If you’ve spent any time reading this blog then you know that we’re all about one thing more than any other: data.
Utilizing Purply to analyze billions of dollars of sales made through thousands of different affiliates over the course of more than a decade gives you a massive amount of information that can be used to optimize your marketing campaign and maximize your sales.
However, trying to look at this much raw data can feel like drinking from a firehose. That’s why you need to identify the key performance indicators (KPI) that will let you know if your campaign is succeeding and how you can improve it.
These are the three most important KPIs you need to measure to know if your affiliate marketing campaign is working.
Conversion Rate
This is possibly the single-most-important metric to determine if you have an effective affiliate strategy.
Conversion rate measures how many sales you make per clicks you receive and following it closely can give you a lot of valuable information. For example, it can tell you which of your promotions are most effective, what time of year people are buying your product and how effective your individual affiliates are.
The general rule of thumb in affiliate marketing is that a good affiliate should give you a conversion rate of around %.05. If your affiliates are consistently delivering a lower rate than that, then it might be a good time to examine your network and see if you can build more effective relationships
Average Order Value
This is a measure of the average amount consumers spend on each order they make through your affiliates. It’s an important metric because it helps you identify your high-performing affiliates, not in terms of the number of customers they deliver but the actual value of the sales they’re making.
Essentially, an affiliate who delivers 100 customers a month who spend an average of $10 on each order won’t be as valuable to you as one that delivers 50 customers a month but who average $25 per order.
If you have an affiliate that’s consistently delivering a higher AOV than average, it will definitely be wise to study their sales strategy with your product and try to determine if it’s something that you can replicate across your network.
Category Performance
From review sites to coupon sites to influencers, the term “affiliate” covers a broad range of websites and categories and your performance with each one can tell you a lot about both your customers and your campaign.
For example, if your highest performing affiliates are content partners, then this means you’re effectively increasing your brand awareness with new customers. However, if you’re seeing more traffic from coupon sites, then those customers likely are already familiar with your product and are motivated to buy it.
Depending on what the goals of your program are, this information will let you know what type of customers you’re attracting and how you’ll need to tweak your strategy to meet your goals.
As we’ve said, there are thousands of ways to measure your success (or lack of it) but if you don’t know the right way to analyze your sales data, you won’t be able to run an effective affiliate campaign.
If keeping track of all this information feels overwhelming or just too time-consuming, remember that Purply automatically produces customized KPI reports that can instantly keep you up-to-date on the most important data that you need to drive your sales to their highest level.
