You’ve got a growing business. You’ve also got an inkling to work with some micro-Influencers who have the potential to be good sources of affiliate marketing traffic. Last time, we touched on the best platforms for these Influencers. This time, let’s dive into the content that they (and you) will be creating on these platforms.

Not all content is created equal, especially since different content can cost vastly different amounts of time and money. A tweet is essentially free (though paying an Influencer to tweet for you will cost something), while producing a polished video to put on YouTube can cost thousands of dollars. Since different businesses have different audiences, it behooves you to think about where best to allocate your content calories.

Platform-specific affiliate marketing content

If you’ve done the research to discover where your market lives online, that might quickly narrow down the type of content you create. While Facebook can accommodate all types including photos, videos, blogs, etc; if your core audience lives on YouTube, you know it’s all about video (or podcasts, since YouTube is a popular destination for podcast listeners).

Knowing where and how your audience consumes information also can tell you the level of depth of your content. If your affiliate marketing content mostly lives on Instagram, you’ll at most have a minute-long video; and usually be relying on amazing pictures. This platform is geared toward short attention spans by necessity. This matters for your content in case you are interested in longer “explainer” videos that don’t really fit on a given platform. If your product needs some explaining, you’d better pack in a lot of information into a small amount of space and time.

Here are our favorite types of content for each platform:

YouTube

When it comes to 360-degree, thorough content, videos are king; and that means YouTube. And there are two types of videos that we see the best ROI on for affiliates and merchants.

Product Reviews

Since 84% of people trust online reviews as much as reviews from friends, they turn to YouTube to “test drive” products before they buy. And due to that, there’s a thriving market for YouTube Influencers who make a heck of a great living reviewing products in their respective niche and using affiliate models (affiliate links, product endorsements, Google Ads) to do so. The video above is from YouTube tech guru Marques Brownlee, and it has been watched nearly 2.5 million times in about 3 days.

One thing to note here: the length of the video. It’s nearly 10 minutes long. All the conventional wisdom you hear about videos having to be really short, that doesn’t much apply when the video has solid content throughout. Yes people drop off after a few minutes, yes people skip through, but if the video is of high quality and the product is interesting, many people will watch all the way through no matter if it pushes the 12 minute mark.

Savvy merchants will want to find good Influencers to review your products, be it beauty, food, health, apparel, you name it. If your brand has physical products, product reviews on YouTube is great content. Less so if your business is about services such as SaaS, since that can amount to a webinar, but still not impossible to create review content around.

Tutorials

Who hasn’t learned how to tie a certain necktie knot or apply eyeliner from YouTube? Tutorials are the other piece of content that always do well with affiliate marketing. While there is an aspect of reviewing a product inherent in tutorials, it’s more about showcasing products in the best light (literally in this case), which is amazing content for your brand.

Working with a YouTube influencer to teach their audience the best way to use your product is a win all around, and best of all, the content is fairly evergreen. People will return again and again, share the video with friends, and thus create plenty of opportunities for them to click on affiliate links to order the product.

Most brands can take part in tutorial videos, and all the more if your product is complicated to use well or is rather unknown. Less so if you sell dead simple products like socks or dog food. While tutorials are fine to place on your own YouTube channel, having an Influencer do it with their own style and humor is always better.

Instagram

Instagram is all about finding the right niche Influencer that perfectly fits your brand. Once you’ve found the right person, diving deep into that relationship and making your product a part of their regimen usually translates to success.

In the text accompanying the workout video series above, you’ll see that this Influencer put in her personal coupon code so that anyone who orders these butt-shaping bands will kick back an affiliate commission.

But it doesn’t stop there. Following the link on the subsequent Instagram page shows us that she has her own line of Booty Bands from this company:

The indicated bands come with her own personal branding. So when her followers use her code, they know they’re not only getting a discount but also supporting her directly, without question. And the other bands in this image? They’re branded with other Influencer names.

So this exercise equipment company has partnered in deep with their Influencers, leveraging their popularity not just on social media, but on down to the products themselves.

This sort of Influencer integration makes for effective content, and your brand should do well to see if you can develop this sort of partnership as well with your affiliates, and create this level of content. The video series itself is intimate and relatable (showing a home workout), a tutorial, and shows the product in perfect use. A solid piece of Instagram affiliate marketing content all around.

Blog

While it may seem like videos and images get all the content love these days, there’s still a place for the written word. And the reason for that is Google/SEO as it’s still much easier to rank higher on the search results page with great written content, than just video or images alone.

If you partner with Influencers and experts who maintain popular blogs, one of the best pieces of written content you can create is “an ultimate guide” on a topic in your niche. While there is a place on blogs for reviews, product comparisons, topical articles; we’ve found that giant, evergreen guides is that piece of content that will return dividends month after month, and often year over year.

The blog that is screenshot and linked above by Neil Patel is a great example of such an ultimate guide. It often appears on the top of Google’s results for “affiliate marketing” and it is a well-research, well-written, and completely comprehensive guide to this industry. It is tens of thousands of words long, and acts as a one-stop-shop for people looking to understand what affiliate marketing is. It’s fairly ageless, though Patel updates it every so often to keep it relevant (and to game the SEO system, of course).

For your brand, seek out an expert in your niche to write such a guide. Sell wine? Have a wine expert write an ultimate guide to wine tasting, peppering it with affiliate links back to your site. Every brand can (and should) take this approach when allocating resources on written content, because as painful as it might be to create, the ROI on such content makes it well worth the effort.

Other content

There are plenty of other types of effective content for brands including:

• gift guides
• animated 2-minute explainer videos
• seasonal articles/videos
• testimonials

But these are usually less effective when it comes to affiliate-created content. So we recommend working with your reps to create the types of content we listed above first, before trying anything else. As of 2019, content is still king, and Influencer content featuring your brand is a true winning combination.

Learn how Refersion can track your network of influencers.

The best affiliate marketing content for your brand. was originally published in Affiliate Marketing — Refersion Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When it comes to Influencer marketing for your eCommerce store, you have a lot of options to choose from. We’re not just talking about the Influencers themselves (and you want to make sure to work with the best ones out there), but the social media platforms where they live and wield their influence.

With limited marketing dollars to spend on these Influencers, you will have to do your research on where best to allocate your investment. After all, you don’t want to pay a YouTube Influencer to work with your brand, only to find out that most of your audience lives on Instagram.

