Affiliate Portal Whitepaper - CRMJetty

Affiliating Fueling Revenues with Affiliate Programs Through a Secure Portal

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Enhancement

Contents Introduction

5 6

The Global Market Merchants

6

Publishers

6

End users/customers

6

Reason to Have a Affiliate Portal

6

Small Role of Affiliates in the Business Process

6

Why Not Managing Affiliates with CRM?

7

Security and Safety Concern

7

Problems Transformed to Solutions With Affiliate Portal

8 9

General Problems That Organization Face: Fraud Clicks

9

Building Trust

9

Sign-up fees

9

Disputed payments

9

Broken offers and Voucher Codes

9

Unique codes

9

Poor matches

10 10

Solution That Portal Renders Fraud

10

Trust

10

Sign-up fees

10

Late and Disputed Payments

10

Broken offers and Voucher Codes

10

Unique codes

10 11

Smart matches

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Partner Portal

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Core Features of Affiliate Marketing That a Portal Checks

11

Performance Marketing

12

Affiliate Marketing

12

Affiliate Networks (Cost Per Action Networks)

12

WebMaster, Publisher, Advert

12

Advertiser

12

Tracking

12

Fraud

13

Shave

13

Lead

13

Offer

13

How Advertisers Currently Use Data

14 15

Pre-sale User Profiling

15

Geo Targeting

15

Personalization

15

ISP

16

Prospecting & Pre-Targeting

16 16

Post Sale Understanding Data Path

16

Product Level Data

17

Affiliate Data Futures

18 18

Consumer insights

Objective of The Affiliate Portal

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Affiliate Portal

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Fueling Revenues with Affiliate Programs Through a Secure Portal Everyone is familiar with services such as Uber and Booking.com, but few people are aware that they are affiliate programs. An affiliate program is a marketing environment, where an affiliate mediator is involved in driving a promotional campaign while an advertiser pays for the end results.

Any advertiser can create their own affiliate program. They can create it independently or by using existing affiliate channel programs. In the latter case, the advertiser is subject to the affiliate's costs, along with that, it also needs them to to cope up with potential fraudulent actions on the part of affiliates.

Moreover, the affiliates lack trust in the advertiser, as they find it difficult put their trust it will not

results in being concealed or tampered with. Such shortcomings can be eliminated with the establishment of an affiliate network that can manage all roles of both publisher as well as the parent website. An affiliate portal is the perfect solution for both as it combines the benefits of both, merchants as well as affiliate.

It helps an advertiser to easily create an affiliate offers and turn them into profits through affiliate

advertising campaigns. This will be stored in distributed registries of the portal at enterprise end and would be released the affiliates.

These rewards can be paid through smart payment gateways that guarantees security with policy

honesty and transparency for the productive engagement affiliates generates. It works as a smart anti-fraud system developed to bring more transparency and efficiency in the affiliate program. It

will also prevent the affiliates to engage in fraudulent activities with an independent, decentralized system that will be manage everything from both the ends.

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The Global Market

End Users/Customers

Merchants

who visits the merchant website

which have their products or

purchase on these websites

Portal, Merchants will be able to

merchants.

services through a affiliate or a

These are the buyers and visitor

These

are

Parent

Website,

through the affiliate. They make

services to sell. Using an Affiliate

and

market

generate the sales for

their

offerings

and

network of affiliates.

Publishers

These are businesses, websites and

individuals

that

publish

products and services of some other companies. Affiliate Portal will use advance CRM features to match

chants.

Publishers

with

Mer-

Reason to Have a Affiliate Portal Small Role of Affiliates in the Business Process Affiliates program might be having less roles and

scope of features but it has a broad criticality that stands out to be outmatched with an important

feature. The portal can help the organizations to

build a dynamic solution that will help them to streamline their engagement with their affiliates.

Affiliate programs are more specific towards

products and centred around the commission generation.

Thus, they require less features and more snip-

pets. But managing these features is a tough task as the data they process is critical and possess

numerous complexities. It is also difficult to go manage all these information sharing and handling with emails.

