Singapore – Affiliate marketing service provider Rakuten Advertising has recently published a new blueprint called ‘A 5-Stage Blueprint for High-Performance Affiliate Marketing’, which aims to educate and inform both advertisers and publishers about the strategic role that the affiliate channel is now playing in marketing strategies.
Said blueprint is based on input from members of the Rakuten Advertising International Collective (RAIC), comprising affiliate marketing specialists from leading advertisers and publishers around the globe including Asia, Australia, Europe, the US, and Latin America.
For advertisers, the blueprint demonstrates how different affiliate models can be combined to enable them to find and influence new customers throughout the customer journey, from discovery to conversion. For publishers, the blueprint offers guidance on how they can enhance, extend and further monetize their offering, building deeper relationships with existing advertisers and attracting new brand partners.
“The affiliate channel has transformed over recent years, and our goal in creating RAIC was to bring together some of the leading thinkers in the affiliate industry to unlock the insights and best practices that are driving innovation in this space,” said Stuart McLennan, senior vice president for Asia-Pacific at Rakuten Advertising.
He added, “The open and willing sharing of their direct experiences and strategies as advertisers and publishers has formed the basis of this blueprint, and highlights how unique the affiliate channel is in driving collaborative partnerships to meet respective commercial objectives.”
The blueprint can be summarized in these points: aligning affiliate KPIs to business objectives, making the best use of the available data, aligning affiliate strategies to the customer journey and brand positioning, integrating existing and emerging affiliate models, and analyzing, learning, testing, optimizing and proving their marketing strategies.