Let’s dive into each platform and see the reasons your business might want to invest in one over the other.

But first…

Know your demographic

As we alluded to earlier, it all starts with knowing who your current customers are, as well as the marketing profile of your target audience. Analyzing your incoming traffic via Google Analytics (or whichever analytics software you fancy) will give you a good sense of what percentage of your traffic is coming from which platform.

Of course, just because all your current traffic is coming from, say, Twitter, doesn’t mean you only want to target that platform. But it does give you a good place to start. Your brand is resonating with the community on Twitter, and it might well be worth exploring if you can get a bigger slice of that pie.

Beyond your current traffic, maybe your goal is to win over the Facebook crowd. Analyzing your current traffic from Facebook can also provide valuable insights as you work with Influencers on that platform. What age group is your current Facebook traffic composed of? What time of day are they coming to your site? The more data you can collect, the better your Influencer targeting will be.

Speaking of Facebook…

Facebook Influencer Marketing

Despite everything you’ve probably read about the decline of Facebook, it’s still the 2nd most used social media platform in America with 68% of adults on it, and 2.27 billion monthly active users worldwide.

And because Facebook users skew older, this audience generally has a higher income level and thus tend to spend more than other platforms. It has a nearly even split between men and women (skews slightly more women), and boasts the most educated audience of nearly all the platforms.

All that is to say that Facebook is the most general marketplace for eCommerce, providing merchants the ability to reach most of the shoppers they want to… unless you’re strictly looking for Gen-Z. While the 18 to 29-year-olds are well represented on Facebook to the tune of 79%, only 51% of teens 13 to 17 use it.

Another weakness: the lack of “Facebook Influencers.” While Facebook has a powerful advertising platform for marketers to use, there’s less popularity working with an Influencer on this platform because it’s not as trendy as it once was. The strength here is in traditional online marketing, and finding general affiliates, but you might be hard-pressed to find Influencers who specialize in just Facebook.

YouTube Influencer Marketing

Now we’re talking. YouTube edges out Facebook in usage by a few percentage points in America, to take the #1 spot for largest audience. Furthermore, a whopping 91% of adults ages 18–29 visit YouTube regularly, along with 71% of 13–17 year olds, showing us exactly why traditional media is dying a painful death due to streaming.

In short, YouTube is where you will find the largest audience as well as the largest young audience.

And because this is where the youth congregate, there are plenty of YouTube Influencers to choose from. Basically, any channel with a few thousand subscribers can be considered an Influencer channel, depending on your niche. Remember, micro-Influencers can be even more effective than all-purpose Influencers.

The main area where YouTube falls short is in how often you may be able to reach your audience. According to Pew, YouTube ranks near the bottom when it comes to daily active users (51%). Compare that with Facebook which has daily users at 74%. Because YouTube has less of an immediacy, you’re more likely to catch users once a week than each day.

This is why it’s important to work with Influencers who post at least once a week, if not more. YouTube isn’t a platform users will just casually scroll through. Also, since you’ll be working with an Influencer who has a higher production bar (videos take more time and effort than posting a picture), you’ll have to be patient with your Influencer’s uploads, and their pricing. YouTube Influencers can often be more expensive to work with due to the expense of video production.

Learn more about working with YouTube Influencers in our YouTube Guide.

Instagram Influencer Marketing

Instagram is probably the first platform that comes to mind when you hear the word Influencer, and that’s no surprise. It has the highest amount of self-professed Influencers on any of these social platforms, and there is a booming market for their services.

The main strength of Instagram is in its reach with youth culture all over the world. 72% of 13–17-year-olds use it, as well as 64% of 18–29-year-olds. But here’s the real kicker: 80% of Instagram’s user base resides outside of the US. Instagram is an amazing platform to reach young people globally, all at once, with the right Influencer in your corner.

While Instagram was once just a photo platform, the gradual addition of video options (InstaStories, 1 min long videos, IGTV, etc) have made it a strong rival to YouTube. In fact, the average daily time spent on Instagram is an unbelievable 53 minutes a day! By comparison, YouTube users average only 40 minutes a day. And remember, that 40 minutes may be a handful of videos; but those 53 minutes on Instagram could be dozens and dozens of photos and video. Way more varied content is consumed on Instagram.

Instagram Influencers are some of the most seasoned, and usually don’t come cheap. They’re savvy, but with that comes expertise; many of them know exactly who their audience is and how best to engage with them, so working with these Influencers can teach you a lot about how to utilize your own Instagram feed. Its main weakness is that if your brand doesn’t sell a particularly visual product, it will have a hard time doing well here. Fashion, food, and fun perform. Software, business services, and boring stuff? Probably not the best place for it.

Learn more about working with Instagram Influencers in our Instagram Guide.

LinkedIn Influencer Marketing

Probably the oddest “social networking platform” on this list, LinkedIn occupies a space without much competition from the others. Everyone knows that it’s all about business and professional networking here, and thus caters to a very specific crowd as well as marketing opportunities.

The average user only spends 17 minutes per month on LinkedIn, which is abysmal compared to the more “fun” social networks. However, if you’re looking to sell to individuals with high incomes, and your products are ensconced in the professional world, it might be worth the investment. That goes double if your company sells B2B as many business owners and C-level employees spend time here looking for the right partnerships.

However, Influencers on LinkedIn aren’t really a thing. At least, by that moniker. You’re more apt to find “gurus” or “consultants” that leverage LinkedIn. Neil Patel can be considered a LinkedIn Influencer, with over 380,000 followers on the platform. He reposts his business articles that he publishes on his own website here, and technically has a larger following on LinkedIn than both Twitter and Instagram.

And if you want to get really technical about it, to be a legit “LinkedIn Influencer” you actually have to be invited by LinkedIn. This list is comprised of people like Richard Branson and Melinda Gates… people who probably won’t be interested in your $1000 offer to post something. In general, it might be worth reaching out to LinkedIn profiles with a large number of followers in your niche, but it would probably be more cost effective to utilize LinkedIn Ads instead.

