For WordPress implementations I find the best tools to measure traffic from affiliates are AffiliateWP and Google Analytics in conjunction with Google Tag Manager.  The metrics provided by these three tools provide sufficient information to determine traffic sources and conversion metrics.  I also very much like that since the two tools are entirely different systems, they provide a measure of redundancy when used together.

Measuring search terms leading to a seller’s conversion page can be done effectively with a range of tools including Moz, Rank Math, Serpstat, and MonsterInsights in conjunction with Google Analytics and Google Search Console.  We can set specific tracking for the landing page which will enable us to see what terms from either Google or Bing are being used to direct users to that particular page.

There is a quick and dirty Chrome Extension called “Keyword Surfer” that I have been looking at lately for rapid assessment of search terms employed that must be added to the mix as well.

What normally happens is in the reports you will see a list of terms and the frequency with which they were used in drawing traffic to the page.  Quite often those terms will reflect the text that is used on the landing page.  Coordination with marketing will be key to deciding what language to use on the page to attract the right customers and to help draw visibility to the site through search engines and social media.

For past campaigns we have had the most success with AffiliateWP, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager used in conjunction with Google Search Console.  As for how it is used, AffiliateWP in particular has a very detailed Referrals section which literally itemizes completed sales and incomplete sales per each Referral URL generated.

With Google Analytics, by using a UTM Tracking code, we can identify the website where our clicks and conversions are coming from.  UTM Tracking codes also help us to identify specific ads or links that are responsible for generating the clicks and conversions.  UTM Tracking codes are very helpful not only for tracking, but for maximizing clicks and conversions.

Between AffiliateWP and Google Analytics Campaigns URL Builder, we can effectively track traffic to a specific landing page from each affiliate.  More parameters can be introduced to the equation to refine and drill down into the data to provide us with specifics about country, time of day, device, key words, demographics and more.

We do have to be mindful of GDPR and data-collection within the EU however; the fines for non-compliance can be very very steep.

Monsterinsights also has a very compelling affiliate tracking system which offers more analytics from the SEO and keyword tracking perspective and integrates smoothly with Google Analytics.

Which tools to employ depends on the size, complexity, and nature of any existing Affiliate programme.  Simple or complex, I am yet to find an affiliate programme that does not have some sort of peculiarity unique to the seller of the product being sold.

1. Determine the current traffic footprint of the company that offers “online organic cooking courses” using a service like ALEXA to determine domain ranking;

2. Use SERP tool like SERPStat to determine the ranking of the company and the associated keyword profile;

3. Determine the social media presence of the company – do they have a high number of followers?  How effective is their client on-boarding procedure?

4. How easy is it for clients to actually sign-up to their courses and what is the client retention rate?

5. By marketing commission we have to be clear about when we would be paid – in most marketing affiliation agreements payment occurs not just on referral but on referral and purchase of the affiliated product.  If the company offering the organic cooking courses is not effective at converting their visits to sales that will result in a fruitless affiliation;

6. We want to make sure we are partnering with firms that will provide a positive complement to our brand – particularly in the cosmetics industry.  If we are seen to be linking to a provider of online cooking courses that is not a quality product, that may impact people’s perception of our product offering.  Therefore analysis of the potential affiliate partner and where they rank amongst their peers must be conducted by looking at their Yelp reviews and other sources of customer reviews, social media feedback, in addition to technical indicators like Search Engine Rank, bounce rates, SERP results, etc.

7. Ultimately the evaluation must be made on the basis of which partnerships will:

a) yield the highest revenue generating potential;

b) have potential for a sustainable long term relationship

1. Establish a personal connection with a key partnership contact at the associated company;

2. Focus on bottlenecks or impediments to implementation;

3. Establish a slack channel or easy communication platform between our company and the affiliate company;

4. We will need to obtain the key benefits of the partner product/service offering so as to be able to create portals on our site to help in driving traffic to our affiliate sign-up page;

5. Since the partnering company is engaged in marketing themselves and will most likely have other affiliates, we need to work as hard as possible to ensure that they do not sign additional affiliates that occupy the same market space as us;

6. We want to implement our own social media campaign and SEO strategy to promote our funnel page that drives traffic through our affiliate link to the product signup page;

7. Speed and follow-up – it is customary to continuously use A/B split message marketing on funnel pages to help us refine our message, email newsletters announcements, as well as social media posts to promote our association; but it is also important to reevaluate the effectiveness of our campaign on an on-going basis making sure to implement any micro changes to our affiliate funnel page that may yield a better result and communicate these optimizations to the partner so that they too can make any adjustments to their processes that might help us to be successful.