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Why No to Managing Affiliates with CRM? It is also a bad practice to manage all your affiliates and communicate with them via CRM. As

your CRM is already managing all the employees

and other important business officials, adding more users will loaden it up with more users.

Inclusion of affiliates will also make your CRM

messed up with such additional information overload that your affiliate program possesses.

Another issue with this is the addition of extra cost

with your CRM licencing. As the major CRMs are

paid and accessible with user licence, which is

With more number of users in you CRM, ERP of any other business software, system also becomes

insecure and unsafe. Affiliates have very limited role the parent organizations and it often hap-

pens that they pay less attention to the user

manuals, training programs and other guidelines

related to your tool. It makes them handy with your critically important business software. Such handyness of business management tool to

mass number of affiliates creates threat to the

system, which can result in losing or misplacing crucial business data. Their carelessness in managing your business processing software can also cause system errors.

necessary for every CRM user. So, when you

include affiliates as CRM user, there would be

requirement for more licences. And this will increase the operational cost for the organization.

Security and Safety Concern The quantum amount of affiliate is quite high in numbers. When an organization manages all these affiliates through a CRM, ERP or with any

other business software, the flow of information from a mass users loads your business software.

It messes up the information sharing base espe-

cially when they work without a role specified

accessible. In such an environment, the information also becomes difficult to arrange and sort, resulting into a messed up data loop.

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Problems Transformed to Solutions With Affiliate Portal

General Problems That Organization Face.

An affiliate program has a critical process to deal in context with publishing links of numerous products with a unique id that is trackable. In this process, there are certain points, where it is necessary to

store and share information. Sharing this information becomes difficult for both organizations as well as affiliates. Hence, it often creates miscommunication between both. Some of these issues are as follows:

Fraud Clicks

Bot and spam programs also generates clicks and creates bogus traffic. Both partners and merchants have to keep track of such clicks

through daily, weekly and monthly reports. Managing these reports in daily monthly reports is a

tough task and also end up with confusing report.

Building Trust

Studies says that industry is suffering from affili-

ate mistrust as almost every one out of four traffic

redirection is fake. An affiliate must trust that after they redirect the traffic to the parent website and

it successfully accomplishes a visit, it will result in them receiving the payment.

Sign-up Fees

Both Merchants and Publishers have to spend thousands of dollars for sign ups in the CRM or ERP software to manage their business roles. This cost

further increases when there comes a recurring

monthly fee. This is one of the reasons that restrict small to medium enterprises to and dissuade

them to stay away from affiliate marketing as they cannot afford to incur expense more than their earning.

Disputed Payments

As affiliate marketing has a complex process and require a transparency with precision. With an

ordinary and messed up system, it becomes diffi-

cult to track record of every single link. Such system often misses out links and clicks lead them to have disputes. Affiliate have issues with

Merchants in such cases as they do not pay them leads, which miss out from their system.

Broken Offers and Voucher Codes

It is big problem for affiliates and especially for

websites that offer coupons and vouchers. As most of the offers codes, vouchers and coupons affiliates redirect, are broken links or expired

offers. This happens due to lack of a streamlined system between affiliates and parent website.

Unique Codes

Another problem that enterprises face is gener-

ating unique codes for the affiliates. It also creates a need for them to check that they do not provide same link to multiple affiliates. Affiliates

also have to cross check the links codes and proper way of reusing these links.

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Poor Matches

Publishers drive traffic and leads for the merchants that are of less use and renders less productivity. To maintain a performance analytics record of affiliates, merchants need such data of theri productivity.

Generally normal accounting softwares fail to provide such reports.

Solution That Portal Renders Fraud

Late and Disputed Payments

each and every single click. The portal will store all

time. It enables the enterprises to add credits to

Using an affiliate portal, there can be a track of the data and share it with both publisher as well

merchant. This way, both can track and see which user was redirected, which reached them and what purchase they did.

Trust

A portal saves all the data and make it visible to affiliates. It also bring utmost efficiency in the

system, which help them to gain trust. With this,

they would be able to track in real time, where a successful task completion triggers the system to execute credit in their account and release funds with intervention of any middle man.