Twitter Influencer Marketing

Hot take: skip it. Yes, there are people with large Twitter followings. Yes, some can be considered Influencers, but unless they are mega-celebrities, Twitter-based Influencer posts don’t ever seem to get as much ROI as on other platforms. Twitter is great for building your own brand’s personality (see the recent Chicken Sandwich Wars), but it’s cheaper and better to hire a funny person to run your Twitter account than to pay-per-post with a Twitter Influencer.

In our experience, your Influencer dollars are better allocated in the other social media platforms. Feel free to do your own research and you’ll see that there really aren’t any success stories with Twitter Influencers that aren’t from multi-million dollar campaigns, and especially with micro-Influencers with just a few thousand followers. So we highly recommend putting Twitter last when considering your Influencer options.

Are there other platforms? Sure. Snapchat is still kicking around, and TikTok and Twitch are both growing in popularity. But for the near future, with limited dollars, consider these five (well, four minus Twitter) before anything else when embarking into Influencer marketing.

Learn how Refersion can help you manage your army of influencers.

What is the best influencer platform for brands? was originally published in Affiliate Marketing — Refersion Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the biggest areas of friction between businesses and their affiliate reps is payment issues, and it’s an exceedingly effective way to lose good reps and your affiliate marketing reputation. Word travels fast in the affiliate community, and your company risks developing a “do not work” stigma for repeated offenses.

And getting on the bad side of people who are social media experts is probably a horrible idea for your brand.

So let’s avoid all of that. Here are some best practices to follow to stay on the good side when tackling paying your affiliate marketing reps.

Manage expectations

The best way to stay on the side of the angels when dealing with payments is to be extremely clear on pay schedule expectations and to put that right in your affiliate contract. As long as you have a clearly stated time frame in order to process checks to your affiliates, and you stick to that schedule, you’ll be golden. But even though that seems like common sense, it trips companies up all the time.

The biggest reason companies miss payment windows is that their windows aren’t realistic enough. While net30 is generally industry standard, your business may need more time than 30 days to turn around checks. This can happen if cash flow is an issue and you need to wait to see if any returns are made by your customers before calculating how much money is left in the coffers for the month.

Of course, this is not the ideal scenario, but bootstrapped small businesses deal more in stark realities than idealisms when it comes to cash flow. To give yourself more of a cushion to process returns, consider implementing a net45 or even a net60 in your affiliate rep contract. While the downside is scaring away potential reps with long payment schedules, you minimize the risk of being late on your payments. Then once you’re in the groove, you can work to shorten the payment window to a net30.

Make time to review and approve

Another unexpected delay in processing affiliate payments can be from running out of time to look into conversion issues and discrepancies. Merchants should never approve payments until all the affiliate conversions have been reviewed and approved, but many times merchants don’t realize that this takes time. Some conversions may appear questionable and may time days to look into, making sure that there isn’t any fraud happening.

Our best practice suggestion is to set aside a couple of hours at the end of each week to review your affiliate conversions. That way, you’re processing and qualifying as the month goes along instead of letting them pile up and trying to go through them all on the 30th. Trust us, this will actually save you time in the long run, even if it seems like scheduling this in each week might be a lot on your plate. Prevention is always easier, faster, and less stressful than performing triage.

If you notice any discrepancies, you’ll have ample time to reach out to your affiliate reps via email and resolve issues before issuing any payments at the end of the month. Remember NOT paying for a fraudulent conversion will save you exponentially more time (and money) than trying to recover those payments.

Automate your payment process

Simply put, the fewer obstacles you have to issue payments, the more likely that issuing payments won’t be an obstacle (was that simply put?). In other words, make paying easy. Once you’ve scheduled the specific day to run payroll for all your affiliate reps, you can use payment systems like Payment Rails (connected to your PayPal account or bank transfer) to help you easily process bulk payments. If your reps are producing a high quantity of conversions each month, this can save you a ton of time instead of having to issue payments one by one. PayPal Payouts (their replacement to Mass Pay) is another good option to use.

Pro tip: merchants who use Shopify can also take advantage of Order Cancellations to automatically adjust commissions when customers cancel orders. A system like this can help you “set it and forget it” so you don’t have to worry about manually adjusting payments to each rep by calculating the net sales.

Know when to hire help

Finally, know when there are so many affiliate payroll and adjustments that you simply need to hire some help. As your business grows, your own time might become too valuable to spend on affiliate payroll. After you’ve explored all the automation options above, you should consider hiring either a dedicated affiliate manager or a general bookkeeper who can take overpayment. The former would be better for your program as a whole, while the latter might be good for your business’s accounting as a whole.

A good bookkeeper can also help with tracking down any tax issues for each of your 1099 freelancer affiliate reps. Ideally, they should have all filled out the required tax documentation the moment they became affiliate reps, but we all know things slip through the cracks all the time.

And hey, if you want to pay via Bitcoin, store credit, or even gold; there’s a way to do that too (Manual Payments for Refersion customers). Just make sure you know how to pay taxes on all those uncommon methods! Another reason to look into hiring a bookkeeper or accountant to help out with the payment process.

Learn how Refersion can help you manage your affiliate payments.

Tips on Paying Your Affiliate Marketing Reps was originally published in Affiliate Marketing — Refersion Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Don’t worry! You still have a lot of summer left since it technically ends around the 22nd or 23rd of September each year (and with global warming, potentially never!). But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be preparing to run your end-of-the-summer sale at your online e-commerce shop. And now’s the time to start prepping for it.

Part of the early start is that many Americans see Labor Day (September 2nd) as the official sign of the waning summer, and that’s when they expect to see not only Labor Day sales, but close-out-of-the-season sales as they head into a Fall mindset. And it’s not uncommon for the best sales of the year to take place over Labor Day as well, so customers are accustomed to seeking out and finding great deals.

Let’s break down how to go about prepping and launching your end of the summer sale.

Take stock of your overstock

Savvy customers and savvy businesses align at this point in the year: now’s the time companies want to get rid of their excess stock of products in order to make room for the new hotness that they’ll want to be pushing during the holiday season. That means offering big discounts on overstock items that shoppers will be lapping up.

Putting aside the fact that last year’s post-mortem should have prevented excessive unsold inventory, now is the time to check your warehouse of exactly how much you have to liquidate. Knowing the number left lets you add that piece of information to each product’s description in order to push urgency to your visiting shoppers. This is a powerful psychological tool to increase conversions.

