There’s no better way to maximize your ROI than by making sure an offer is personalized. What does it mean, exactly? It means the recommended products should be based on something a customer has shown interest in. It also means any discount, sale or other shared content should be based on data that shows a customer is looking to receive that information.
It’s true that 31% of customers wish their shopping experiences were more personalized than they currently are. However, considering 81% of brands rely on affiliate programs, part of this personalization has to come from the influencers promoting your products. This is why powering your affiliates with the right data, content and offers will help them personalize their marketing, leading to increased conversions and affiliate loyalty for your business.
Personalization isn’t just effective for you. Personalizing the affiliate experience and giving your influencers the tools to properly engage with their audiences provides benefits for your brand, the affiliates and your consumers. In this article, we will talk about how to collect and use data to provide the best affiliate marketing experience.
How to get started with personalization
Before you can personalize customer experiences, you have to understand more about who your customers are, what they like and dislike, what their preferences are, and what needs or pain points they’re dealing with. There are a variety of tools where you can collect this customer profile information, but here are a few of the best ways for brands with affiliate programs.
Collect customer data with an e-commerce quiz
An e-commerce quiz lets brands ask customers questions to match them to the right products and recommendations. There are a variety of e-commerce quiz types, from gift finders, size finders, to product matching. Any e-commerce business, no matter the industry, can benefit from an online quiz. This is because the questions help you learn personal information about a customer’s needs or interests, which you can then use to retarget them with personalized emails, ads, social media posts and more.
91% of consumers say they are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them. Instead of trying to market to your customers based on guesswork, a quiz provides your business and its affiliates with data about customers that took a quiz to properly target every campaign and message.
Look for purchase patterns with your affiliate marketers
Each affiliate will have its own unique audience. For example, an influencer known for their opinions about skincare products will likely drive purchases to cleansers, moisturizers and other skincare products, compared to an influencer known for their makeup artistry that will drive their followers to purchase eyeshadows, lipsticks and other cosmetic products.
Knowing what type of customers your influencers are driving to your store and the products they’re purchasing gives you more data about your customer base to leverage for targeted ad campaigns, emails, SMS marketing and more.
Pay attention to website data, your CRM and purchase history
The ways that customers interact with your email, Messenger marketing and SMS campaigns will tell you a lot about the products they’re interested in. Do they click on the products you recommend? What pages of your website do they spend the most time on? This information will show you what products are best sellers, what customers are your most loyal and more.
When you combine customer data from a quiz with your own affiliate data, website data, your CRM and purchase history data, you can start to segment your affiliates and customers to ensure personalized customer journeys.
Using personalization for great affiliate marketing experiences
Once you start tracking consumer behavior and data, you’ll notice patterns from your affiliates and customers. You’ll want to use this data to create personalized affiliate experiences to help each affiliate be more successful. Here are a few ways to use your newly collected customer data for better affiliate experiences.
Segment your affiliates by products and followers
Segment your affiliates into mailing lists based on the type of products they influence. Make sure each affiliate grouping is only receiving emails about the products they refer customers to. Not only does this drown out the noise of product and discount updates that aren’t relevant to them, but it keeps them focused on referring followers to the right products from your business.
For affiliates driving specific product purchases, like cosmetics, segment these affiliates so they only receive emails from your business about beauty updates and deals, or you could customize specialized cosmetic promotions for their follower base alone.
Share customer data so affiliates can have stronger targeting
Sharing key data points and patterns with your affiliates and influencers amplifies their success since they can customize their marketing campaigns based on what they know about your customer base through your collected data.
For example, if you learn through a quiz that you have a large group of customers that have oily skin, your affiliates can create content that educates customers about treating oily skin and the products they recommend from your brand to help.
Educate your affiliates to help them sell more
Knowing what an affiliate’s followers are interested in gives your business the opportunity to educate them about the products they’re good at selling. You can share value-added content, like blogs or videos, to teach them more about your products so those influencers can share that information with their followers to help drive the sale.
Share ready-to-use marketing materials
Another great way to help your affiliates perform their best is to share marketing material based on the products they promote. For example, customize social media images by product, discount and influencer. Rather than making the influencer take images themselves, maximize their sales and yours by sending product images to easily be shared on their social media accounts.
Segmenting and personalizing the affiliate experience helps inspire your influencers to refer more of their followers to try your products. An affiliate marketing relationship works both ways, investing in your affiliates just as much as they invest in you will ensure success for you and them.
Invest in data-collection tools to start personalizing your customer experiences
Now that you’ve learned how to collect customer profile data and personalize your affiliate experiences, the next step is to use the right tools to achieve this.
First, get started with an e-commerce quiz maker, so you can interact with every website visitor to learn more about their behaviors, demographics, attitudes and other important data. Check out Octane AI to get started.
Next, get set up with an affiliate marketing program that gives you the power to see data from the purchases your affiliates drive. Refersion allows you to manage, track and grow your store with affiliate marketing.
Good luck with personalizing your affiliate marketing experiences!
