Gaining a clear understanding of your growth and its desired trajectory can be challenging when analyzing your click data throughout the purchase process. This complex journey often encounters issues such as missing links and corrupted URLs, making it difficult to achieve the necessary transparency in your cross-channel data.
If your sales are slowing down, it may be beneficial to examine your cross-channel attribution and ensure that you have a completely transparent system with no hidden gaps.
Additionally, it is important to address any lack of transparency in your data to prevent affiliates from taking advantage of the last-click. Implement measures to verify that affiliates are not artificially inflating their numbers by capitalizing on clickstreams just before the point of purchase.
We strongly emphasize the importance of nurturing affiliate relationships. Many partnerships simply end with a quick digital handshake and no further communication. This approach is detrimental and can have negative effects on your marketing strategy. Your affiliates may not feel valued or know how to effectively represent your brand. This could result in losing affiliates, stagnant sales, and a negative reputation in the industry.
Take a close look at how your affiliate partners communicate with you. Have you clearly stated that you are available for communication? Have you clearly communicated your strategy and expectations? Are there affiliates who are not delivering the expected results? Reach out to them to understand why. It is wise to have these conversations before deciding to end partnerships based on underperformance.
Conduct an experiment by shutting down your program for a week to test the impact on your top-line revenue. If there is no change, it may indicate that you are only targeting current customers and not attracting new ones. This is a problem because affiliate partners are meant to expand your audience and increase value for your company through new customers, higher order values, and repeat purchases. You should see your customer base growing instead of solely relying on a loyal core audience.
Evaluate how you and your affiliates are approaching the acquisition of new followers. If no obvious issues are identified, it may be time to consider ending that partnership and using it as an opportunity to restructure your marketing model.