Bundle for fun and profit

Pushing overstock can sometimes be as simple as including these items along-side other more popular items, or bundling a few of your overstock items together. Sounds intuitive, but there is a secret to bundling that you might not know.

According to “The Dynamic Effects of Bundling as a Product Strategy” a research paper out of Carnegie Mellon University, there is a specific type of bundling that yields the best results. As Forbes summarized from the paper:

The researchers found that consumers might actually value the bundle less than they would value the individual component products, that is there was a “negative synergy” associated with the bundle. Despite this, they found that Nintendo sold the most products when it offered a bundle option — a video game console and a game sold together as one package- — coupled with an option to buy each piece individually.

Sales from this “mixed bundling” offering were estimated to be much stronger than a scenario where such a bundle was not offered.

In short, only offering bundles led to negative results. Offering both a bundle and the choice to buy each item separately led to much higher sales in total. Be sure to keep this psychology in mind as you offer bundles.

Discount dynamically for dynamite dealmaking

You’ll obviously be discounting your overstock items, but the question is how much? Well, there’s the easy way and the other easy way (that might cost a bit).

The first way is relying on the rule of 1/3rds: a third of your remaining inventory of product A will be discounted by X, the next third by Y, and the last third by Z. For example, say you start with a 25% discount around Labor Day. After either the first third sells or the first week goes by, then you can further discount the item by, say, 35%. Repeat until most of the product is sold. This method is basically manual dynamic pricing.

The other method is more of an automated dynamic pricing. If your store uses Shopify, there are apps that can do this for you once you input the parameters you want. These apps make it easy to set up rules to automatically adjust prices lower as time goes on, or if inventory doesn’t sell as much as you want to.

Either way you go, changing your prices over time is a better way to push product during your end of summer sale, rather than just setting and forgetting an overall discount.

Activate your affiliate marketing team

Now’s also the time to prepare your affiliate marketing reps to make their individual push about the upcoming end of summer sale. Keep in mind the 3 I’s of this process:

Inform: Be it through a newsletter, a private Facebook group, or old fashioned telephone calls, communicating with your reps is the first step in activating their efforts. Let them know exactly when the end of summer landing page will be going live, what products will be on discount, which ones they might want to personally push, and anything else you want them to know as the sale looms.

Incentivize: Motivate your affiliate reps with a limited time bump in commissions, or a bonus for selling. As most of their traveling and summer vacation activities will be winding down, they’ll most likely be back to the grind. This might make it the perfect time to establish a leader board to foster healthy competition between your reps. The person with the most sales at the end of summer gets a new car! …Or a bonus that’s more appropriate for your business.

Ideas: We’ll say this again and again, don’t rely on your affiliates and Influencers to do all the heavy lifting for you when it comes to these promotions. It behooves you to come up with the cool and fun ideas that they can easily push to their followers. Be it a contest to great images/videos to memes, don’t sleep on generating the ideas that will make your sale really take off.

Winter is coming. Restock.

And now, with all the room you’ve freed up after moving inventory, start stocking up on what you’ll be selling during the holiday shopping season. It’s just around the corner, even if it still 95 degrees out!

Happy selling!

Learn how Refersion can help you run an effective affiliate marketing program.

How to run an effective end of summer sale. was originally published in Affiliate Marketing — Refersion Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Not only are we great at throwing industry meetups, we’re great at picking days without the heatwave! The 25th didn’t get above 85 degrees, probably due to the ice-cold free drinks we were slinging all night to the 100+ attendees at Birch Hoboken. Let’s recap!

Along with our partners P3 Media and Easyship, Refersion hosted another successful meetup for merchants, business owners, eCommerce agencies, and those just looking to get started selling online on the Shopify platform. The night started with an introduction by Refersion’s CEO Alex Markov, telling the audience that between the free food and drinks, they’d be hearing from successful Shopify businesses on real-world insights into how they each grew their customer base.

Alex then gave the floor to the first speaker of the night, Rivky Itzkowitz from Impact Fashion. Rivky not only owns the brand, she’s also the designer, model, and basically the “everything person” for her shop! Who better to learn from than the superwoman who literally does it all?

Rivky explained that she had to pivot once she understood the challenges of gaining customers. Her initial problems were the same ones that most boutique luxury brands have in common: items are expensive, they’re difficult to keep in stock (a common issue for smaller businesses that deal in a high-end product), and most clothing is event-focused (as opposed to general wear). With these obstacles recognized, Rivky knew she had to change her brand strategy to acquire more customers.

So Rivky zig’d when everyone else zag’d. She made her clothing line less expensive, which also helped with keeping items in stock, and made sure the outfits and jewelry could be worn as everyday items, not just for special occasions. This led to much wider appeal and helped Impact Fashion reach more customers who liked her designs, as well as those who made “impulse buy” decisions more frequently with the lower price tag.

And it worked! Orders increased by nearly 200%, and the number of returning customers more than doubled. Rivky said the key to these changes came from truly listening to her customers, especially the ones that appreciated her mission of body positivity and stylish modesty. An amazing success story throughout.

Next up was Stephen Hersh, CEO at Biaggi, an innovative company who pioneered folding 4-wheeled luggage and now, a whole lot more. Sound familiar? That might be because you saw Stephen win big on the hit show Shark Tank! An investment from Lori Greiner has paid off handsomely for all parties involved.

As Biaggi grew, Stephen said they focused on 4 main questions when it came to their customer acquisition:

1. Who are my customers?
2. How do I reach them?
3. What do I show them?
4. How much can I spend?

Diving deep into each of these four questions revealed Biaggi’s target demographic, where they lived online (for targeted campaigns), what sort of content motivated them to act, and how much to spend on them by using 3 key metrics in their data to track… 3 key metrics that only our audience gets to know (so make sure you come to our next meetup to learn all the helpful hints!).

As for results, Biaggi’s sales numbers speak for themselves. From annual revenue going from $40,000 to well above $2 million in just four years, Stephen’s work in finding the right customers and marketing to them in a way that elicits a response has definitely succeeded.

All that’s left for them now is to go global!

Our final presentation came from Renske Gosselink, co-Founder at Noobie Box, a gift box company with a focus on women on their journey of motherhood. Their flagship item is a free gift box for expecting mothers, as well as gift boxes, appropriate from pregnancy through the first year with the new baby.

