management of one program equates to a list of, say, around 25 relevant content affiliates. Experience managing ten programs equals 250 (assuming no duplicates), and so on.  

But what if they’re in different verticals? Does that change the content affiliate that would be best for my brand? Or require other pay structures?  

Ahhh, you now understand the mass multiples in this formula for success. More importantly, you’re beginning to understand that effort cannot compete with contextual data when it comes to affiliate program success.

And if you’re a reader of our blog, you know that content partnerships are top of mind (and funnel) this year. With IG releasing their affiliate tracking version for influencers, the ‘experimental marketing channel’ has suddenly made its way to the big time.

 

Here at Advertise Purple, we’ve been working closely with content creators and influencers since 2012. As a matter of fact, in 2019, we recruited, optimized, and managed over 23,181 content partners for our brands. In 2021, that is positioned to close at 32,893. But how is that possible? How can a company of ~150 support that level of care, dedication, and attention to each affiliate for our brands? Easy: our data shows most of these content partners aren’t a good fit for your program.

Yes, I said it. Despite morbid curiosity about what a Kardashian post would do for your brand, the vast majority of influencers aren’t positioned to boost your bottom line.  

Conversely, though, many are.  

And using our revolutionary Purply technology, which contains over $2.3billion in affiliate growth data from our management since 2012, we get immediate insight into whom and how growth occurs from content affiliate partners. Geeky tangent about the tech – it’s served up over 241,866 data-backed recruitment and optimization suggestions to our Operations team since 2020… I guess it makes sense why our clients continue to grow at break-neck speed. I’m a nerd and will silence myself now. 

And as the most-awarded affiliate agency with the most reach, most data, and relationships with top tier affiliates, here is some friendly advice: next time you’re at a fork in the road choosing between effort or data, we’d suggest siding with the latter (trust us, we have the numbers to prove it 😉

Interested in which content affiliates would be a good fit for your brand? We’d love to share! We look forward to connecting.

Are you getting started in affiliate marketing or looking to improve your current program?

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