Sign-up Fees

Affiliate Portal will work on single license and

comes with a one time fee or monthly recurring

fee, which includes single licensing cost and does not ask for separate license per user. This takes

down the barrier for entry of small to medium enterprises. This creates a collaborative environment where more businesses engage with each other.

A portal tracks and maintains information in real their affiliates, which can be encashed by fund

transfer whenever affiliates wish to withdraw

them. Portal works on an automated process, which eradicates the payment disputes. Payment

history and confirmation reports also keep the system confusion-proof.

Broken Offers and Voucher Codes

An affiliate has the ability to send alerts and noti-

fication to the affiliates for their latest offers and notifications for removing the older ones that has expired. Affiliate portal can also automatically remove outdated offre codes and coupons from

the affiliate dashboard. It will also disregard leads for discarded offers and would not count commission for them.

Unique Codes

Affiliate portal will automatically generate the unique codes in the system and assign them to

affiliates. It will track these link and will also verify that every affiliate is using different codes. The

portal eliminates the cyclic usage of same link and will reward affiliates only on the codes that are issued to them.

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Smart Matches

Based on high end CRM technologies, affiliates

portal

generates

analytics

reports that are useful for affiliates. It will

generate useful recommendations for both Publishers and Merchants. Such engagements will also better their relationships and drive higher ROI.

Core Features of AďŹƒliate Marketing That a Portal Checks

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Performance Marketing

WebMaster, Publisher, Advert

achieve concrete, measurable results. Its

marketers within a single account in an

It is a marketing industry, whose goal is to distinctive feature is the ability at all stages to see a specific, quantitative indi-

cator that reflects the outcome of each individual marketing activity (e.g., site visi-

tor cost, application cost, call cost, order cost, and end cost of attracting the customer who has carried out the target activity).

A professional marketer or a group of

affiliate network) who advertises the

product or service for advertisers and receives a cash reward for the target action of the client.

Advertiser

In this context, Advertiser is the one who incentivizes affiliates to engage custom-

ers by creating offers and paying the

Affiliate Marketing

affiliates (often through affiliate net-

works on the basis of a payment model

match the conditions of the offer. Often,

It is an internet marketing industry that for affiliates (web-masters) for each tar-

geted action by their customers (order, purchase, install, etc.). Advertisers often

do not work directly, but through affiliate networks (CPA Networks).

Affiliate Networks (Cost Per Action Networks)

Services in the sector of affiliate market-

ing, offering affiliates remuneration on the basis of the CPA model and providing

works) for targeted customer actions that

advertisers describe possible ways of attracting customers by providing materials, ready-made templates, scripts, and so on.

Tracking

Tracking of many different campaign

metrics in the affiliate marketing process.

For example - time, source, or number of target activities.

advertisers services necessary for the

establishment of affiliate programs. Affiliate networks charge advertisers for customer actions, pay commissions to affili-

ates and charge commissions for the service.

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Fraud

In terms of affiliate marketing, different ways of deceiving the affiliate advertisers

and their network, in order to obtain a monetary reward. Varieties of fraud may be: Emulation of target actions, spoofing the source of introduced clients (cookie-stuffing),

deceiving

customers

by

Fraud

lihood of target action (for example, by

Shave

using misleading ads to increase the likeusing a significantly lower price than the

Lead

offer of the advertiser) and others.

Shave

Offer

A deception of the affiliate network or the

advertiser by an affiliate, which downplays the performance of an advertising campaign in order to pay less.

Lead

It is a target based action program that

intend to generate a response from the towards an ad campaign. It drives traffic in form of registrations,

application

installations, calls, sales, orders etc.

Offer

It is an advertising proposal that attracts the targeted activities from advertisers along with other affiliate networks.

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How Advertisers Currently Use Data

Tracking data and using data are two very different things. The

customer journey is not simple and ensuring that brand en-

gagement is created along all touch points – including post

purchase (how valuable was the final customer) – is key to any marketing campaign.

Awareness to Post-Purchase Data Cycle

Looking more closely to the system we can examine the different types of data that are useful for each stage of the customer journey in more detail.

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Pre Sale A key stage in the customer journey is initial brand awareness - first impressions count and are proven to lead to conversion.