With a clear niche and a positive message and product, Renske knew that Noobie would want to leverage referral marketing and influencer marketing to spread awareness of their gift boxes. But they didn’t know how exactly to select and reward influencers for sharing their brand. And they knew that if the incentives weren’t right, there just wouldn’t be any referrals coming in at all.

To do referral marketing the right way, with solid data, Noobie launched the “Noobie Ambassador Program” using Refersion. This way, they could create exclusive offers just for their ambassadors, as well as create personalized discount codes which would be automatically tracked and logged in Refersion. They also made the wise decision to create separate referral programs: one for all their customers, and one for just their Ambassadors. This helped them track their most loyal and active supporters, and reward them accordingly.

The results? Over 1,000 affiliate orders since launching the Noobie Ambassador Program in May of this year. With more motivated reps, shares on social media are up, leading to a full 20% of their new customer acquisition coming directly through referrals. It’s safe to say that Renske and Noobie are now big proponents of data-driven referral programs!

And that was it for the speakers! As more food and drinks were consumed, they stuck around to chat with our audience in informal Q & A, and the night ended with positivity all around. Another successful learning meetup in the books. Check out all the pictures from the fun night here!

Join Our Meetup Group And Be Notified As Soon As We Post An Event

Shopify July Meetup: Growing Your Customer Base was originally published in Affiliate Marketing — Refersion Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you’re in the NYC area on the 30th and have any interest in the cutting edge of eCommerce, you need to check out the GrowCommerce event happening on the 30th in Queens. We’ll have a kiosk there to spread the good work of affiliate marketing, but we’re just as excited to learn from the top players in the D2C space.

The growth of Direct-to-Consumer eCommerce has basically been the story of modern eCommerce in general. So many more brands are engaging with, and directly selling to, their customer base without any retail middleman (let alone a retail location) because of the internet’s reach that it’s been a game-changer to say the least.

A report from Bringg spoke to the effectiveness of D2C:

With revenue growth remaining a challenge, almost half (48 per cent) of manufacturers are racing to build Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) channels, with almost all of them (87 per cent) seeing these channels as relevant to their products and consumers.

Leading brands that once upon a time relied solely on partners to distribute their products are now embracing Direct-to-Consumer sales, which can be a powerful distribution channel with the added benefit of full control over the supply chain, and therefore also in full control of the overall brand experience.

Without having to partner with retailers, brands can keep basically all of their gross margin on sales, leading to higher profits even while keeping the costs low to their increasingly loyal customers.

The benefits of the D2C model

Deloitte (via Shopify) created a handy chart that outlined many of the benefits of D2C models:

In short, businesses can get more reach with less overhead by marketing and selling directly to consumers. It’s also fitting that this data came out of Shopify which has grown leaps and bounds right alongside the D2C industry as this e-commerce platform actively powers many of the online stores of D2C businesses. Much of Shopify’s now $19 billion valuation comes from it powering this tidal wave of direct-to-consumer businesses.

Also, in this current age of savvy consumers, D2C confers more trust between the brand and the buyer. Because there is no middleman, and therefore no additional markup in price, customers generally feel a closer connection to the brand as well as the knowledge that their hard-earned dollars are going directly to the people behind that brand, and not to some other company that has nothing to do with the product or service. Since trust is in such short supply these days, this means a lot for retaining and remarketing to a customer base.

D2C and affiliate/referral marketing

Furthermore, many of these benefits dovetail beautifully with affiliate marketing, which is why we’ll be at GrowCommerce. After all, loyalty programs and brand representatives are some of the most effective D2C marketing campaigns that exist in the space, as well as some of the most cost-effective as well.

In fact, a recent report out of Yotpo on the state of D2C showed this graphic:

It’s heartening to see that a third of D2C brands are already utilizing referral programs in their overall marketing plan, and to see that most are seeing great ROI from it. But that also shows that there is still room for growth for referral and loyalty programs among these businesses, which is why we’ll be evangelizing the huge upside to this marketing model at GrowCommerce.

The future of D2C

Again, the growth of e-commerce is also the story of the growth of D2C, and e-commerce shows no sign of slowing in the coming years, according to a Shopify report:

With eCommerce responsible for half of all retail growth, and increasingly more companies turning to D2C, the future looks bright for this sector overall. And check out this quote from Diffusion’s research (via Retail Dive):

A third of U.S. consumers plan to do at least 40% of their shopping from D2C companies in the next five years, and 81% say they’ll make at least one purchase from a D2C brand within the next five years, Diffusion found in its “2018 Direct-to-Consumer Purchase Intent Index.

More consumers are discovering the convenience and reasonable price-point of D2C online shopping, which will translate to higher sales. It seems both business and customers are all aboard this gravy train for the foreseeable future. That’s sure to make a lot of happy faces at GrowCommerce!

Come find out more of how D2C can transform your business, or help you bootstrap your new one at GrowCommerce! Sign up to attend here, and make sure you come visit our booth!

Learn how Refersion can help you grow your D2C brand.

The evolution of the D2C movement in the eCommerce industry. was originally published in Affiliate Marketing — Refersion Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s nearly the second happiest time of the year! Well, at least according to merchants because back-to-school shopping is the second largest consumer spending season of the year. Despite the rapidly dropping birthrate, it seems all the existing children and teens in America still need new school supplies, clothes, electronics, and vaccinations, making this season a particularly lucrative time for businesses.

Especially this year, because the National Retail Federation estimates that 2019 will see the most amount of spending ever during the back-to-school shopping season. Families with K-12 students will be spending an average of $696.70 per household (the highest ever), even though total spending will be slightly down from 2018. Why? Well, our comment about the birthrate wasn’t facetious: the NRF reports “fewer families surveyed have children in grades K-12.” So while there are fewer young students, families are spending more on each of them.

So what are parents spending their money on?

Where back-to-school spend goes

Here’s a great chart from Deloitte’s recent analysis on back-to-school shopping:

What’s less interesting is the big piece of the pie: clothing and accessories. That segment is always going to be there and always the largest slice (young humans, after all, grow). What’s more interesting is a) the smallest slice being computers and hardware, and b) the fastest-growing slice being “electronic gadgets.”

Gen-Z cares much less about desktops and even laptops, and much more about mobile devices and digital subscription services. When this generation comes online they’re doing it from phones and tablets, and this elevates all the products and services that support that ecosystem.

