AWIN

Refersion

CJ Affiliate

It’s no secret that consumer shopping behavior (and expectations) have shifted in a massive way. Over the last 12 months, mobile engagement in affiliate has increased 20% YoY surpassing desktop usage for the first time, proving it all the more important that brands adopt an app strategy and put in the work to understand and utilize in-app tracking for a better consumer experience.

Traditionally, affiliate has been slow to adopt such tracking, perhaps due to an overall lack of understanding on how app tracking works. Another factor may be that those in affiliate haven’t recognized the growing customer need for cohesive experiences across devices.

Typically, mobile apps don’t rely on standard cookies to track in-app activity. Cookies therefore can’t be used to associate a click with an in-app transaction, creating a lack of transparency about how affiliate is driving purchases within the app. That gap can lead to poor customer experiences as well as a breakdown in the relationship between advertisers and publishers. In most cases, app tracking attribution requires a mobile measurement partner, or MMP—an independent third-party platform that can track, organize and visualize mobile app data for marketers, therefore providing a unified view of performance across channels and platforms.

“Increasingly, it’s not rocket science to tie this stuff together,” said Chris Maddern, the cofounder and Chief Innovation Officer at Button in a recent Junction Live podcast. “What you need is a well-coordinated set of partners to make sure that you get a consistent view across these things and your channels are measured in an apples-to-apples kind of way.”

Still, there’s a misconception that apps are a walled garden where tracking is difficult and not consistent. Another common misguided belief is that customer falloff is triggered when brands facilitate customers’ return to cashback sites. That perception, however, is starting to change, meaning that now is the time to make apps a key part of digital strategy, Maddern said.

Kelly Merkel, the Vice President of Publisher Development at CJ, agreed. “We have a unique situation here where customers are extremely engaged,” she said. “They have an opportunity to build loyalty to not just the brand through affiliate but through the publisher experience. We have kind of a two-fold way to tap into consumers and get opportunities and engagements in front of them.”

"The goal should be to create an authentic, seamless customer experience with reliable tracking," Merkel said. "It’s not about trying to keep a customer in the app, it’s about having an app be an integral part of a holistic brand experience that meets the customer where they’re at."

Customers then get an uninterrupted path to a purchase and can be confident that their cashback and points are accurately applied to loyalty programs. But it’s not just customers who benefit from a streamlined ecosystem—it advantages advertisers and publishers as well.

Advertisers see increased revenue capture and conversion because of better tracking and the transparency results in insights about mobile customers. Publishers can get full attribution and commissioning of mobile transactions. And both advertisers and publishers benefit from having a unified platform to track and report for both mobile and desktop conversions. "Successful marketers prioritize the user experience across all channels," Maddern said. And they don’t under leverage the power of their affiliate channel, which he believes is one of the most effective channels that companies have. It just needs to meet consumers where they’re at —on their phones.

“Increasingly mobile is where people are spending time, attention, and money,” he said. “Brands build apps because they are the best way to build deepening long-term relationships with customers and the best way to drive single purchase transactions as well. They wouldn’t keep building them if they didn’t work.”

Learn More about CJ’s partnership with Button

Rapid changes in consumer behavior require brands to adapt quickly

 Mobile growth in affiliate is driving a change in advertiser behavior

Martech Record, along with experts across the e-commerce realm, have been closely following affiliate marketing’s recent rise to prominence. While industry authorities believe this growth is likely in its early stages, the boom has already revealed both challenges and pitfalls as vendors swarm the industry. Affiliate marketing has always centered around relationship-building, but in an increasingly crowded field, it can be difficult to determine a trusted growth partner.

In the case of leading affiliate marketing platform Refersion, constructing this bridge of confidence is fundamental to effectively recruit and retain affiliates and influencers.

“Building trust with your affiliates begins with making sure they get paid on time (every time) and by automating tax compliance,” said Alex Markov, CEO and co-founder of Refersion. “Our aim is to offer a complete affiliate marketing platform to track unlimited clicks, coupon codes, and affiliate conversions, while automating direct ACH payments and taxes in a single place.”

Refersion Pay is designed to make influencer and affiliate payments faster, while simultaneously meeting the requirements of tax documentation. Through a direct payment strategy, Refersion Pay allows brands to pay hundreds to thousands of affiliates in a single click. With this level of automation, Refersion Pay’s technology eliminates the need for third-party payment vendors while saving merchants from costly third-party management fees. The platform also allows businesses and affiliates to track the cost and revenue associated with their affiliate marketing campaigns—a task that can quickly become overwhelming and difficult to scale if done manually.

