How To Reward Your Best Affiliates To Maximize Sales And Conversions

Every marketing program that hopes to compete with the big guns needs dedicated partners. If your affiliates lack motivation, conversions could significantly drop over time.

Thankfully, there are many ways to keep your partners motivated, happy, and appreciated. By offering attractive commissions and special bonuses, for example, you can naturally encourage your affiliates to give their best to bring high-end customers to your business.

In this article, we'll explore tried and tested methods for rewarding affiliates the right way, as well as approaches you can use to incentivize them.

Why Rewarding Your Affiliates Crucial For Your Business

Perhaps the most important aspect of running a successful affiliate program is being able to incentivize your best affiliates, so they have a good reason to stay on top of their game. After all, they are the main engine behind your program, and to be able to do their best work, they need to be acknowledged and properly motivated, like any other worker.

If you want to make it big, you need to focus tightly on promoting your products or services, and on this journey, affiliates are your closest allies. But if they don't have a solid reason to push for more sales, their motivation will eventually fall, and they will start looking for better opportunities.

Furthermore, with an attractive rewards system, you can give your business solid ground on which to build a strong marketing strategy. Keep in mind that affiliates are the most important ingredient of a wealth-generating affiliate program, so being able to attract high-end influencers/affiliates need to be one of your top priorities.

If you are having a hard time bringing in valuable recruits, you will likely experience stagnation further down the road. You are also risking losing existing recruits if they don't feel truly appreciated. Hence, you must do everything in your power to keep them happy and satisfied.

In the following paragraphs, we will take a detailed look at the 12 best approaches you can take to keep your best affiliates motivated to work for you.

1. Offer Exclusive Deals

If all your partners are using the same audience offers, it might be wise to create some exclusive deals they can offer so that all parties are happy. This could be anything from a limited bundle deal, tasty bonus content, or a special, limited version of the desired product. Affiliates are aware that if they can offer something unique, it will attract more customers and result in more clicks.

A special offer can generate massive reach and benefit them much more than it would by earning the commission they usually would receive while making you drive more sales in the process.

2. Provide promotional materials

Promotional materials such as videos, banners, graphics, and landing pages are key when it comes to creating a successful marketing program. After all, human beings respond much more positively to visual information than to simple text.

Creating visual content regularly, however, is extremely time-consuming and will eat up the time your affiliates spend on promoting your products. If you prepare these materials for them beforehand, they will be much more efficient in promoting your business.

Aim at providing your partners with cool graphics and personalized landing pages of solid quality, or connect them to your graphic designer to discuss what's best for them.

3. Offer Merch And Freebies

Branded merchandise or free products like shirts, mugs, pillows, rucksacks, or computer accessories, can show your partners that you see them as an integral part of your business. Everyone loves gifts, and by giving affiliates cool items, you can also create opportunities for them to promote your brand — when they carefully place these in the space where they make videos for their audiences — just like product placements for movies and television.

And whether your affiliate receives a branded cap or a special flash drive, they will be much more likely to tell others about it or share their joy on their social media pages. Naturally, this will boost customer engagement, as well as create a good impression of you and your brand among affiliate web followers. This approach can work like magic, especially if you know your partners use your products regularly and will share their experiences with them with others. You can, for example, give partners a couple of copies of a product – one for themselves and one they can give as a gift to their loved ones. And if these people happen to enjoy it, there's a good chance they will tell others and even turn into new customers or affiliates themselves.

4. Pay Them Fairly But Handsomely

If your affiliates are doing a good job, give them a commission upgrade, they've earned it. Always try to offer the best commissions to your top performers so that they can keep generating traffic for you. Not everyone will perform at the same level, but everyone has potential. You must track the sources of the traffic affiliates bring in. Check how well they've placed their affiliate links; if there's anything wrong, let them know by emailing them.

Affiliate links can be tracked with good affiliate marketing software, introducing affiliate contests (you'd be surprised by how much more traffic you can get if you let affiliates compete), and giving them financial incentives for reaching a specific goal.

It would help if you ensured that your affiliates are being paid handsomely, as they usually earn quite a lot. If you fail to do so, they won't think twice about switching to one of your competitors.

