Know Your Numbers: Become Part of the Top 1% Affiliate Managers

Knowing your numbers is not just about staying on top of your own business, but also showing respect for your partners by revealing you care about their ROI (return on investment). Remember, every time one of your partners mails for you, they are taking a risk of not mailing for someone else who could potentially make them more money. By knowing your numbers, it provides you with the opportunity to optimize your offers and allows you to recognize the areas that need improvement. Here we provide advice on what stats you should be paying attention to, for both your affiliates and yourself.

Stats and Numbers Affiliates Care About

These are the most common stats that we found at East 5th Avenue when speaking to affiliates, providing the perfect guide to help you understand what they care about.

Earning Per Click (EPC)

This is what your affiliates will earn for every click they send you, whether this is from email (which is most common), social media, or podcasts.

Earning Per Lead (EPL)

This will apply if you have a lead gen funnel, but it is basically the same concept as EPC: What did your affiliate earn for every lead they sent your way or every email address?

Opens + Click Through Rate (Opens + CTR)

The last thing you will see is the CTR and this has to do with your email systems. Did your email get a high amount of opens and direct access to CTRs to your landing pages (sales page or opt-in page)? This matters to a lot of affiliate partners because they want to make sure they have a healthy relationship with their lists. The more interest that sprouts from offers on their lists the better the opens and CTR is going to do.

Commissions Earned / Commissions Per Acquisition (CPA)

What commissions do they earn and how much money did they make for supporting your offer? This can also be blended with what CPA you’re providing that affiliate partner to support your offer.

Conversion Rate (CR)

Can also be referred to as click to sale or opt-in to sale. This is important for us at East 5th Avenue as a good rule of thumb for offers ranging under $500, especially around the health or PD space, we’re looking at an average CR of 2.5%. This is especially the case when we’re going to roll out an offer to affiliates. The higher the CR the more money the affiliate partner makes and the better your offer becomes.

Refunds

An average refund rate is around 5% for most offers under $500. If it’s over $500 it really depends on what the offer is. For example, you have an offer that is in the $500-$1,500 range and their refund rates are around 20%, this would be a stat that your affiliate partner is going to want to look into more.

Tribe Opinion

What the customers say about the offer is immensely important to the success of your affiliates. You might have offers that may not work with the people of your affiliate partner’s list. Affiliates for the most part, especially those that have bad luck running their offers on cold traffic, are not getting constant new blood into their program. Thus, getting their tribe’s opinion will be something that matters to them to progress forward.

Stats and Numbers You Should Care About

There will be some similarities between these stats to the ones your affiliates care about, but there are some subtle differences that you need to know, including:

Hitting Goals

You must be hitting your monthly email goals. If you don’t know what revenue number you’re supposed to hit per month, let’s say it’s $200,000, you need to figure this out. This is a critical piece of your list’s hygiene and hitting your financial goals especially around affiliate revenue.

You must also be hitting your daily average send goals. This is what you should be making per day per email on average. This depends on if you’re sending every single day or sending once a week, but it’s all going to tie into your top number. So, if the monthly email revenue goal that you want to be making from mailing affiliate offers is $200,000, then what does your daily average send goal need to be? You should not just be randomly sending out emails because your monthly and daily goals will be two numbers that will anchor the rest of your stats.

Getting the best structured deals is also tied to hitting your goals, because the bigger your list the more active your list will be. The better structured deals you can get ties into how well your offer will convert. If your offer is converting well and a lot of affiliates are mailing for it, you’re going to be able to build a list very quickly. Getting a structured deal in place is very important for the longevity of your lists, especially if you’re progressively adding to them.

Earning Per Click (EPC)

This is what you earn for every click that you send to an affiliate partner’s offer. You should have some sort of threshold here.

Earning Per Lead (EPL)

This is what you earn for every email you send down to every affiliate partner’s lead gen funnel. Again, you should have a threshold here.

Opens + Click Through Rate (Opens + CTR)

This one is essential for you to follow, whether it is your offer, or you’re mailing someone else’s offer. The opens are going to determine if it was a good subject line, and if it was compelling enough for them to open, your CTR will determine how hard you sold the offer.

Commissions Earned / Commission Per Acquisition (CPA)

You should always see if you can get the most out of your affiliate, especially if you are doing one-way mailing where they’re not going to reciprocate for you. However, if you are doing some sort of reciprocation back and forth with a joint venture partner, you still want to have a structured deal. You always want to see if you can bump up your CPA or commission because you have monthly email goals and daily average send goals that you need to hit. Every bit counts.

Conversion Rate (CR)

Simply put, the higher the CR the more commission you’re going to earn and the faster you’re going to hit your goals.
Refunds

This is important because if your affiliate partner has a high refund rate, you’re going to have less commission than you thought.

Tribe Opinion

What does your tribe think about the offer? Say your affiliate partner has an offer with a 45% refund rate. In this case, your tribe tried it and did not like it. By preparing an explanation to tell your tribe why you thought it was a good offer, if they complain, you can sell it. This also includes:
Did you get a massive unsubscribe from your list?

Did you get a large number of customer complaints from sending that particular offer?

If you’re sensitive to this kind of situation, then you’re going to want to add this to your stats checklist along with your monthly email and daily average send goals.

Remember, just because some of your stats may meet your affiliates’ needs does not mean they will meet yours and vice versa. If you want to further your knowledge of tracking your numbers, you can opt-in to get the Know Your Numbers Blueprint with details on how to calculate each number.

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Sources
https://east5thavenue.vipmembervault.com/products/units/view/173/?lesson=853
https://east5thavenue.vipmembervault.com/products/units/view/173/?lesson=854
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xe3sR6wN0SJ7iu4eIICp_I-rt-BGTkYl/view

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