Are You Losing Active Affiliates Over Non-Converting Clicks?

Affiliate managers focus on affiliate recruitment, and then sweat over affiliate activation; but do you realize that when you, finally, get affiliates to put up your links on their website(s) your conversion is then under scrutiny — their extremely critical scrutiny?

There are very few affiliate programs that I promote on my blog, and when one is yielding a higher-than-average click-through rate it quickly stands out. Then, however, if it yields low or (worse yet) no conversions, it stand out even more! Such has been the case in the situation exemplified by the below-shown donut chart:

Yes, 2,427 clicks (or 91 percent of all clicks sent to the merchants on this network) were generated since getting active with the program, and… zero of them converted.

I took their links down replacing them with another merchant; yet couldn’t help but wonder how patient affiliates normally are with their non-converting merchants. So, I put together a poll asking affiliates how many no-conversion clicks makes them give up on a merchant.

It turns out that very few affiliates will patiently wait on merchants to straighten out their conversion rate issues. Seven out of ten won’t refer more than 500 clicks, and three out ten will give up on a merchant (taking down or swapping their links) within the 100-300 clicks range.

Sobering? It should be.

It is also 100% natural. After all, the rule of this affiliate game is “get paid for each conversion.” Affiliates are rarely being compensated for traffic, “eyeballs,” branding, or anything that cannot be directly expressed in a conversion (most frequently a sale, or a lead). And they will take your links down if you don’t convert. Some earlier, other later… So if, as an affiliate manager, you see clicks but no conversions (or conversion rates substantially lower than the averages), look for an internal problem, and fix it before your affiliates give up on you.

CEO & Founder of AM Navigator – an award-winning OPM agency. Founder & Chair of Affiliate Management Days conference. Author of bestselling "A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing" (2007) and "Affiliate Program Management: An Hour a Day" (2011), speaker, consultant, and affiliate marketing evangelist.

Tags: affiliate program conversion, conversion rate optimization, website conversion

Merry Christmas All...

MichaelT

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