Whether you’re just starting with affiliate marketing or have already been in the trenches, finding the right people to promote your business should always be a priority if you want to grow your brand. Most businesses spend a lot of time and money to find high-end affiliates, but the process doesn’t necessarily have to be that difficult. And this is because you can partner with your customers and turn them into amazing affiliates.
Affiliate customers can do wonders when it comes to bringing organic traffic your way while helping you build a strong community. To start converting customers into affiliates, however, you need to be active and precise by offering them motivating incentives while creating a robust system for running marketing campaigns.
In the following paragraphs, we will explore how to turn customers into affiliates so you can harness the full potential of your iGaming business, or any other business for that matter.
Your customers are already familiar with the products and services you offer, and you’ve earned their trust. They spread the good word about your brand on social media and forums, recommending your business to friends, family, and people looking for guidance on the best products in the category. They write positive reviews and give you the social proof you need to attract more people to your business.
When clients present your product or service in a positive light on the web, they elevate it in a way that traditional forms of marketing cannot. The reason? Customer messages are authentic, which gives you an honest voice to reach your target base. Almost all customers trust the opinions of other customers more than the ads and marketing materials created by the brand, proving that word of mouth is still the most powerful persuasion tool.
By having affiliate customers on your side, you won’t need to spend insane amounts of money to create sticky ads that come across as salesy to the average customer. Instead, the affiliate details all the reasons why they bought the product and why others shouldn’t miss out.
With so many brands to choose from, it can often be difficult for people to find what they need, and in many cases, advertisements are either misleading or fake. And that is why people turn to the advice of others who have purchased or tested the product so they can make easier buying decisions. When people share their thoughts on a product or service, they provide unique insights that have immense power when it comes to attracting new customers. They can share their experiences via in-depth reviews and how-to guides that can do much more than a regular ad.
Becoming an affiliate for a brand that customers love can be an extremely exciting opportunity because they know they can earn rewards for every successful referral, conversion, or sale. Human beings love being rewarded, and an affiliate program gives them a special opportunity to earn cash, vouchers, discounts, content upgrades, and other goodies.
Are you eager to find out how to convert iGaming or any other group of customers into powerful allies? Follow these 11 tips to convert customers into productive affiliates for your business.
If you want to quickly catapult your affiliate program to success, you should start with your most loyal customers. Apart from the fact that they are more likely to be interested in putting on the affiliate hat, they are (in many cases) the most qualified people to represent your product or business. Furthermore, once you’ve successfully turned some of your customers into affiliates, you will have a firmer ground to stand on. And from there, you can polish your strategy while using reliable real-world examples.
One of the most efficient persuasion techniques for your customers to become affiliates is to offer the sweetest deals. What are the benefits of joining your program? Will they be rewarded financially, or will you offer heavy discounts on future purchases?
Think your offer through and make it irresistible because that’s the best approach for earning the long-term loyalty of your affiliates. If your offers are not good enough, you’ll have a hard time convincing top affiliates to join your program.
Offering your new sign-ups something they cannot refuse is a great way to win their hearts. Alluring sign-up bonuses, such as eye-popping referral rates, can do wonders for the success of your campaign. These can, for example, come in the form of tasty flat-rate commissions or solid percentage commission rates for initial sales.
Personalized content can work like magic when it comes to turning customers into affiliates. People are attracted to brands they feel can understand their needs and desires and personalize their communication methods and offers. You can start the personalization process by including their names in emails to establish a more personal connection. Additionally, you can send congratulatory messages for your customers’ special days (e.g., birthdays) and send them something to show that you truly care.
Making things too complex is always a significant obstacle when converting customers into affiliates. If you make it bumpy for them to become involved with your offer by requiring too many steps, or redirecting them to other parts of your site, for example, you risk losing their interest.
Think about giving unique personalized discount codes. For example, when one of your customers refers your brand to a friend or acquaintance, they both get a certain discount percentage on their next purchase. Some businesses have referral programs with free products or other attractive non-financial benefits.
If a brand doesn’t value its customers’ opinions, it will naturally lose them. And since you’re not a mind reader, you will need to ask people for their honest feedback. You can, for example, ask them to leave a review after buying a product, offer a survey, or a suggestion box where they can give constructive feedback and let you know how you can improve your product or service.
When your customers see that you are taking their feedback seriously and taking steps to act on it, they are likelier to remain loyal to you and recommend your brand to others.
To inspire your customers to join you on your journey, you’ll need to give them the relevant information they need to make this exciting decision. Set up a dedicated affiliate package that is easy to understand for any customer who might be considering becoming an affiliate.
What makes your affiliate program stand out from the rest? Let people know about the irresistible commission rates you’re offering upfront. Also, include information about what other benefits are included, the tools and resources you use to track and measure performance data, as well as anything else you think might make your offer more appealing.
Monitor customer behavior and employ analytics to understand them better. Set up a system that will guide you toward understanding how customers found your brand before making their purchase. This includes analyzing the pages they passed through, the ads they clicked on, which products they glanced through, and more.