For example, millions of students will get their very first phone during this time. That purchase creates a need for phone cases, educational apps, Bluetooth keyboards, etc. Knowing where the spend is going to be will clue ancillary merchants who are not quite in the back-to-school space on what products/services will be most likely to move.

When back-to-school shopping starts

Thanks to a fake “holiday,” now all merchants have an easy way to know when the season starts:

Not only are parents using Prime Day to start stocking up on school supplies (why do you think Amazon put this day right here in the first place?), according to Deloitte, 62% of all spending is done in the last two weeks of July and the first two weeks in August.

And remember, that’s just the actual spending. This means the research before spending starts even earlier than that. After all, a new iPad is a decently large financial decision for most households, and that’s usually not a spur of the moment purchase at a brick-and-mortar store.

In short, your marketing machine for your business should be ready to roll right from Prime Day into Back-to-School sales.

And here’s another tip for when savvy parents might be most likely to open their wallets: tax-free weekend. Many states have been implementing tax-free weekends during the back-to-school shopping season to motivate households to spend. For example, in Massachusetts it is August 10–11. There are restrictions and limits for each state that participates. Here’s a helpful rundown on what those are.

Affiliate marketing for back-to-school

Now that we know what parents are spending on, and when they are spending, let’s put together the right affiliate marketing game plan to get a piece of that $696/household spend.

Activate your affiliate reps that target parents

You should have a good understanding of the demographics and the channels that each of your reps best utilize. If you don’t currently work with the right reps for back-to-school, now is a great time to reach out to some and forge partnerships that can quickly bring in dividends.

The famous “mommy bloggers” are very much in demand for their reach and audience of other parents who look to them for advice and product recommendations. But more parents are turning to video now, so “mommy vloggers” may be more en vogue, and working with these Influencers can help you target the right audience.

Once you’ve identified the reps that can provide the best access to parents, it might be a good idea to give them incentives to sell more during this time.

As well as your affiliate reps that target students

Of course, targeting just the parents is not enough. Do like breakfast cereals do: target the kids. They might not have the direct dollars to spend, but their influence on their parents’ purchasing decisions is huge. In fact, it might be more important to get their eyeballs, according to this chart by Deloitte:

With children affecting about 70% of purchasing decisions, they’re the true Influencers during back-to-school shopping. Again, use your affiliate data to see which of your reps can best connect you with this demographic. Instagram still captures most of the attention of younger humans, so make sure your Instagram Influencer game is on point.

Since so much spending goes into electronic devices, Influencers that review tech products would be great to double down on during back-to-school shopping. YouTube is a clear winner here, but don’t forget about Twitch streamers in this space as well who get plenty of student views. According to influencermarketinghub.com, Twitch viewers spend 95 minutes per day on the streaming site. That’s much longer than YouTube (about 40 minutes).

Create the right content

Understanding what sort of content both parents and students are looking for during their shopping research will help you be top-of-mind. Top 10 lists (that, of course, include your product) of “back-to-school necessities” have a good chance of being shared and clicked on. Getting this type of content to your reps to propagate is important for effective affiliate marketing.

Likewise, your social media posts should showcase students using your products, instead of random adults. Get creative. How about a video series of “kid-tested” where Gen-Z students try out your gear? Or maybe you run a back-to-school give away promotion/contest (again, easily shared by your affiliate reps) to juice interest in your store.

And of course, when the students are back in school, that’s when parents get really interested in some relaxation and luxury products. Capitalizing on that joyous feeling of being “empty nested” can be a great way to extend the summer shopping season by targeting rejuvenated adults.

The season is right upon us so don’t delay in putting your affiliate marketing programs to work. Don’t have one yet? We can help. Get started with Refersion today!

Learn how Refersion can help grow your online store.

The ABC’s of back-to-school affiliate marketing. was originally published in Affiliate Marketing — Refersion Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

American consumers, if not global consumers, have become Subscription Nation. Sure there are the staples: Netflix, Spotify, cell phone plan, health insurance (kidding); but we’ve only recently been on the subscription box kick, and its impact has been shaking up eCommerce.

According to Fuel by McKinsey, the subscription eCommerce market is worth about $10 billion (and that’s not even counting Amazon Prime and its “subscribe and save” portion). For an industry that’s been around for about a decade or so (most of the players much less), that’s impressive growth. In fact, the average active subscriber of such services has two subscriptions, and over a third have three or more subscriptions. This shows that once a consumer gets a taste of the convenience and joy of receiving monthly packages, they get hooked.

But why?

The psychology of subscription boxes

A 2018 study by McKinsey & Company broke down the subscription box companies into three categories: replenishment, curation, and access. These also neatly fit the psychological reasons consumers love to shop this way:

Replenishment is all about convenience. Who wouldn’t want something they constantly buy anyway arriving on their doorstep? If you buy into the idea that we all get Decision Fatigue, that’s one (or seventeen) fewer items to think about when it comes to shopping. As you can see, about a third of people subscribe for this reason.

Skipping ahead to Access, that’s a much smaller sliver because these consumers are subscribing to be a part of a community and get/earn bonuses. Sometimes, the only way to get certain items is to be a subscriber, and these people are willing to pay a premium to get a discount… and that’s not as counter-intuitive as it sounds. After all, you can’t watch Stranger Things unless you have Netflix (or know someone’s password).

But the bulk of subscribers are all about Curation, aka, the Christmas Experience. They want to be surprised, and that anticipation and the eventual act of unboxing (which in of itself is a hugely popular topic on YouTube), is what gets them hooked.

Even for the low-key “replenishment” category, which includes Dollar Shave Club and Ritual, consumers ranked the novelty-seeking aspect of “personalized experiences” as one of the top three most important considerations in choosing a subscription box service. For the “curation” category, it was the most important aspect. — Pitchbook.com

And if your business can get your customers to eagerly anticipate a surprise each month? You’ve got yourself a steady revenue base.

Businesses hitting big with the subscription box model

This graphic from Hitwise (via Forbes) shows the top subscription sites seeing massive amounts of visitors. The same article cites that:

The online subscription market has more than doubled each year over the past five years, with the largest players among them generating more than $2.6 billion in 2016 sales, up from just $57 million in 2011, according to the McKinsey study.