I’m a big believer in systems.  We almost have to templatize our processes for working with partners and we have to better capitalize on their contact lists and ours.  Which means there must be a phased campaign and informational roll-out coupled with the recycling of social media posts in order to continuously build awareness – our team of writers and designers must be prepared to apply different versions of the same message in order to drive sales.  One post – one iteration of a landing page, is not enough.

1. Establish project management platform;

2. Establish dates and timelines;

3. Determine key deliverables for both our company and the affiliate;

4. Obtain sign-off on official marketing collateral including approved text and messaging and key imagery / photographs;

5. Determine the marketing mix for maximum message penetration which can include but not be limited to Social Media, Online Press in the form of bloggers and influencers, eMail Newsletters, Website Funnel Pages, A/B Testing, client onboarding messages, etc

6. Determine launch dates and coordinate with affiliate partners;

7. Roll-out with continuous improvement and optimization including A/B testing of landing pages and outreach / sales newsletters and text.

The key to the effective launch of a campaign revolves around consistency and clarity of messaging.  This means that everything from the imagery used to the words used to describe the offering’s benefits must be packaged as a brand.  Our writers and designers must be willing to view the partnership proposal as the hybridization of two brands to become a brand in and of itself.  By way of illustration, consider a two-circled Venn diagram.  Our brand on the left, the partner brand on the right, and the partnership brand is the middle overlapping area.

The focus of our writer and design team efforts must be to capture the essence of that middle area, in the website funnel page; furthermore our social media and video efforts must be geared towards providing our users with a new sense of possibility with our tools and our partnership.  It is important to sell the experience and the community as opposed to the product. Establishing a strong brand is something that allows this to be done quickly, consistently, and efficiently.

To be frank, I realize that this question refers to the organic soap and cooking lessons question but in the interest of time, let’s look at Toolset specifically.  This is a product that should have a more dynamic and active community given the number of integrations it has – from admin-columns to WP All Import to the partnership that I initiated with WPSOLR (which empowers Toolset with Elastic Search).  The dynamism of the community must extend beyond technical support requests and deep into client use-case scenarios.  

For the Toolset / WPML brand ecosystem to be complete, use case scenarios and the developers that implemented them must come to the forefront.  This incidentally will become an effective means of attracting and retaining and giving us the choice of the best partners for our brand journey.

There is no easy answer to this question because cross-promotion projects are by their definition dynamic, ever-changing, and iterative.  I have had extensive experience in the luxury cosmetics space.  I can offer that the use case of organic soaps to organic cooking online lessons may not track 100% to an IT market place because cosmetics by their very nature tend to be branded in such a way that the less they change, the higher the perceived quality of the product.  There is also the issue of government regulation – particularly in Europe.  Cosmetics firms are very tightly governed in terms of the language they can use to describe their products.  This is less true in the USA.

IT product cycles are vastly different.  They are rapidly changing – particularly in the WordPress ecosystem where WordPress core frequently is updated and plugins are often deemed “old” or incompatible if they are over a few months out of date.

Evaluation on cross-promotion projects must be based on:

1. Sales (Both absolute monetary and units sold as well as in terms of a rolling sales delta)

2. Refunds

3. Bounce Rate

4. Time Spent on Page

5. Product Reviews

6. On-boarding Site Traffic

7. Heatmaps (in conjunction with A/B testing) to determine the effectiveness of the time to order, shopping cart abandonment, messaging, and order taking design of the page.

In the early phases, the above must be evaluated daily, then weekly with optimizations implemented quickly.  In mature implementations, bi-weekly reporting and fewer optimization change requests can be expected.

On a six month semi-annual basis, we can determine best practice for deploying cross-promotional partnerships.  In doing so future implementations will be faster, more precise, and more efficient – allowing us to put more energy into marketing and sales efforts than on setup and implementation.