The affiliate channel uses data in a number of ways to maximise the efficiency of brand

awareness. The main way is through the abilities of various tracking solutions to analyse the customer journey from first click to final conversion. In addition various partners can

target users according to the demographics. More examples are detailed below. It’s this stage in the journey where affiliate data delivers back high value to other marketing

channels by providing sales data to add to the fully integrated marketing programmes.

User Profiling

A few attributes that you must go through before adding any affiliate are:

Geo Targeting

Delivery infrastructure, physical store locations or propensity to purchase based on geographic demographic; the ability to pinpoint a customer’s location at home and at work are core drivers for the majority of advertisers.

This could be using data to target a specific location. For instance, take a retailer which has a low physical presence in a large city centre. Online is key to acquiring

a new, affluent customer base. Or for an advertiser with a limited delivery infrastructure – it may be more cost effective to deliver customers direct to a store in a particular location. Affiliate data is ideal to use to isolate both objectives.

Personalization

Customer profiling is a key attribute to successful campaign management. What sets affiliate data apart from other forms of online advertising data is that the final conversion factor is based on actual and not modelled sales data. This is unique to affiliate acquired data and contextualises the range of other behavioural analytics in a completely fresh framework whether producing single customer views or aggregating years’ worth of consumer data.

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This is data collected by publishers and advertisers and can drive highly accurate

targeting – eg insurance products for women or display advertising retargeting at

customers who have viewed, but not purchased a specific product. This form of ac-

curate targeting is more likely to result in a conversion, thus improving an advertiser’s ROI.

ISP

If specific IP ranges are known to apply to specific broadband suppliers, for exam-

ple, it’s possible to build targeted marketing campaigns to just certain broadband users. This is ideal for the Telecoms and media markets.

Prospecting & Pre-Targeting

As customers connect with brands, the ability to capture their information and engage with them is key.

For example, when a new product is due to be launched, there’s often a stage where targeted customers are given the opportunity to place a pre-order. This early adopter approach – typical in the telecoms, media and publishing industries

– gives marketers advantages in what are often highly competitive market places.

Post Sale Understanding Data Path

The ability to understand the data path your customer took to purchase is complex.

There are wide variety of options is available across the channel. The key is being able

to apply equal as well as quantifiable analysis techniques to be able to interpret the data in unique ways to make a specific advertiser’s campaign more competitive and profitable.

This requires advertisers and agencies to draw on the expertise of all channels through

networks, tracking platforms and publishers if they’re to understand optimisation for

future campaigns. This means in many cases – establishing new communications channels between suppliers and in-house.

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Product Level Data

Most affiliate networks can supply advertisers with product level data for their campaigns. This not only allows advertisers to reward publishers with specific commissions

for different items in the basket, but also gives advertisers useful sales data insights. For some marketers, this kind of evidence can unlock additional funding through internal budgets or supplier funding, and so open up more integrated campaign development.

Customers

Website

A

Website

CRM

Contact Module

Merchants

Authenticate User

User

Publishers

Portal Sign Up

Authenticate User

Verified User If User is Merchant

Portal login

If User is Publisher

Manage Account Profile Settings, Payments, History Reports

Manage Publishers Account, Profile Settings, Payments, History, Reports

Manage Approval/ Rejection of publisher

Yes

If merchants accept request

Send Request to merchants

No

Manage store and Products

Manage Deals and Offers of publisher

Provide Live Support to publishers

Revise and Resend request

Affiliate Data Futures Affiliate data is constantly evolving as more of it is integrated across the value chain. A

brief review of some ways that publishers and advertisers are developing their strategies to make the most efficient use of affiliate data exposes significant opportunities for now and in the future.

These are specific examples of innovative ways in which affiliate data is being used col-

laboratively to drive advertisers’ marketing plans forward and improve customer/brand

interaction. Most of these innovations are not yet standard but demonstrate the importance of integrated thinking, planning and execution when maximising online performance spend.