When a business is seeing billions in subscription sales, it perks up some ears. And who wouldn’t want to get in on this type of eCommerce? Let’s run down some of the major benefits of a subscription business:

• Consistent revenue — Unlike other eCommerce stores, you have an accurate sense of what your monthly sales will be. Sure there is a certain churn rate, as with all service businesses, but it’s no where near as fickle as regular stores which live and die on seasonality.
• Accurate inventory — Your business will have a leg up on manufacturing and storing just the right amount of product. Overstock situations should be less frequent than other businesses, which also helps save on overhead.
• Built-in Marketing — All those boxes are beautifully packaged with large logos for a reason. Anyone who happens across the front porch will see it. Not to mention all the Influencers unboxing your wares on YouTube (more on this later).
• Personalization — Customers are more loyal when they feel an emotional connection to what they buy. Subscription boxes that can tailor to their customers can encourage a rabid loyalty that other companies can only dream of.

So is there any reason NOT to get into the subscription box industry? Well…

Are we at peak subscription box?

According to data from PitchBook, while 2018 saw the most amount of capital ever invested into subscription box businesses, the number of venture capital deals peaked back in 2016. Growth overall seems to be slowing which may be signaling that the young industry is already maturing, allowing the bigger fish to flourish while the smaller ones die out. In fact, 13% of merchants tracked by My Subscription Addiction (basically an index of all these services) have stopped operations.

Another worry is the advantage that the big-box retailers have if and when they get into the subscription box game. Amazon by itself dwarfs just about every other business with its “Subscribe and Save” option. Remember that a third of the consumers who get subscriptions at all do it for Replenishment? It’s hard to compete with Amazon on that, and suddenly there goes a third of the market.

And yeah, Walmart does it too.

So is it a bad idea for you to get in the game?

Tips on running a successful subscription box e-commerce business

A graph like this from Entrepreneur is nice to see, because it shows that there is a fairly low bar to entry in the subscription box market. Seeing just how many of them bootstrapped their way into life shows that it can be done without tons of funding. At the same time, be wary: because the bar is low, competition can get stiff.

Which is why it’s important to choose a sector that isn’t yet too crowded. Check out this other graphic from Entrepreneur:

Thinking about getting in on food & beverage, or baby products? Those are already pretty popular and perhaps saturated. Meanwhile, the pet sector seems relatively small, as does the faith & spiritual group. Doing your research into the major (and minor) players in the vertical you want to launch in will be an important first step to see if your subscription e-commerce business will be successful.

Next, remember that over 50% of subscribers do so for Curation. Meaning, you’ll have more success if you stay away from Replenishment and Access types of subscriptions. Staples like shaving kits and baby wipes might already be cornered by the big players, and fancy “VIP”-ish products like high-end organic health food might be a tough sell. But providing boxes of niche, specific items that surprise and inspire will go a long way. Companies like LootCrate have found success catering to “geeks” and always wowing them with things they haven’t seen before.

And if you can navigate the shipping headaches, know that the international market is far behind on subscription boxes:

There’s a whole world out there that would also like to get products delivered to their door, on a monthly basis. If the economics work out to ship to Europe, Asia, or South America, there could be space in the market for your business.

Finally, according to a study by Hitwise, there is a very effective marketing channel to acquire new subscribers. Any guess as to what it might be?

Yes, affiliate marketing seems to be the fastest growing traffic source and “key to customer acquisition.” And this makes sense. Many subscription boxes hit the Millennial demographic, and they continue to be influenced by, well, Influencers.

Influencers who open boxes for review and get ten of thousands to millions of views, which can be some of the best marketing ROI you can get. How else can you obtain 1.4 million eyeballs on your product by sending a $20 box to an Influencer to get his/her take? They love getting free stuff, people love watching them unbox, and you get all that great marketing (and sales through the Influencer’s affiliate link in the video description). It’s win-win-win.

Every niche has an Influencer just hoping that a company will give them a commission for reviewing products. Some niches, like beauty, are saturated and will command large commission rates; but others are small enough that those Influencers will be happy with much lower amounts. For more information, check out our guide to working with YouTube influencers.

In our own estimation based on our clients who are in the subscription box business, this sector of eCommerce still seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. Now just might be a great time to leap into the fray with your own unique subscription box business that can capture a hefty share of the market.

Schedule a demo to learn how an affiliate marketing program can put you ahead of your competition.

The radical growth of the subscription box industry in eCommerce. was originally published in Affiliate Marketing — Refersion Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Has there ever been any product that has gone from being basically illegal to a giant industry as quickly as CBD? Even though science is fairly iffy on the effectiveness of Cannabidiol overall, that hasn’t stopped the world from embracing it as our next panacea. In fact, a recent report from FiorMarkets claimed that the global CBD industry will grow from about $1.5 billion in 2018 to over $17 billion by 2026.

That would be overly exciting if CBD oil wasn’t so darn calming.

There is a green rush happening that’s fascinating to observe. The speed of the CBD industry’s growth is outstripping the slow pace of state and federal laws, as well as traditional e-commerce players and platforms who are finding themselves operating in gray areas as they sell online.

It’s still not easy to sell CBD

For example, at the time of this writing, most credit card companies are only just starting to allow CBD merchants to do business with them (and usually with higher transaction fees). Same goes for PayPal. Square has only recently started an invite-only program to allow for CBD product sales. Stripe still has a blanket ban on any cannabis-related products.

This makes selling CBD products more of a headache than it should be using traditional e-commerce platforms that normally rely on these payment processing companies to do business. But this presents yet another green rush opportunity as there are CBD-focused e-commerce platforms being created just to facilitate these transactions. There are also now certifications that CBD companies can get to show that they are in compliance with federal and state-level regulations.

In fact, the United States may be in danger of being left behind in the emerging CBD industry as the legality of these products face much lower scrutiny in other countries such as Canada and Spain. This is why many advocates are pushing to legalize cannabis outright, which would greatly loosen any lingering restrictions on the sale of CBD products.

CBD competition is booming as well

Then there’s the growing issue of standing out in an increasingly crowded field of CBD brands. The green rush (as well as questionable governmental regulations, or the lack thereof) has led to hundreds, if not thousands of CBD brands to spring up to try to make their fortune in the space.

