Cashback sites a winner for SMEs
Affiliate industry publisher Hello Partner recently reported, after analysing all their member data, that Cashback publishers were te biggest moneymakers for SMEs last year.
CPI: what you need to know
CPI (Cost per Install) is fast becoming popular. Most people use apps every day to perform various activities. Apps are now part of almost everything in our lives, and advertisers have – correctly so –started to take notice. Just as with a CPA campaign model, CPI downloads can be tracked so the client only pays when the user performs a specific action. However the way an advertiser approaches CPI differs from the way they perceive CPA. Bear in mind that the definitions of both CPA and CPI are always evolving, but for now we’ll assume CPI stands for the cases where the conversion happens when the user installs and opens the app. As for CPA, let’s assume it stands for those offers where the conversion takes place when the user purchases something inside the app (as is the case in regular Mobile Subscription offers). It’s important to understand why advertisers choose one over the other: CPA guarantees “instant revenue” users since volumes are substantially lower. In CPI, they’re paying for users that may never spend a penny on the app. Even so, due to the fact that the number of installs is much higher, they predict what percentage of those should turn into active users. This prediction of the highest number of active users is what can make advertisers choose the CPI model instead of CPA, where they’d get fewer users. The way an advertiser approaches CPI differs from the way he perceives CPA. It may sound weird, but advertisers aren’t always looking for committed users. When an app has a high number of installs, it goes up in the Google Play/App Store ranking. This gives advertisers what they’re ultimately looking for – visibility to reach organic users. For the initial high volume installs, advertisers usually look for incentivised traffic. In this type of traffic, users need to install the app to either get some reward in a game they’re playing or be able to see some type of content. Generally, these guys won’t become long-term users of the app they’ve installed. What does this mean? Basically, it means that incentivised users are a way to get to those cool, money making organic users that won’t be forced/lured to download an app. Instead, they’ll decide to download it without seeing any advert because they’re genuinely interested in it. This way, developers will pay for the initial downloads only as bait for the real users they’re looking for and that’ll be acquired for free. Nonetheless, if advertisers want real paying users instead of just many users to go up in the rankings, they’ll become more demanding with the quality of traffic.They’ll need to take the LTV (lifetime value of the user) each publisher delivers into account so they can select which ones they want to see promoting their products. At the beginning, advertisers may lose some money until enough time has passed for them to be able to analyze the long-term value of users they’ve lured via CPI. AdMarula Publisher Team.
10 KPI’s all affiliate marketers should be measuring
In a time when there is no shortage of data to measure how a website could improve in effectiveness, publishers should have the mind set of marketers, which means continuously finding ways of improving their ROI. This is only possible if you are measuring the right metrics. While measuring your impressions, clicks, social media shares and conversion rates is important, you should also be measuring how these metrics relate to one another in order to get a holistic picture and understand the value of each touch point. Here are 10 KPI’s every affiliate marketer should be measuring: Total visits – Measuring your total number of visits will give you a “big picture” idea of how well your campaign is driving traffic. If you notice your numbers drop from one month to the next, you’ll know to investigate one of your marketing channels to figure out why. New sessions – A metric found in Google, it’s a good one to understand because it tells you whether your site is sticky enough to encourage repeat customers as well as how effective your outreach efforts are. Channel-specific traffic – Found in Google’s ‘Acquisition’ section this metric will segment your traffic based on their point of origin i.e. direct, referrals, organic or social. Bounce rate – Generally, you want the bounce rate to be as low as possible because the more time someone spends on your site, the more likely they are to convert and perform meaningful action. Total conversions – Total conversions is one of the most important metrics for measuring the profitability of your overall marketing efforts. Low conversion numbers could be the result of bad design, poor offerings, or otherwise disinterested visitors. Lead to close ratio – This metric is easy to define: simply divide your total number of sales by your total number of leads, and you’ll get a ratio that defines your sales success independent of your marketing efforts. Customer retention rate – Most conventional businesses can measure this by calculating what % of customers return to their business to buy again. A low retention metric can be a symptom of a product or service that isn’t sticky, or an indication of lacking outreach programs. Customer value – Customer value is a difficult metric to calculate. To find your average customer value, you have to take into account all sales the average customer will initiate over the course of your relationship. Knowing your customer retention rate will help here. Cost per lead (CPL) – To calculate your cost per lead, take a look at the average monthly cost of your chosen campaigns and compare it to the total number of leads you generated with that specific channel over the same period. Projected ROI – The single most important factor for any individual marketing campaign because it demonstrates its profitability. The formula is simple: compare your cost-per-lead against your lead-to-close ratio, and compare that figure against your average customer value. For example, if you pay R200 per lead and close 50% of your leads, you’ll pay R400 for each successful new customer. If your average customer value is more than R400 in this example, you’ve generated a profit and your marketing campaign can be considered a success. AdMarula’s tracking platform already provides several of these metrics where publishers on the performance and transaction reports are able to measure their conversion ratios whether it is from click to lead or lead to sale and so on. These combined with your own web analytics can give you the insight necessary to maximise your content and your marketing efforts and ultimately your and the client’s ROI. Happy selling! Mawande Barnes – Affiliate Manager