Consumer Insights

Publishers have a unique insight to your customers – much like shop owners have across physical footfall. Many publishers have been collecting data from their cam-

paigns with advertisers for over 15 years and have amassed a significant amount of insight into consumer behaviour over that time. Top-tier publishers provide additional insight into an advertiser’s through purchase activity across multiple brands.

Publishers such as cashback, voucher code, comparison or closed-user-group models

such as loyalty and ‘club’ models possess unique consumer data, spending habits, income, brand preference, demographic and more. These publishers are expert in compiling this data into actionable insights.

For instance, portal segments its database of 4 million members by demographic, purchase behaviour and channel engagement to enable the right message to be dis-

played at the right time. This segmentation across channels (online, mobile and in-store), has already demonstrated that members targeted this way spend and transact on average 3x more than a single channel message.

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Objective of The Affiliate Portal 1. Create an affiliate network that supports the advanced Pay Per Action model

Our highest priority is to offer Merchants and Publishers complete confidence in

Affiliate Marketing schemes. By creating an environment in which trust is not

required, Merchants will rest in the knowledge that they only pay for the comple-

tion of clearly defined end user tasks, and Publishers will rest knowing they will be paid for their efforts.

2. Eliminate fraudulent Affiliate Marketing activity

The industry is plagued with issues

around trust, disputes and fraud. By using Smart Contracts on the Blockchain and

moving away from the Pay Per Click

model this will be effectively eliminated,

creating better relationships between Merchants and Publishers. This relationship is critical as in most affiliate programs less than 10% of affiliates drive 90% of traffic and conversions.

3. Remove the high barriers to entry for small businesses

subscription costs are unreasonably high.

Small businesses are forced to find alter-

native marketing strategies, but this need not be the case. The Partner platform will be able to assist small businesses in achieving their marketing goals by significantly lowering the barrier to entry.

4. Increase network wide ROI by intelligently pairing Merchants with Publishers

By building a self-learning AI capable of

providing recommendations, we aim to increase ROI for all customers on the net-

work. Pairing Merchants with Publishers and achieving consistently high success

rates is difficult, especially when left to humans.

However,

with

such

vast

amounts of historical data we can anal-

yse trends to determine what works and what does not. By using modern machine

learning techniques we can provide rec-

ommendations to Merchants and Publishers, resulting in higher rates of successfully completed end user tasks, ultimately generating more revenue all round.

Running Affiliate Marketing campaigns for small businesses is often not financially viable because entry fees and monthly

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5. Decrease end user frustration by purging inactive Voucher Codes

6. Support exclusive offers and Voucher Codes

Many Voucher Codes on the web are

Current systems make it impossible to

they have expired or were never activat-

exclusively. This is often attempted but

inactive and do not work, either because

ed. An invalid Voucher Code is a source of immense frustration for the end user and has a negative impact on their E-com-

merce experience. Using our plugins for 3rd

party

platforms,

Merchants

can

import their Voucher Codes directly into the Affiliate portal dashboard and have them stored on the Blockchain, ready for

assign Voucher Codes to a Publisher breaks down because the Voucher Code

is essentially public information and can be used by other Publishers. With Smart

Contracts and Blockchain technology we can ensure the correct Publisher receives

the reward even when exclusive Voucher Codes are used.

distribution to Publishers. Should a Vouch-

7. Utilise Affiliate Marketing in new and emerging technology

date the Smart Contract, be removed

With a steady increase in people access-

the network updated. As a result there will

wearables, virtual/ augmented reality

within our network.

for Affiliate Marketing that we will look to

er Code expire or be altered this will invalifrom the platform and the feeds across

ing the internet through smart devices,

be no invalid Voucher Codes anywhere

and the IoT, there is a gap in the market occupy. Our goal is to stay one step ahead of the industry and offer unique

ways to use Affiliate Marketing with emerging technologies and sectors.1

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Engage Smarter.

Add Value to Your Affliates Program Through CRMJetty Portal.

CRMJetty is a business intelligence solution provider for corporates across all the industries. We specialize in CRM applications with major technologies like Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, SugarCRM, and SuiteCRM. Our next generation solutions add improvisation to your process to make it more productive, costeffective, user-friendly and customer oriented.

Tour crmjetty.com to learn more.

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