And that’s not all. Powerhouse, long-establish brands are looking to get in on the action. Starbucks may launch a CBD infused drink. Urban Outfitters already sell many CBD products. The “winner” of the CBD wars may well come down to the brands that can partner with these massive distribution outlets to sell their wares. Of course, the bigger your CBD brand is, the more likely that you can make a deal with the likes of, say, Neiman Marcus.

So how do you market your CBD line effectively? Especially when it’s not really legal to do so?

Marketing an “illegal” CBD product

That’s right. According to the FDA, marketing CBD products as a supplement is illegal:

We are aware that there may be some products on the market that add CBD to a food or label CBD as a dietary supplement. Under federal law, it is currently illegal to market CBD this way.

Yet, merchants market CBD infused food, oils, and drinks as health products all the time. It’s all a very (very!) grey area even if it’s happening everywhere, all the time. And it’s hard to tell what might happen. Feasibly, the government could put the kibosh on CBD products at any time… yet can they really stop such a massive industry?

This uncertainty is why broadcasters have been hesitant to allow CBD products to be advertised on traditional media. In fact, the first CBD product to be advertised on TV was CBD edibles… for pets. Now that’s an interesting way to test the waters.

All this is a huge reason why CBD affiliate marketing programs have been on a tear lately. With just our clients, we are seeing hundreds and hundreds of CBD merchants launching affiliate and referral programs to sell their products. Basically, where traditional media is hesitant to tread, Influencers in the space with their own blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, and other social media accounts are making money by working with CBD merchants to sell products. The growth of CBD in just affiliate marketing alone surprised us, but it makes sense with the current climate of peer recommendation and uncertainty of legality on other advertising channels.

It’s a strange and exciting time for CBD merchants, and we’re just in awe of both the current growth as well as the potential growth of the industry. Seeing first-hand how merchants are leveraging affiliate marketing to be the tip-of-the-spear in CBD sales and branding is not only fascinating, but inspiring. If you are in the CBD business, do your research into how to best market your products; we think it’ll lead you back to affiliate marketing as today’s best solution.

Schedule a demo to learn how an affiliate marketing program can put you ahead of your competition.

The Crazy Growth of CBD in E-Commerce was originally published in Affiliate Marketing — Refersion Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If the recent #metoo movement has done much for elevating women’s voices in the social and political sphere, another movement might be responsible for the rise of women-led and owned businesses: eCommerce. While women have long driven the bulk of consumer purchasing (to the tune of up to 80% of spending overall), they haven’t been well represented at the top levels of businesses since, well, ever.

But eCommerce has been steadily changing that.

Join us at our next live webinar where we dive into our affiliate platform and how it can power your affiliate marketing program.

Business outlets like Entrepreneur.com highlight the advantages inherent to eCommerce that often give women an edge. For instance, legions of stay-at-home moms can now run successful businesses from home that can reach audiences all over the world. Etsy, for example, is the tip of the spear for this sort of business.

And nearly a third of these women selling on Etsy cite it as their sole occupation, so eCommerce has grown to be much more than just a side hustle for a large swath of women.

“A large part of their success is the way women treat and support each other in this space. It’s just better than what men seem to do. This group is so positive and they truly enjoy helping each other. They seem to have a natural knack for it.”

So says Tom Allen, co-founder along with Cortney Fletcher of eCom Babes, the #1 community and training site for women entrepreneurs. As Tom tells it, Cortney recognized the need for mentorship in the eCommerce space and they decided to create this opportunity. So far, they’ve helped thousands of women work toward their goals of creating and sustaining their own businesses.

Tip: Learn how to segment your customers to drive more conversions.

“Cortney is really the reason this exists. She’s been in eCommerce for years and got off to a rocky start, doing the mainstream methodology of buying inventory first, paying for expensive ads, and seeing no results. She experienced a paradigm shift once she got a taste of social/Influencer marketing, and realized there was a much better, and lower cost way, of approaching eCommerce.”

With their experience, they offered a few tips for entrepreneurs who are looking to start their own online store:

“First, use focus as a weapon of progress. It’s really easy to put 500 things on a website. Instead, we teach women to focus on a niche. Learn the language of that niche, the culture, where the audience hangs out. Go deep instead of wide. The success rate is so much higher with this approach than the people who try to conquer many things at once. Instead of selling socks, sell dog socks.”

“Second, stay lean. You have two types of currency: time and money. Money shouldn’t be the deciding factor to a business being successful. Without money, you just need to use time more effectively. Get creative with what you do and how you do it. I don’t mean this to sound like a plug but Refersion really has allowed our 1000+ students to market products without doing expensive ads on Facebook or similar sites. Avoid traditional media buying until you’re profitable.”

In fact, many of our favorite clients here at Refersion follow this mentality (and are run by women).

Primally Pure Skincare

Primally Pure is a skincare line founded by Bethany McDaniel whose time on an organic farm inspired her to ditch conventional products that used too many chemicals, and to focus on creating replacements with pure ingredients.

BootayBag

BootayBag is a subscription underwear service for women founded by Ellyette Gheno that ships stylish, comfortable, and affordable pairs straight to customers’ doors.

Kinder Beauty Box

Kinder Beauty is a subscription service for vegan and cruelty-free makeup, skincare, hair-care, and accessories. It was founded by Daniella Monet and Evanna Lynch for women with a passion for the ethical treatment of animals in their care products.

Skinny Mixes

Skinny Mixes was founded by Jordan Engelhardt to deliver all the flavor of your favorite beverages, but without all the sugar and calories. They have a line of syrups as well as mixes, all low carb with no added sugars.

Sakara

Sakara was founded by Danielle Duboise and Whitney Tingle who grew up on natural eating habits and wanted to spread the word of good nutrition. Sakara offers plant-rich super meals delivered right to your door.

These are just a few of the hundreds of women-owned businesses that Refersion works with to bring low-cost affiliate marketing to their outreach strategy. The savvy and support in these companies, we are lucky to see first-hand, and we plan to do even more to encourage and highlight women-run businesses. We’ll end with this last quote from Tom:

“Support is important. Don’t go at it alone. Invest in a program like eCom Babes, a Facebook group, or some other way to connect with other women entrepreneurs. Be around a campfire. It does a lot for the soul and keeps you going.”

Join our live webinar and learn how Refersion can manage, track, and grow your affiliate marketing program.

Women are finding success in eCommerce. was originally published in Affiliate Marketing — Refersion Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.