Let this valuable data help you target and recruit the best customers in the most efficient ways. With this knowledge in hand, you will also be able to develop a solid conversion strategy to turn your customers into affiliates while improving the customer experience.
Email is an extremely potent communication tool for online businesses, but to use it effectively, you need to keep your message fresh and useful to your customers. While growing your email list, you will come to understand that your subscribers are more diverse than you might have expected. They all have different backgrounds, needs, and desires, and you will have to segment your email list to cater to all of them.
You can, for example, segment your users based on their subscription level, purchase amount, or the consistency of interaction with your support team. Once you’re able to define your list, you can create custom messages to interact with your customers more personally, which is always good practice.
And last but not least, spend some time connecting with your potential affiliate customers. When they post their thoughts about your product or service, make sure to engage with them to show that you value their feedback and dedication. When they share one of your Facebook posts, for example, thank them and encourage them to join your program and become an affiliate. By doing so, you will both make them happy, and they will be much more likely to consider joining forces with you as affiliates.
Now, let us explore some highly potent commission structures to give your business a strong chance of standing out from the rest by making the best use of your affiliates.
This ancient method allows advertisers to pay affiliates an evenly distributed amount based on how deep the customer dives into the purchasing process.
The sum and gross profit can be directly proportional, meaning that the affiliate will earn a pre-determined sale cut. This commission structure is perfect for campaigns that deliver a fixed revenue amount.
The fixed margin structure is one of the best ways to keep affiliates incentivized while also bringing in new affiliate partners. This type of commission structure usually involves using agreed-upon fixed commissions for affiliates that are not affected by the number of actual sales.
You could, for example, offer an affiliate a commission of 5% for sales on any of your brand’s products. The fixed margin structure is easy to grasp and track for brands and affiliates while limiting discrepancy and incentivizing sales.
When setting up a fixed margin structure, one thing to keep in mind is that you always have to incentivize affiliates with good commission margins to ensure that they’ll remain loyal to you.
This structure rewards the affiliate with credit for influencing a conversion closest to the event. For example, an affiliate may have won a consumer’s interest. Still, another affiliate will get the full commission or a bigger chunk of it if they reach the customer right before they make a purchase.
The time-decay structure is especially efficient for popular brands with saturated campaigns and companies that want to advertise across various traffic channels while using multiple affiliates.
Position-based commission structures reward affiliates by bringing in customers at key stages of their journey as buyers. This means that a company can offer a certain amount of money to an affiliate that initially engages the customer while also rewarding the affiliate who influenced the purchase.
This structure works by monitoring the customers’ mental process and purchasing practices and paying the affiliates that contributed the most to their journey to investment.
Coupon codes are a popular commission tool that helps businesses work with more online and offline affiliates. The affiliate receives a cut for any transaction that comes through their special code, no matter how the customer may have gotten the code.
Cross-platform tracking is one of the most used commission structures, as the buying journey of today’s customers often involves the use of multiple devices. For example, a customer learns of a product or service thanks to an affiliate while surfing social media on their mobile device but later makes a purchase on their desktop computer. This type of structure rewards the affiliate even if customers use different devices during their buying journey.
Businesses want to be sure that their money is spent wisely when used in advertising. Shopping cart disqualifications allow them to only reward affiliates that guide a purchasing decision rather than affiliates who become active after the customer has already made their decision.
Let’s say a customer puts something in their shopping cart and then continues to surf the web or go through their emails searching for a discount code. Usually, the code would be connected to an affiliate, and they’ll receive a cut for the purchase. However, with shopping cart disqualification, businesses can stop an affiliate from being rewarded if the coupon is used after the item has already been added to the cart, and the customer pauses the process until they find a code they can use.
To take your business to the next level, you will also need an affiliate marketing platform with a proven track record of driving revenue sky-high.
Powered by Smartico.ai, The Affiliate Platform is a comprehensive software solution that allows for multi-brand campaign creation and tracking while keeping each brand’s affiliate registrations and access separate.
With this affiliate system tailor-made for online casinos and sports betting, you can build strong partner relationships and expand your affiliate network on your terms. Its flexible tools can also help you optimize your affiliate marketing spending with surprising efficiency.
This white-label platform is designed specifically for casino, poker, sportsbook, and fintech operators.
In addition, The Affiliate Platform offers the following features and benefits:
The Affiliate Platform offers many more tools, and, driven by customer requests, new features and functionalities are released every month. To book your free in-depth demo, please click the “Request a demo” button at the top of the page.
Not all customers will be interested in becoming affiliates, so don’t invest too much of your time trying to push them; those who might want to play such a role will be showing up by themselves with little prompting and an attractive deal from your end. Also, don’t take it to heart if things don’t happen as quickly as you want them to – you may have to polish your offers to find out what works best.
If your first aim is to recruit the most active, most invested, and most loyal customers, you will naturally build momentum from there. Don’t make it too complicated; make it easy for them, state the affiliate program information plainly and in detail, try to personalize it depending on demographics, age, gender, etc., and always keep in mind that the better your product or service is, the easier it will be to have your iGaming or any other group of customers join your dream team as affiliates!
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