Segmenting your affiliates

The recent a4uexpo London had lots of good talks this year but my favourite from the event was Matt Swan and Helen Southgate discussing Sky’s data. Within the presentation they looked at the different performance of affiliates on different metrics. It got me thinking about how people segment their affiliate base.

The need to segment your affiliate base is obvious. You only have to look at a recent A4u forum thread, from a couple of weeks ago, to see that being sent irrelevant communications or offers is frustrating.

Most times when I hear people talk about segmenting their programme, they talk about doing it by the type of affiliate. It kind of makes sense. Cashback affiliates should in theory be most worried about the cashback offered, the voucher code sites want the best code and content sites want something they can write about. But does this over simplify the affiliate’s business? On a lot of programmes, there will be more in common between affiliate types so it could be a good way to segment. But the main thing they will have in common is the promotional tool. How often do people actually look at the sales being driven by these affiliates to see if they have anything else in common?

Another panel from the expo had an affiliate champion for each area. While I really enjoyed it, what it highlighted more than anything is that a lot of affiliate types have converged. Just looking at cashback; sites are doing content, they have comparison engines, they offer branding opportunities, and they promote vouchercodes. Although segmented as the same ‘affiliate type’, some cashback sites may have more in common with content sites like Money Saving Expert than other cashback affiliates.

So how do you segment them?

I think Helen’s talk could suggest one way. Ask yourself some questions about your programme. Do you have insight into the type of customer that is being driven by the affiliate? For example, do they tend to attract customers with higher basket value? Is the churn lower? What sort of customer demographic do you get from them? Can you look to segment your affiliates based on the type of customers they provide? Would the affiliate perform better with a different promotional message tailored towards their audience? Perhaps you still use the promotional type as the base for the segmentation but then use your data to create sub-segments.

Using Sky as an example, could they create bespoke promotions around the full Sky+HD packages with Broadband etc to those affiliates whose users have the higher spend? Affiliates with lower basket values may convert better with a stripped down version. Perhaps these customers are less valuable so Sky could look at how they demonstrate the value of the higher packages through this affiliate segment. If they are content sites, can Sky work alongside them to provide good quality content on the savings for the full package? Segmenting the affiliate base by the end user rather than thinking all affiliates are the same.

But average order value should not be looked at in isolation. It is also important to look at what they are selling. The affiliate who was upset in the thread above was being sent information about diets when he only promotes travel. So for Sky it could make sense to look at the product split from affiliates before sending offers out to them. Sky may have affiliates that focus on different areas. For example, a sport blogger might push Sky Sports. They are, therefore, likely to be more engaged with Sports related communication and promotions than finding out about the special offer on Talk Unlimited.

If your time is limited, then segmenting by affiliate type is better than nothing. You will hit a lot of affiliates with a promotional offer/tool that they can use. But by actually looking at some of your data, understanding your affiliates and their users will give you a better insight and opportunity to help improve their performance. You will also be less likely to be accused of spamming. One definition of marketing is to identify and fulfil and exceed customer needs. It’s interesting that in affiliate marketing, segmentation too often fails to look at the customer and instead looks at the method of promotion.

source: affiliates4u.com

Affiliate model justified in roundtable

a4uexpo London hosted a roundtable of various performance marketing figureheads. The discussion was filmed and organised by affilinet and featured representatives from companies such as Nectar, Holiday Autos and uSwitch.



Mary Keane-Dawson was chief instigator of conversation. She incited discussion about the entrepreneurial aspect of the industry. Publishers are uncovering new technologies and business models, which will help advertisers test and trial new CPA activity, a big positive for the sector.

There was talk about the perception of publishers. They should be pushing to become viewed as brands, especially the more mature, premium publishers. There will likely be a shift in perception where customers become brand-loyal in the UK, much like consumerism in the USA.

Publishers should become brands

Evidence of publishers becoming brands is no more evident than in the spate of TV advertisements that have been aired recently. The traditional role of affiliates as being purely a mechanism for generating sales is becoming somewhat of a grey area. Their increased media activities show they create demand too.

Big data’s still in its infancy according to the roundtable. You just have to look at the volume the industry has available and how little it’s capitalising on that volume. There was talk about pooling it together so publishers, networks and advertisers can create a bigger picture of future trends.

Talent is another issue that needs to be resolved. The roundtable felt so-called attractive digital channels like mobile and social were more appealing. Once affiliate business had recruited talent, they needed to be kept engaged. It’s a tricky prospect as new recruits look to broaden their marketing experience by hopping to other channel.

source: affiliates4u.com

Facebook to share data with Instagram, loosen email rules

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook Inc is proposing to combine user data with that of recently acquired photo-sharing service Instagram, and will loosen restrictions on emails between members of the social network.

Facebook also said on Wednesday it is proposing to scrap a 4-year old process that can allow the social network’s roughly 1 billion users to vote on changes to its policies and terms of services.

Facebook said it may share information between its own service and other businesses or affiliates that Facebook owns to “help provide, understand, and improve our services and their own services.”

One of Facebook’s most significant affiliate businesses is Instagram, a photo-sharing service for smartphone users that Facebook acquired in October for roughly $715 million.

The change could open the door for Facebook to build unified profiles of its users that include people’s personal data from its social network and from Instagram, similar to recent moves by Google Inc. In January, Google said it would combine users’ personal information from its various Web services – such as search, email and the Google+ social network – to provide a more customized experience.

Google’s unified data policy raised concerns among some privacy advocates and regulators, who said it was an invasion of people’s privacy. A group of 36 U.S. state attorney generals also warned in a letter to Google that consolidating so much personal information in one place could put people at greater risk from hackers and identity thieves.

Facebook also wants to loosen the restrictions on how members of the social network can contact other members using the Facebook email system.

Facebook said it wanted to eliminate a setting for users to control who can contact them. The company said it planned to replace the “Who can send you Facebook messages” setting with new filters for managing incoming messages.

Asked whether such a change could leave Facebook users exposed to a flood of unwanted, spam-like messages, Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said that the company carefully monitors user interaction and feedback to find ways to enhance the user experience.

“We are working on updates to Facebook Messages and have made this change in our Data Use Policy in order to allow for improvements to the product,” Noyes said.

Facebook’s changes come as the world’s largest social networking company with roughly 1 billion users has experienced a sharp slowdown in revenue growth. The company generates the bulk of its revenue from advertising on its website.

The changes are open to public comment for the next seven days. If the proposed changes generate more than 7,000 public comments, Facebook’s current terms of service automatically trigger a vote by users to approve the changes. But the vote is only binding if at least 30 percent of users take part, and two prior votes never reached that threshold.

Facebook has said in that past that it was rethinking the voting system and on Wednesday Facebook moved to eliminate the vote entirely, noting that it hasn’t functioned as intended and is no longer suited to its current situation as a large publicly traded company subject to oversight by various regulatory agencies.

“We found that the voting mechanism, which is triggered by a specific number of comments, actually resulted in a system that incentivized the quantity of comments over their quality,” Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of communications, public policy and marketing, said in a blog post on Wednesday.

Instead of the vote, Facebook will look for other forms of user feedback on changes, such as an “Ask the Chief Privacy Officer” question-and-answer forum on its website as well as live webcasts about privacy, safety and security.

Facebook, Google and other online companies have faced increasing scrutiny and enforcement from privacy regulators as consumers entrust ever-increasing amounts of information about their personal lives to Web services.

In April, Facebook settled privacy charges with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it had deceived consumers and forced them to share more personal information than they intended. Under the settlement, Facebook is required to get user consent for certain changes to its privacy settings and is subject to 20 years of independent audits.

source: interaksyon.com