5 impact.com features small ecommerce businesses need for affiliate partnership success 

Why small ecommerce businesses benefit from affiliate marketing partnerships

Did you know that 89 percent of consumers trust personal recommendations over advertising? And honestly, who can blame them? Consumers sniff out marketing tactics from a mile away. 

So, what’s the alternative to grow your online store? 

Let’s talk affiliate partnerships. When you team up with affiliates, they’ll actively promote your products to their audience. This means you’ll instantly tap into a fresh pool of potential customers you otherwise might not have reached.

Here’s the kicker: affiliates only earn a commission when they generate sales or leads for your business. So, you’re not blindly throwing money at advertising and crossing your fingers. Instead, you’re investing in a strategic marketing approach built to deliver tangible results.

Here’s what’s even better: affiliates are true experts in their craft. They know their audience inside out, possess exceptional selling skills and are genuinely motivated to drive sales for your products because that’s how they make their money. It’s a win-win scenario for both parties.

No matter the size of your budget, these partnerships are accessible and can play a crucial role in growing your business and acquiring new customers. Imagine achieving a remarkable 16:1 return on advertising spend (ROAS) or having a partnership channel that contributes to 30 percent of your revenue—all with the simplicity of one-click integration through impact.com. 

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How impact.com can jumpstart your ecommerce affiliate partnership program 

So, where do you find these partners? The impact.com platform offers an extensive, intuitive marketplace that connects you with potential affiliate partners, publishers, and influencers. You can zero in on the exact partners you want to work with using the discovery features, with information including industry, content type, and demographic information.  

Discover, recruit, engage, pay, and optimize the perfect partners—all conveniently in one place. Check out these five awesome impact.com features that can help you make the most of your partnership success: 

1. Jumpstart your affiliate program with automated partner matchmaking

Audiences aren’t just looking to click on your ads. They want to connect with your brand through real people. And that’s where partnerships come in—they provide the warmest introductions.

You know what they say: variety is the spice of life. And when it comes to partnerships, it’s no different. You can optimize touchpoints throughout the customer journey and reach a wider audience by exploring diverse partner types—think email marketers, content bloggers, social media influencers, and PPC affiliates. 

Small online retailers without teams or fully developed marketing strategies often face challenges in finding and onboarding the right partners to grow their brands. The Starter Edition by impact.com provides you with the tools to grow affiliate partnerships at just $30/month.

Once you join, everything is automated. No longer bound to tedious spreadsheets, you can immediately search for potential influencer partners and recruit them at scale to launch your program. 

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2.Track partners across devices and analyze performance

Partnership marketing success is measurable. 

In addition to full-funnel analysis, impact.com offers cross-device tracking for deeper insights. This functionality shows which devices belong to the same consumer and links them, allowing users to uncover their partner strengths and identify how they contribute to revenue growth.

With superior tracking and reporting, you can see the whole picture like never before. These businesses can reliably track online sale page visits, asset downloads, subscriptions, and much more.

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3. Automate payouts with smart electronic contracts

Flexible custom contracting is essential, and impact.com has it. 

Since the impact.com platform offers unlimited partner tracking options and payouts, you can customize your payouts to fit your campaign. Choose from many options, like: 

• Cost per action (CPA) model: Only pay a partner when they make a sale for you. Many small businesses using the impact.com platform with the CPA model bring in 30 percent of their total revenue through the partnership channel.
• Flat fee payments
• Performance bonuses when partners reach certain milestones

You can message inside or outside the app, and all contracting and payment details are handled. The best news is that you never need to rely again on (error-inevitable) spreadsheets.  

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4. Gain a deeper understanding of the incremental value your partnerships bring

It’s easy to think affiliate marketing contributes zero incrementality. The sale was bound to happen, right?

However, research proves that’s not the case.

Companies with the most mature partnership programs drive revenue growth nearly twice as fast as those with less mature programs. These companies are up to five times more likely to exceed expectations on various business metrics, like stock price and bottom-line profitability.

Partnerships can change the entire trajectory of your business only if you understand the exact value that each partner brings. 

With the impact.com platform, you can pull reports on anything like:

• Which partners are doing the best job selling specific products
• Which partners are driving customers for certain locations

You can also create partner commissions based on hundreds of incrementality-driven factors:

• New versus returning customers
• Cart size
• Discount and promo code margins
• SKU category

Compared to manual spreadsheets, these automated reports save immeasurable time, provide complete accuracy, and offer transformative strategic insights.

Payment differs between influencer marketing and influencer partnerships. You get better results when you have longer-term partnerships with influencer partners that deeply understand your brand and audience. With skin in the game and an authentic investment into your brand, these partners will drive high-quality content (and results) over time.

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5. Gain knowledge to power partnerships with free online courses

Educating the market on the power of partnerships remains a key mission for impact.com, especially when 56 percent year-over-year growth is possible.

Signing up for The Starter Edition by impact.com will transform your business, but knowing how to use it, will knock your success out of the park.

Jump into free courses at pxa.impact.com to learn all about partnerships, including these popular courses: 

• Influencer partnership types and content formats
• Managing and tracking influencer programs
• Optimize: Affiliate and partnerships industry training – Associate 

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Impressive ecommerce brands leveraging impact.com to power partnerships

Partnerships work and here are three brands that harnessed the benefits of this revenue-generating channel—powered by impact.com. 

1. Ivory Ella 

Ivory Ella offers high-quality apparel and gear, with 10 percent of net profits donated to Save The Elephants. Since a niche audience wears elephant-inspired attire, the brand wanted its mission to drive sales. Ivory Ella wanted to reach untapped markets and liked the partnerships channel’s low barrier to entry. 

With the assistance of their agency BVAccel, Ivory Ella leveraged various partners, finding the most success with micro-influencers and college ambassadors. They scaled this program rapidly and easily tracked and attributed sales to each partner.

At the end of the first year of this partnership program, Ivory Ella saw:

• 11 percent of their total revenue through the partner marketing channel
• 19 times return on ad spend (ROAS)
• +56 percent Year-over-year (YoY) revenue in Q4

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2. Parker Clay 

Parker Clay creates hours of employment for women in Ethiopia by producing handcrafted leather goods, pioneering a better model of making, shopping, and consuming. 

Learn how Parker Clay used impact.com to manage its partnerships efficiently and successfully nurture partner relationships.

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3. Corkcicle

Corkcicle designs “cool” products that insulate your favorite food and beverages and elevate your every day. Its growing line of premium drinkware, coolers, and barware products is fueled by innovative design and social responsibility. 

Proving that today’s affiliate partnerships deliver quality customers, the channel became integral to Corkcicle’s marketing portfolio, driving as much value as its best-performing channel, paid search. 

Revenue earned by the affiliate channel grew 178 percent quarter over quarter by the end of Q1 2021. 

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Power up partnerships with one click 

To be inside the customer journey, you need to be where consumers research before purchasing and partnerships provide the perfect solution to be present at each touchpoint.  

With one-click integration and no technical background needed, you can use the impact.com platform to grow their business into a sustainable and significant revenue stream. With unmatched functionality, the impact.com platform also supports you as your partnership program grows.

It’s time to dig deeper into partnerships. Far from parting words, this is your call to action. 

Starter Edition by impact.com provides the tools and resources to grow influencer and affiliate partnerships. Get started for only $30/month.