As affiliate marketing continues to gain traction among ecommerce brands, Refersion is setting the pace for customization and automation. Today’s performance marketers are accustomed to seeing detailed and almost real-time data from analytics platforms, making it all the more crucial for affiliate program reporting to meet such expectations.

Refersion’s platform provides a personalized affiliate dashboard that displays performance, payment, and tax information. To further fulfill these new industry standards, Refersion Pay offers an array of payment options for affiliates that have a preferred payment method.

“Affiliate programs that do not offer multiple and low cost direct ACH payment options may struggle to attract and retain premium affiliates and publishers with large amounts of traffic,” Markov said.

When it comes to retaining these high-quality publishers, a tailored relationship is a necessity. Top publishers often look for customized content management systems to track performance and meet their payment needs.


“When you work with large publishers, take a personalized approach to developing the relationship rather than relying exclusively on automation,” Markov suggests.


With a platform like Refersion, performance marketing teams can spend more time recruiting affiliates and less time reacting to affiliate requests. Brands have the ability to streamline their tracking and direct payment processes, and affiliates are empowered to understand the success of their campaigns.

Offering a seamless, fast, and transparent payment and tax experience for affiliates just got easier with Refersion Pay. More than 57k brands trust Refersion to process more than 615k affiliate orders a day, and track over $1.6 billion in affiliate revenue through its platform. To begin your affiliate marketing journey, contact Refersion at hello@refersion.com.

How modern payment technology can lay the foundation for affiliate marketing's most important element: trust between partners.

Smarter Affiliate Payments

 has announced the appointment of David Lloyd as Chief Customer Officer, a new role for the company. A long-time Google leader who helped the company ascend to top advertising partner to many retailers in the UK, Lloyd was most recently General Manager for the UK, Netherlands, and Nordics for Alibaba Group. 

Lloyd’s appointment sparked a great deal of industry buzz because of what it signals about the rapidly evolving affiliate industry and how AWIN is driving proactive change. As the affiliate business has expanded rapidly, notably since COVID-19, brand perceptions about the channel and its role have evolved considerably.

David has more than two decades of experience in marketing, working with senior marketing leaders both within and beyond the traditional affiliate arena. He brings a holistic view of marketing to AWIN and embodies the company’s efforts to change what being customer-centric means in the channel.

The company has long believed that while many businesses and pundits have articulated a vision for a more central and strategic role for affiliate, key actions must accompany all that grand talk. By establishing a new standard toward meeting customer needs, AWIN is driving genuine change in the market.

AWIN believes that today’s affiliate opportunities are best addressed when teams take a consumer-centric versus channel-centric view. As affiliate marketing interactions are now driving a quarter or more of total sales for many businesses, it’s plain that brands and their partners must manage these consumer touchpoints strategically. In keeping with AWIN's goal to be a single solution through which marketers can drive maximum results from all forms of partnership, the appointment of Lloyd as Chief Customer Officer is another significant signal of the company’s commitment to serving clients as a genuine business partner.

Said Mr. Lloyd, “AWIN wants to capitalize on increased investment in affiliate marketing partnerships and bring the benefits to even more businesses that need profitable, risk-free solutions tailored for any marketing challenge. I have joined a fantastic team and am finding great opportunities to leverage my experience to further optimize AWIN's customer journeys, putting the customer’s needs at the heart of every interaction they have with us.”

In his new role, Mr. Lloyd leads every aspect of AWIN"s customer experience, leading the company’s Regional Managers and Global Publisher, Account Management, Operations, New Business, Marketing & PR teams. In keeping with the importance of this new role for the company, Lloyd has also joined the Awin Executive Board, which sets the vision and key initiatives of the business.

The appointment also points to AWIN's global footprint and success in acquiring many new clients focused on taking a more strategic approach to the channel, particularly in North America.

Continued Lloyd, “The need to deliver genuine brand value to our clients is strongest in markets like the United States and the UK where the channel is most developed. Our organization is driving innovation and change in how companies work with partners of all types. It’s an exhilarating time at AWIN because we are unlocking the full potential of affiliate as it moves to the center of go-to-market planning for most leading brands. And we’re doing so by aligning everything to how brands put consumer needs first.”

AWIN has announced the appointment of David Lloyd as Chief Customer Officer, a new role for the company. A long-time Google leader who helped the company ascend to top advertising partner to many retailers in the UK, Lloyd was most recently General Manager for the UK, Netherlands, and Nordics for Alibaba Group. 



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