It’s a topic that’s long been discussed within affiliate marketing – which referrer gets paid commission on sales? Who should be rewarded? Last referrer wins usually means that affiliates who have introduced a customer to a brand or product, only to have them visit another affiliate site before purchasing, lose out.

Yesterday (June 14th) MoreNiche, who specialise in health and diet type products, introduced “split commissions”. This will allow their merchants to reward more than one referrer for sales.

Initially, the new structure is being tested by a single merchant on the network – Proactol.  You can read all about the debate behind which referrer should be rewarded for a sale, and their new commission structures here.

So What’s It All About Andy?

I asked MoreNiche MD Andrew Slack a few questions about the new commissions and what effect they will have.

How did you pitch this to the merchant, i.e. what’s in it for them?!?

Proactol are a very forward thinking merchant and so it was pretty easy, the idea of them being the first ever weight loss merchant to reward first referrers and thus make their campaign more appealing than competitors really excited them.

Not only does this allow them to get more exposure across our network but also as we announce this new feature (for example on your sites) they may also attract new affiliates because they are the first to give it a go.

In a very competitive space, this will allow them to stand out in our network where we have 20-30 different weight loss merchants.

Do you envisage a greater uptake with your other merchants once the new structure is launched? Is there much interest amongst your pool of merchants?

We have already been asked by a number of other merchants to use this split commission feature but we want to monitor how well it works with Proactol before rolling it out to everybody, most merchants are asking about the first & last referrer with the understanding that the last referrer should retain the highest commission.

Less interest has been placed on incentivising affiliates throughout the chain but I believe this will become more important as we move forward and merchants want to become more competitive.

I personally feel that the first referrer is often more important than the last, these are the affiliates who are introducing the brand for the first time, often losing out to brand bidders or voucher sites for example, with networks becoming more dependent on coupon sites I feel split commissions allow the power to shift (even if it’s just slightly) to the content affiliates who are adding ‘more’ value to the brands themselves.

Any ideas what sort of percentage of sales have more than one referrer?

We ran the numbers for Proactol before pitching it to them and currently 39.46% of all sales have more than 1 referrer in its chain, this is quite high which we believe is down to the lifetime cookies we offer, it was interesting to see sales coming in from over a year ago, with over 15 affiliates in the chain.

Different sectors will vary whether it’s a impulse purchase or a calculated buy, our research shows that weight loss products are more impulse with most people purchasing within a number of days, often on the same day however on average a surfer passes through 1.85 affiliate sites before purchasing proactol and across our network the number is higher at 2.59 sites.

Good News For Affiliates In This Sector
I think the changes that MoreNiche are bringing in are great for affiliates operating in this sector. I was fascinated by the stats Andy gave me on how many affiliate sites people have been referred through before making the decision to buy (probably demonstrates how important it is to think about what people search for at the end of their buying process!). The new system of rewarding multiple referrers may also help a lot of their affiliates tighten up their conversion rates. Having the fact that a significant proportion of your cookies are being overwritten would be a great focus to look at your keyword targeting strategy and try to tighten things up.

The Start Of A Big Change In The Entire Affiliate Sector?

This new structure will certainly make merchants choosing to employ it stand out from the crowd in the competitve sectors MoreNiche are operating in.

However, would it have any application in the wider affiliate world? It’d be nice, but I’m doubtful. Margins are a lot tighter in other areas of online retailing. The cynic in me says we’re a lot more likely to see referral data being used to de-dupe affiliate marketing commissions against a merchant’s other internal marketing streams such as Adwords campaigns, newsletters, and possibly even magazine advertising where there’s a special offer involved.

I’m pleased to see MoreNiche taking this step, and hope it adds value to both their merchants and affiliates.

http://www.moreniche.com/split-commission-technology.php

This post is from: Kirsty's Affiliate Marketing Guide - Affiliate Stuff UK

MoreNiche Launches Commissions Rewarding Multiple Referrers