Also, if you have the budget, you might want to look into working with Super Affiliates — their global popularity can do wonders for drawing attention to your brand.

5. Train And Support Your Affiliates

Your affiliates will only do an excellent job if they know your product inside out. You must teach them about the most vital aspects of your product or service to avoid losing potential customers.

So, to ensure a smooth and effective process with your affiliate, provide them with sufficient training and support when they need it. If you can, also provide your affiliates with a trial version of what you're selling so they can gain an in-depth understanding of it. This way, they'll be able to accurately describe all the features and benefits you're offering and have a much better chance of directing traffic to your site.

6. Establish A Personal Connection

You'd be surprised how much a simple congratulatory message can mean to an affiliate. Tell your affiliates if they're doing well — this will strengthen your relationship with them while motivating them to push even harder next time.

Whether it's their first or 1000th sale, always be appreciative. You can give your affiliate gifts for hitting specific targets — this could be anything from a food basket to a piece of custom-made clothing. By making your affiliates feel appreciated and valued, you are creating a stronger bond between you two and the mission, thus providing them with the natural push, they need to go the extra mile.

And why stop there? Next time you're throwing a staff party, invite them and show them that they're an integral part of the big family.

7. Offer Various Payment Options

Another way to keep your affiliates happy is by offering different payment options so that they won't have processing issues, regardless of their location. Provide them with choices supported by their home country, and you won't be wasting their time with unnecessarily prolonged payment methods that require hefty fees for processing. So, offer multiple payment options to avoid losing your affiliates' loyalty.

8. Promotional Offers Are A Must

Provide exciting promotional offers. You have to introduce new promotional offers frequently — during holidays, celebrations, or when your sales start to drop. For example, you can offer a double commission to your affiliates for a month, so they'll feel incentivized to do a stellar job during this time and bring you back in the game with your customers.

9. Work With A Professional Affiliate Manager

The efficient management of affiliates is crucial for business success. Third-party marketplaces usually provide package affiliate management services and will have you pay a hefty fee for an enterprise plan.

Hence, it's best to hire a qualified affiliate manager, as they will know how to deal with affiliates efficiently enough to serve your financial needs.

10. Active Affiliates Are The Wind Beneath Your Wings

With multiple qualified active affiliates by your side, you'll massively increase your chances of success. They could be influencers, famous bloggers, website owners, video game celebrities, etc. Even just one popular affiliate can generate many sales daily for a long time.

Your affiliates need to be taken good care of, as they can be the backbone of your finances. Spend time finding out which affiliates might best serve your needs and bring in as many of them as your budget allows.

Generating traffic can be difficult, and having a solid database of affiliates bringing you constant traffic will make your life much easier.

11. Offer Competitive Bonuses

Bonuses are a common feature of affiliate marketing programs. Also, they are greatly adaptable and can be an excellent way to acknowledge the success of your affiliates. If they did their part in bringing in new customers, they deserve to be rewarded accordingly. Furthermore, when they feel appreciated, you could strengthen their bond to your program and motivate them to work even harder (the main driver here is additional bonuses).

The bonuses you offer could be handed out every month to those who manage to achieve specific goals or have performed exceptionally well. You can, of course, choose whatever time frame you want for bonuses, and it's entirely up to you how often you want to reward your partners.

12. Create Tiered Commission Levels

Another great way to reward your best affiliates is to create tiered commission levels. Even though, in the end, your profit margins and running costs of your affiliate program will have a direct impact on your strategy, this approach is worth consideration.

Commissions are a vital part of affiliate marketing, and keeping yours up to par is instrumental for its success. By implementing a level-based, tiered commission structure, you can both financially reward success and motivate your affiliates to work harder.

If your affiliates know that their hard work can get them promoted in the form of a higher commission rate, they will raise mountains to bring in more customers and sales. It's a win-win for both parties.

If you're undecided about what you should offer them, you can start by researching your competition. This can help you find out what has worked for others, and you can even combine approaches as you see fit.

How Affiliate Marketers Get Paid

As a cheap and easy way of making some cash without having to worry about actually selling something, affiliate marketing has an unparalleled allure for people looking to make a profit online. But what are the methods an affiliate marketer gets paid for after linking consumers to sellers?

