17 KPIs to Measure Affiliate Marketing Performance

You can use performance measurements to assess progress towards a strategic objective or goal in affiliate marketing. Different companies have different KPIs by which they measure success. We'll share 17 affiliate marketing metrics and KPIs that you should monitor as an affiliate program manager. The conversion rate is a key metric that has a great impact.

To measure the conversion rate, the number of conversions in a given period is taken and divided by the number of page views in that same period. When managing an affiliate program, your overall conversion rate can fluctuate due to new affiliates being recruited for your program and different traffic sources being tested. For example, you can have an affiliate who drives most of the traffic to your site through their blog and who achieves a 15% conversion. Looking at a combined conversion rate is useful, but it doesn't show the full picture of the program.

New customers are those who made their first purchase with your brand. Keeping track of this number allows you to also calculate other key metrics, such as customer acquisition costs, retention, customer loss, and so on. By measuring your top affiliate partners, you're seeing the partners that generate the most revenue, new customers, and traffic to your site. In general, we'll see that 20% of your top affiliate partners drive nearly 80% of the total affiliate channel growth.

That's why it's so important to establish close relationships with your main affiliate partners. It is normally considered as the new registered customer recommended by affiliates who has not been “touched” by other marketing channels (SEM, email, organic, etc.). However, defining and measuring incremental revenues isn't always an easy task. The more affiliates you turn into repeat sellers, the more effective your marketing efforts will be (and the more likely they are to increase your sales and profitability). While a cost-effective affiliate program is undoubtedly a priority for most brands, it is also a priority for most affiliate partners, since their profits are linked to the profitability of the program. By regularly tracking and analyzing affiliate marketing metrics, companies can make informed decisions about how to optimize their campaigns for maximum success.

Once the data is collected, companies can use it to identify trends and patterns in their affiliate marketing campaigns. If your affiliate traffic is declining, it's time to activate your affiliates and recruit more new ones. Setting up to measure LTV for affiliate marketing can take a while, but once this KPI is up and running, it can provide detailed information about the long-term value that influencers bring to your campaigns and your final results. Companies can learn more about the effectiveness of their affiliate marketing initiatives and make informed decisions about how best to optimize their campaigns by tracking these metrics and KPIs. Learn the quality metrics of your affiliate sales performance (&) with the help of the FastSpring affiliate program KPI template. Segmenting your affiliates based on how they generate traffic will help you understand at what stage of the user journey your product generates the most conversions, your audience, the elasticity of prices and, finally, the incremental value that each type of affiliate generates. However, selecting the right KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure the effectiveness of affiliate or influencer marketing campaigns can be difficult. In affiliate marketing, it's also known as commission reversal because you'll have to cancel the commission that your affiliate partner earned from previous canceled sales. If only a small percentage of your affiliates are active, it's time to reevaluate your training, engagement, and even affiliate hiring strategy.

Incremental affiliate revenue is the revenue generated by new customers that have been recommended by affiliates. Since recruiting affiliates is the most time consuming part of running an affiliate program, changing your segmentation strategy can make all the difference. The affiliate marketing channel gives you access to comprehensive data-based traffic reports. KPIs help you measure the effectiveness of your marketing programs related to affiliates and influencers. By regularly tracking and analyzing these metrics and KPIs companies can make informed decisions about how best to optimize their campaigns for maximum success.

Sheldon Aksamit
Sheldon Aksamit

Incurable web scholar. Incurable social media geek. Professional analyst. Professional web junkie. Friendly twitter advocate.