Benefits & Challenges of Migrating Your Brand’s Affiliate Program to a New Network

Nov 02, 2022

Chrissy Kammerer

Director of Content

Is maintaining the status quo ever really “good enough”?

Any business–in any sector–that thinks “good enough” is going to elevate them and allow them to scale, is making a costly mistake. Yet, the fact remains that many marketers are relying on advertising methods and platforms that work just well enough to keep the business going.

Believing the status quo is good enough for your affiliate program will only serve to keep you trapped in inertia—forever languished to performance marketing mediocrity.

And while many marketers realize their existing affiliate network provider isn’t delivering the results they crave, they are under the assumption that this is it…this is as green as the grass gets. In other cases, perhaps they assume that it’s just simply, too hard, too costly, or too risky to move.

The truth is that it’s far more effective, easier, and profit-boosting to make a switch to a new affiliate provider. Let’s look at why.

Addressing Common Affiliate Marketing Migration Misconceptions

Often, affiliate strategies have a simple goal—to acquire new customers and drive more revenue for your business. If you’re only seeing fractional improvement and growth in your affiliate channel year-over-year, you’re missing an opportunity to harness the channel’s potential—and it doesn’t have to be that way.

While marketers have valid questions and share common concerns around migrating an affiliate program, these shouldn’t serve as obstacles.

Let’s breakdown the most common misconceptions marketers have when it comes to migrating an affiliate program.

It’s Too Heavy of a Technical Lift to Migrate

The move to a new affiliate solution may seem like a technical nightmare. But it’s actually nowhere near as complex or as time-consuming as you may expect and the right tools can make all the difference in making it a seamless process.

Container Tags offer flexibility to affiliate marketers and are easy to integrate. Simply implement the code on the top of the body of all pages on your website, test and you’re ready! Solutions like container tags are designed with the intent to make the burdensome technical integration a manageable lift. Additionally, look for turnkey affiliate integrations already established with ecommerce providers like Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Shopify. These ecommerce platform tracking solutions allow for a seamless integration setup every time. More so, this strategic partnership speeds up the time it takes to launch, increasing efficiency immediately.

You Don’t Have All of My Publishers.

Many brands experience the feeling that their publishers won’t be accessible through other affiliate providers. This can be a worrisome situation, but don’t assume your current solution is the only one with those sought-after publishers. The reality is that publishers are agnostic and work with all major affiliate networks and platforms.

Consider leveraging an affiliate provider that enables you to migrate your existing publisher distribution and tap new publishers through tools and workflows that make the recruitment process easy. Limiting yourself to the belief that you are tapping a network’s publisher distribution creates a perception that you can’t build your own affiliate network. The reality is that you will want a platform that enables you to seamlessly migrate existing relationships and easily discover and activate new partnerships to drive growth.

It’s Going to Be Expensive.

There are several thought patterns here. You may believe what you have is good enough and well within your budget, so why change that? The second thought is that making the move is going to be a large expense that you don’t want to absorb right now (or ever).

In reality, you’ll make an investment, but you’ll gain the ability to generate a far better ROI. That’s because in making a switch, you are seeking a pricing model that is the right fit for your business, based on your needs. Rather than succumbing to the pricing model that your current provider has opted you into, make a proactive choice to select a pricing structure that suits you. For example, if your affiliate channel is funded based on performance, a variable pricing fee might make sense. However, if your channel budget is predetermined and you don’t have flexibility to exceed that amount, a license fee might be a more viable solution.

I’m Afraid I’ll Lose Revenue.

Some organizations worry they’ll lose revenue during an affiliate migration—and they can’t afford to risk that revenue. That’s a very valid concern, but it isn’t one you need to worry about when you choose the right provider.

Affiliate migrations are common. The key is to select an affiliate provider that has experience in performing and supporting migrations. Look for a partner that has performed migrations at scale, and has created repeatable, tried-and-true processes that yield positive outcomes, like revenue growth, traffic lifts and newly activated partnerships.

There’s Not Enough Bandwidth Available.

It’s always important to have a solution designed to meet your needs. Migrating doesn’t have to be limiting to you—you have options. You don’t have to have a team that can handle it all in-house. Even if you’re a smaller organization without affiliate expertise, there are migration services available to you.

These services can range from complete end-to-end migration services to self-service migrations supported by educational guides and step-by-step resources. In either scenario, seek an appropriate amount of support to ensure affiliate migration success.

What Happens During the Process?

A migration is not as complex as it sounds: it’s just three primary steps. Of course, there are supporting details, but Partnerize’s team and tried-and-true migration process ensure that no detail is forgotten.

Account Set-Up

Assuming you have no experience with affiliate migrations, you need to understand the process to set expectations on phases, activities, ownership of tasks and timing.

We’ll work to gather current program information, inclusive of publisher information, commission structures and creative assets and more. This information is used to establish the foundation for your affiliate marketing lifecycle. Following the account and technical setup, your account is activated. Typically, our clients launch in less than 30 days, helping you start executing against migration deliverables, quicker.

Communication

A migration is all about communication – we help you communicate with your publishers through personal and mass outreach to ensure they migrate tracking links, before and after your account is activated. Our goal is to be persistent to ensure a clear plan that conveys the steps and timing publishers need to act on.

Review and Grow

The migration of traffic and revenue generating publishers takes on average 30 days. During this time, your team is available as a resource to review migration progress. This is to ensure the partnerships, and their respective traffic and revenue is migrated for the program. The team will also recommend new partners for you and opportunities for growth throughout this process.

Benefits of Migrating Your Affiliate Program to a New Network

Now that you can see the process, you recognize it’s a valid opportunity. Why do it, though? Consider what your organization achieves when you make the move.

Revenue and Traffic Lift

This is where the biggest benefit will always be – improving revenue and traffic. When you implement our solution, you gain access to more publishers and more opportunities. No matter how well your existing methods are, there’s room for improvement and we’ll get you there.

Incremental activity

The platform functionality we provide allows for ongoing growth and development. That’s an opportunity to constantly grow your activity and results.

Re-invigorate Life in Stale Partnerships

Perhaps you have existing partnerships that are still in that “good enough” world or, in the worst case, no longer working with you due to a lack of growth. Our team works closely with you to determine if they fit into your new model and, if so, how to reinvigorate those relationships that will benefit your affiliate program.

Develop New Partners and Affiliates

Getting Started

Develop new partnerships. Our team works with you to recruit high-quality publishers to your affiliate program. You’ll learn about new opportunities through the data and analytics we provide to you. These are opportunities you are missing right nowMaking the move to migrate your affiliate channel to Partnerize is a financially sound, efficient process that allows you to create new sources of revenue for your company. Today, more than ever, you need to have an efficient and high-functioning affiliate program to compete with companies like Amazon.

“Good enough” is costing you money. Why not flip the page and start seeing growth to scale your company? Partnerize has exactly what you need to achieve this.

Partnerize’s developing technology stack was intuitively designed for markets to exceed your KPIs and grow your affiliate program.

Are you ready to make the move to the Partnerize platform, our cutting-edge tool designed to improve your bottom line? A stress-free migration method is available to you right now.

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