Top 5 Affiliate Marketing Metrics – Maximise Your ROI

A good level of ROI should underpin all online marketing activity. As with all areas of online marketing, keeping control of your costs and taking advantage of opportunities allows you to make your marketing work as efficiently as possible. By using a range of metrics within your reporting, you can help ensure your affiliate marketing campaign is working as effectively as possible.

I have listed below a range of more useful metrics I use when looking at the performance of client’s affiliate marketing programmes. Using these metrics allow you to keep a close eye on costs and capitalise on opportunities. They also help to identify potential issues and find a resolution before they become problematic.

It is useful to track metrics for your overall affiliate marketing campaign and per affiliate. This allows you to build up and compare the results between weeks, months and years to gain a greater understanding of the way your affiliate marketing programme works. By looking at individual affiliates, and what does/doesn’t work for them means you can integrate findings into other parts of your online marketing plan.

My Top Five Affiliate Metrics

1. SALES
Total Sales Value and Number of Orders
Track these over time for the overall programme as well as for individual affiliates. Look at the sales generated by individual affiliates as a percentage of the total sales in order to see how affiliates are working for you. Looking at the overall changes, in comparison to previous weeks/months/years means you can act on information in order to maximise the effectiveness of your affiliate marketing.

2. CTR % =
Number of Clicks / Number of Impressions x 100
Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is a useful and quick indication to see how appealing your affiliate creative is. You should view results in conjunction with the number of clicks and impressions in order to gain a larger pictures. You can use this to identify, for example, the difference a change in banner design may have made to the number of people clicking through.

3. CONVERSION RATE % =
Number of Sales / Number of Clicks x 100
Useful as it shows the conversion rate on your site – ie once people have shown an interest in your offering, what percentage of people go on to make a purchase. Online marketing is all about increasing the levels of targeted traffic visiting your site, making sure the offering is relevant to them – which should increase your conversion rate.

4. COMMISSION PAID OUT % =
Commission Paid / Total Sales Value x 100
The commission level needs to be checked against your budget to ensure the programme is as cost effective as possible. It is useful to compare the commission levels against competitors with affiliate programmes to ensure your programme remains competitive.

5. FRAUDULENT ORDERS % =
Number of Fraudulent Orders / Total Number of Sales x 100
It is essential that you are closely monitoring your affiliate marketing programme for fraudulent orders. If you notice fraudulent orders increasing with an affiliate, you will need to act quickly to ensure you don’t lose money. Contact your affiliate network and/or the affiliate as necessary and consider removing the affiliate if the problem is not resolved or the percentage of fraudulent order overshadows the percentage of genuine orders.

The essence of affiliate marketing is controlling your costs and maximising sales. Through careful monitoring, you can ensure you are getting the best ROI from your affiliate marketing.