The Influencer Insider: Edition 15

The Only 6 Metrics To Track For Influencer-Affiliate Success: Gift Inside ??

Bonjour - Sam here.

Every brand right now is talking about building out their influencer-affiliate program. Low-cost awareness, full usage rights on content, sales at a set CAC… it almost sounds too good to be true.

But when it comes to tracking those results, it’s another story. The truth is that 99% of brands don’t track their traction through this channel anywhere near as granularly as they should.

Imagine at any point you could identify exactly where your program was falling short, and exactly what to do about it.

Today, I want to walk you through the exact funnel you should be monitoring, and the kind of percentages you can expect at each stage. If you get your tracking dialed in, you’ll quickly see which partners are worth doubling down on and how your strategy needs to change.

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Metrics 1 & 2: Seeding Outreach & Acceptance

1. Number of Influencers Contacted
2. Opt-In Rate (% who agree to sample product)

Benchmarks: Our standard opt-in rate runs between 20-35%. In the Health & Wellness space we typically see lower opt-in rates than in other industries: a gaming brand for example may see even higher opt-in rates than 35%!

Key Point: Aim for “personalisation at scale” with your outreach. Segment your influencers into niches, write different sequences for each niche and automate from there. Each influencer receives an email which they feel is relevant for them, beating the “one email for all” approach every time.

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Metrics 3 & 4: Seeded Influencer Engagement

1. # of content per seeded influencer
2. Affiliate Conversion Rate (% who join affiliate program)

Benchmarks: We typically see anywhere from 50-80 pieces of tagged media posted for every 100 influencers we send out to, even before they become affiliates. We then convert anywhere from 15-35% of seeded influencers into affiliates. The quicker customers see results from your product, the more likely your conversion rate is going to be on the higher end of that range.

Key Point: You NEED to have a community manager responsible for building and nurturing these influencer relationships: failing to do so stops this channel dead in its tracks… and don’t even hope to get near the benchmarks above.

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Metrics 5 & 6: Affiliate Performance

1. # of content per affiliate
2. Sales / New Customer Orders (depending on conditions of affiliate program)

Benchmarks: We typically see 12.5 creatives produced by the average affiliate over the first 12 months of them being on the program. On average we see 8 of those come in the first 6 months, with 4.5 in the second 6 months of them being on the program. Sales KPIs completely depend on store, but you can approximate them by using the estimates of 1,000 impressions per creative, 1% CTR and your store conversion rate.

Key Point: Typically the influencer-affiliate channel drives traffic with a higher CVR and LTV than other channels. Pros take this into account in their modelling too!

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Ready to Dive Deeper?

• I’ve got a spreadsheet that models your affiliate program across six months. If you want to see how your numbers might look in practice, reply to this email and I can send you it.

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Speak soon,

Sam

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