Affiliate marketers are usually paid in one of the following ways:

Pay Per Sale (PPS)

PPS is the most common way affiliate marketers make money. Here, the merchant pays the affiliate a percentage of the sale price of the service or product after the customer purchases something as a result of the affiliate's efforts. In short, the affiliate needs to persuade the investor to invest in the affiliate offer before making a profit.

Pay Per Lead (PPL)

PPL is one of the more complicated payment methods. It compensates the affiliate marketer based on lead conversions. The affiliate needs to make a compelling case for the customer to visit the merchant's web page and complete the desired action — this might be registering for a product trial, filling out a contact form, subscribing to an email newsletter, or downloading something.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Generating website traffic and convincing customers to click and take certain actions is a big part of affiliate marketing. That is why search engine optimization (SEO) is key in this field. But despite being free, organic SEO traffic cannot generate sufficient profits for affiliates in such a competitive market — and that's why many affiliate marketers turn to PPC.

Pay-per-click strategies aim to incentivize the affiliate to point customers from their marketing platform to the merchant's web page. Hence, the affiliate needs to convince the customer of the value of the offer so they will move from the affiliate's page to the merchant's page. The affiliate then gets a cut based on the web traffic increase.

There are two popular concepts in PPC:

• Cost per acquisition (CPA): In this situation, the affiliate makes a profit each time a lead is gained by the merchant — and that's when the affiliate link guides the customer to their online store, where they can sign up, subscribe to a newsletter, and so on.
• Earnings-per-click (EPC): In this case, earnings per 100 clicks are measured for all affiliates in the affiliate program chosen by the retailer.

Pay per install (PPI)

PPI is a system in which the affiliate makes a profit each time they guide a customer to the merchant's web page and installs software or a mobile app. Let's say a retailer has a $0.50 budget for every app install generated through an affiliate program. If 1000 customers install the software, the affiliate will get $500 ($0.50 x 1000).

A Dedicated Platform Designed To Take Your Business To The Next Level

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, TheAffiliatePlatform 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, TheAffiliatePlatform offers the following features and benefits:

• Collaboration With Partners — Dedicated Account Manager is part of the service via any of the instant messaging apps (Slack, Skype, Teams) and Jira.
• Convenient Pricing — We don't charge by your results, clicks, or conversion — one price for all.
• Ease of Use — Allows your team total control over your entire affiliate operation, including overseeing your team of affiliate managers, affiliate management, real-time reporting, payments, and comprehensive BI reporting.
• Total Control In One Customizable Platform — Tap into the power of a fully customizable affiliate management solution designed to manage your affiliate marketing campaigns, payouts, creative assets, and more. Upload, update and manage all your creatives across your entire affiliate network.
• Track Everything In One Place, Build The Partnership You Want — TheAffiliatePlatform can make your next campaign the most successful one yet. It is a powerful affiliate software platform bringing casino and betting operators advanced solutions for creating, running, and tracking multi-brand affiliate marketing campaigns.
• Comprehensive Feature-Rich Tracking — TheAffiliatePlatform provides real-time and accurate conversion tracking and records via API integration, FTP solutions, traffic sources, and media placements. It also features broadly advanced no cookie dependencies methods like Server 2 Server (S2S/Postback), Image pixel, iFrame, Client JS Block and Facebook pixel, which are ideal for advanced affiliate marketers.
• Multi-Product & Multi-Brand System — TheAffiliatePlatform allows for multi-brand campaign creation and tracking and keeps the affiliate registrations and access separate for each brand. Different commission plans can be assigned per product and brand. Unite your iGaming brands into one affiliate program and manage them from one admin panel.

TheAffiliatePlatform 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.

Final Words

Keeping your affiliates motivated by rewarding them appropriately is crucial for the success of your affiliate program. If you don't have the abovementioned elements in place, you automatically put yourself at the end of the competition race, as your partners will inevitably lose interest in working with you.

And while money is often the biggest motivator, offering personalized, useful products can work like magic when it comes to creating a lasting relationship with your affiliates. Confer with your affiliates about the best approaches and what will motivate them the most, then develop your strategy accordingly.

The TAP team wishes you the best of luck!