Consider these stats: According to SerpWatch, 90% of advertisers admitted that affiliate marketing was very important to their marketing strategy. The sheer ROI of this channel is enough for affiliate marketing to be a competitive space in terms of recruiting and keeping top affiliates, but there’s much more that goes into the equation.
Entrepreneurs know they can recruit as many affiliates as they want because they only have to pay for clicks, leads, or sales, meaning there’s no upkeep cost unless the business is profiting too. This makes the landscape even more tense. Data can solve this issue.
Good data points can make it easy to identify, reward, and retain affiliates that bring you the most sales. You can also leverage it to predict the items in your inventory that may soon require stocking up or what items are the most profitable when commission rates are taken into account. In other words, having the right data points can make affiliate management easier.
Keep reading to find out what data points you should be on the lookout for and how they can help you grow your Amazon storefront.
What Kind of Data Points Are Available for Amazon Storefront Owners on Amazon?
Every Amazon storefront owner needs to know the most important points that show their affiliate program’s performance.
While Amazon does offer some really insightful data points like revenue & net monthly sales, its dashboard doesn’t report or track other very useful metrics that can simplify business decisions. If you’re interested in data-driven marketing or believe in approaching decisions with an eagle-eye view, then you should invest in an affiliate marketing SAAS that has the data points you need.
Here are the most important data points to help you determine your affiliate program’s success:
- Revenue
Revenue is the most crucial metric to keep track of for your Amazon Affiliate Program. Knowing how much money you make is critical in gauging success. This can also help you make comparisons about the kind of niches that do well or poorly in terms of sales for you.
For instance, knowing the revenue you made from selling a multitude of products can be used to determine things like:
- My revenue is more when I sell more products in fast-selling niches, such as self-care, food, personal finance, fitness, and health.
- If I want to increase my revenue, then I should focus more on these niches, as long as the commission rates don’t eat up my profit.
Not to mention, paying your affiliates a revenue-based commission rather than a fixed percentage of sales also allows you to earn more; you could focus on categories that allow for it.
- Net Monthly Sales
The net monthly sales figure is the total amount of money you make in a month after deducting Amazon’s cut. These figures clearly show how much money your product generates in profit every month.
With Amazon’s extensive product catalog, sellers have loads of opportunities that keep cash flowing monthly. You can find this metric on your earnings report page and in your Amazon email notifications.
- Clicks
This represents the total number of people who clicked on ads you may have run on Amazon to promote your products.
While nothing beats the satisfaction of seeing your ad or product gain exposure through various promotional channels, you need these data points to see how you can increase the number of clicks from each ad and/or determine the ROI you are getting from that campaign.
Use the right keywords for each product and compelling product images or titles to accomplish this. The idea is to entice people to click through and earn more.
- Earnings Per Click (EPC)
An EPC provides a single insight that allows an affiliate marketer to understand how each product performs.
For a store owner, EPC can be used to determine the amount of money their affiliates have earned for each click on a product. With a higher EPC rate, you can make more money and continue attracting traffic to new offers.
- Effective Earnings Per Click (eEPC)
Despite the success of EPC, a sizable proportion of affiliate marketers prefer to track earnings via eEPC. This is the average amount they earn for each visitor to their site. The advantage of this approach is you can study the best-performing products and pinpoint the best-performing affiliates from the rest.
With this information, you can gauge the element that sets these products apart and use it to predict consumer buying patterns as well.
- Top 10 Affiliate Partners
The top ten partners, or those who account for most of your sales, significantly impact your revenue flow. By collaborating and rewarding active partners who generate traffic and sales, you can efficiently improve the performance of this metric.
This will also help you gauge whether it’s time to find new affiliate partners well-suited to your niche to expand your network. It would be best to focus on regularly optimizing your metrics by monitoring your data changes and making adjustments based on what you discover.
- Sales Per Affiliate
The sales-per-affiliate metric exhibits how much money each of your affiliates brings in for you. It also assists you in identifying top-performing affiliates as well as those with growth potential.
The metric allows brands to take the proper steps to retain, collaborate & award top affiliates to nurture that channel.
- Number of New Affiliate Partners
The number of new affiliate partners metric expounds on new entrants added in the last month. If you make successful partnerships in a month, then this is a good indicator of performance.
- Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
The customer lifetime value metric indicates how much money your customers will likely spend with you over their lifetime.
While this is a critical metric for any business, it is crucial for affiliate marketing because it determines whether or not a partnership will be financially beneficial in the long run.
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
The return on ad spend metric can help you compare how much your affiliate marketing campaigns make when compared to how much you spend on Amazon ads. For example, if your ROAS is 10%, you will generate a profit of $1.10 for every dollar spent on advertising.
Once you do a cost-benefit analysis, you will be better equipped to allocate your marketing budget to different channels.
- Organic Traffic
Just because you have an affiliate program, it doesn’t mean you can’t display your products on your own website outside of Amazon.
You can create a dedicated page for affiliate signups, run ads & SEO campaigns that promote your Amazon storefront, and more. You can also collaborate with your affiliate network to cross-promote items.
If you take this approach, then knowing how much traffic you get from search engines, free listings, and other non-paying sources will be key.
People who visit your site through organic search use relevant and best-performing keywords on Google.
One way to Increase organic traffic to your site is by promoting social media content and answering queries on Google’s People Also Ask section. You might also consider employing the latest SEO optimization and influencer marketing tactics.
- Trigger Links
The trigger link metric indicates how frequently someone clicks on one of the affiliate links for your store.
Whether these links are paid or organic, keeping track of this metric is crucial because it allows you to determine how much money and time you can expect to spend on a marketing campaign.
If you have set a benchmark for the kind of customer acquisition costs you are willing to pay for each new customer, then you can use your trigger link metric to determine if it’s worthwhile.
- Growth
We cannot deny that growth is an important affiliate marketing metric. You must, however, monitor your growth rate by comparing data collected over a certain period and not base decisions on short-term data points. Try to evaluate growth on a bi-yearly or quarterly basis.
It’s also important to note that you cannot compare growth recorded during peak periods such as Christmas to less-performing months if you want to establish a more accurate picture of your efforts and overall growth.
- Traffic Quality
Traffic quality is a vital factor in gauging if your affiliates are developing strong and long-lasting relationships with your audience. The audience is more likely to engage with a blog and convert at a higher rate if they build trust.
In short, trust breeds loyalty and positive word of mouth. In the long run, a brand may benefit from a steady stream of repeat customers and a faster process down the funnel if the people your affiliates are funneling to you are really in the market for your product(s).
To receive better quality traffic, your affiliates should be encouraged to increase online activity for your products through videos, guides, emails, e-books, case studies, social media content, and listicles on their own websites or social accounts.
- Average Order Value (AOV)
The average amount a customer spends on your products helps you keep track of customers’ preferences and the program’s overall effectiveness.
These figures can help you determine how much money to expect from each sale and whether it’s worthwhile to continue paying affiliates to bring in deals.
If your traffic has a higher AOV, then you will better understand the ideal audience to target. The goal is to maintain a friendly relationship with affiliate networks. Not only do they help you increase the amount of traffic to a product, but also they translate to a successful Amazon Affiliate Program.
- Conversion Rate
A low conversion rate speaks volumes about your progress, even if you have a high revenue income and clicks per ad. The conversion rate is the proportion of clicks that result in sales.
This indicates your affiliate program’s overall performance. It also assists you in identifying areas where you need to improve conversions, such as pricing, landing page design, or segmentation. These elements entice visitors to purchase a product with minimal cajoling.
- Affiliate Engagement
While some experts believe that increasing the number of affiliates produces magical results, this is not always the case. Instead, engaging your affiliates and instilling a strong desire to promote your services or products is critical.
If you want to maintain a positive relationship with your partners, then be ready to establish long-term affiliate engagements. You will need to double your efforts by engaging them through recognition and allowing them to grow. Encourage newcomers to learn the ropes and reward their efforts.
The Bottom Line
The more data points you have for your Amazon affiliate program, the better your chances of making more strategic decisions to expand your sales. That’s why we recommend that you invest in all aspects of affiliate management, creating solid content, and tracking success.
Refersion can supercharge your affiliate marketing efforts by providing these additional data points that a native Amazon dashboard doesn’t provide. We condense data from multiple sources in one single dashboard & simplify data to help you make decisions faster. You will also be able to actually make sense of the data you receive, track performance, recruit new affiliates & reward top affiliates based on performance — all from one dashboard.
