Why internalise your affiliate programme ?
Today, we are going to see what the advantages are of internalising the management of your affiliate program.
If you are asking yourself any of the following questions, then this article is for you:
- How can I rationalise the costs of my affiliate program?
- How can I get more transparency from my affiliates?
- What are the real contributions of my affiliates to my conversion tunnel?
- What is the share of affiliates compared to my other channels?
- Or more simply: who is my top affiliate? What are my best performing ad elements?
In the past, when you wanted to start an affiliate program you had no choice but to go through an affiliate platform. But nowadays you can do it yourself with SaaS affiliate software.
In this article, I propose to give you the advantages of creating or internalising your own program, without going through a platform.
Benefit 1 – Costs
This is often the first reason to consider alternatives, so YES, by creating your own affiliate program, you will make significant economies of scale, but why?
Simple, there is no intermediary between you and your affiliates. There are no setup fees or platform commissions, just a fixed monthly subscription fee that allows you to control your budget.
Small bonus: these savings will allow you to commission your affiliates better than your competitors and therefore to negotiate better promotions, or to move towards new types of affiliates.
Benefit 2 – A direct & transparent relationship with your affiliates
Creating your own affiliate program also means creating your own network of affiliates. It becomes necessary to build a transparent relationship with your partners, why?
Your affiliates are your online sales people, they like to know that they are dealing with actual physical people and not with an anonymous company, who will be able to answer them at any time and in all transparency.
Indeed, your affiliates will appreciate :
- A better listening and synchronisation between their requests and your objectives,
- Your availability and responsiveness in your exchanges,
- A better knowledge of your brand, which will engage them more in your branding, they will then propose adapted communication solutions.
- The transparency of the means used and the results, the goal is to establish a relationship of trust in order to secure your acquisition and your business.
Who better to involve than you to manage your promotions and advertisements on your partner sites.
Little bonus: On this point, Affilae offers to facilitate the relationship between advertisers and affiliates, thanks to the Affiliate Marketplace, the relationship is 100% free.
Benefit 3 – Flexibility, Personalisation & Branding
Flexibility: No validation delays, no delays in launching new operations and challenges, you decide and choose when and how to launch your campaign.
Customisation of commission rules: CPA, CPL, CPC and why not a mix (CPA + CPC etc.), so you can make a success of your affiliate program by offering remuneration adapted to your affiliates. Also establish your own commission plan : New customer / Old customer, different product categories etc.
Branding: Internalising your programme gives you the possibility of creating a tailor-made solution that will integrate perfectly with your internal tools, particularly thanks to the APIs.
To go further, you can even customise the CSS (put your program in your brand’s colours) and acquire your own sub-domain, such as https://affiliates.mywebsite.com: this is how to integrate affiliation and partnership management into your brand’s communication.
Benefit 4 – Data protection
Without an intermediary, you are the owner of your data. The SaaS platform guarantees the reliability of the tracking data, but in no case exploits this data for commercial purposes, but to provide you with intelligent KPIs within your dashboards.
In conclusion, as you will have understood, internalising your affiliate program will allow you to gain in relevance in the measurement of your affiliate partners.
As a result, you will be able to analyse your conversion tunnels in greater detail in order to manage your budgets and achieve significant economies of scale.
To find out more about the different types of affiliates, I also recommend that you take a look at our article on “the different types of affiliates”.
