Scheduling regular vehicle maintenance ensures your car performs optimally and deters unwanted car problems. Similarly, brands must assess partner and channel incrementality to help identify challenges and ways to align affiliate partnerships to business growth.
With increased competition and rising ad costs, measuring partner and channel incremental value helps cement affiliate partnerships as the ideal digital channel to deliver marketing efficiency and prove a return on investment.
Evaluating incrementality requires understanding how each touchpoint contributes to desired business outcomes to help reallocate spend, facilitate strategic decision-making, and cut wasted time.
Key takeaways
- Incrementality is an event or desired outcome happening solely because of the contribution from a marketing channel or partner.
- Measuring partner and channel incrementality maximizes the marketing budget, attributes partners correctly, and optimizes performance.
- Tracking tools and robust reporting help dedupe conversion credit Leveraging Contribution insights highlight a partner/channel’s true value and how frequently they’re credited for conversions they participate in.
- Reporting tools, like the Crediting Concerns Report, can credit partners proportionally for the value they drive.
Understanding incrementality
The impact.com team typically defines incrementality as an event or desired outcome happening solely because of the contribution from a marketing channel or partner.
Incrementality 101
Discover the basics of incrementality and how it provides actionable insights for your team.
Get my free guideSeeing the last-click in each customer journey isn’t enough. Brands need to know how each party contributed to the final purchase. Some partners (like social media influencers) sit higher in the sales funnel, introducing followers to your brand or products. Meanwhile, coupon code sites usually play a role right before purchases finalize.
Only analyzing the last touchpoint for each customer skews the version of the truth and misattributes which partners made a considerable impact along the conversion path. Brands can assess the partnership incrementality on a partner and channel level.
Partner incremental value highlights each partner’s contribution to your program. It also identifies each partner’s point in the funnel as an introducer (first-touch), closer (last-touch), or influencer (any other point in the conversion path).
Channel incremental value helps understand the partnerships channel’s true impact by analyzing its relative value across your marketing mix and its role as an introducer, closer, or influencer.
3 ways it pays to measure partner and channel incrementality
Accurately measuring partner and channel incrementality helps you make data-driven decisions to maximize your marketing budget, attribute partners correctly, optimize performance, and stay competitive. You can also tap into the following perks.
1. Prevent duplicate conversion credits
Consumers often interact with multiple marketing channels and partners on their path to conversion. Deduplication prevents multiple channels/partners from claiming credit for the same conversion.
The impact.com platform offers tracking tools and comprehensive reporting, like the Channels Report, allowing you to analyze multiple marketing channels’ performance—not just affiliates. Tracking everything ensures the affiliate channel isn’t credited when another paid channel is the last-click, eliminating redundant spending.
2. Gain insights into each partner/channel’s true value
Relying solely on last-click attribution models exposes brands to lost partnerships due to undervaluing, high overvaluing, and opportunity costs. Leveraging Contribution insights goes beyond last-click to truly understand each partner/channel’s value and how frequently they’re credited for conversions they participate in.
For example, you can review reporting data to pinpoint undervalued top-of-funnel partners and align compensation to their contributions—such as higher CPA, participation bonus, or first-click crediting. Ultimately helping you improve your return on investment.
Optimize reports [one sheet]
Prove the truly incremental value of partnerships with Optimize
Learn moreAdditionally, insightful reports like impact.com’s Contribution Report help you easily identify how each partner or channel contributes, providing a clear picture of the incremental value. Report filters like “% Solo” show how often a partner is the only touchpoint in a conversion path to gauge what incremental value they bring to your program.
Measuring channel incrementality also proves the channel’s value with other internal stakeholders and helps with the internal recognition needed for an increased budget.
3. Compensate partners correctly
Accurate reporting is vital for seeing incremental value. It helps discover how often each partner plays a role in the purchase journey and how your ROAS and revenue look without their unique contributions. Robust management platforms like impact.com ensure your decisions and contract negotiations align with concrete metrics and data.
With impact.com’s Crediting Concerns Report, you can credit partners proportionally for the value they drive. It shows whether one partner tends to get credit more or less often than another and offers insights to strategize unique rewards for partners.
You can take the insights from reporting and leverage Dynamic Payouts to adjust commissions to align compensation with the true value being provided.
FAQ’s
- Why does incremental value matter?
Tracking incremental values shows which partners and channels drive sales on their own. You’ll be able to pinpoint top performers and strategies to maximize budgets, drive performance, and improve attribution. - How can my brand benefit from measuring partner and channel incrementality?
Assessing the incremental value of partners and channels helps dedupe conversion credits with accurate tracking. Robust reporting tools help discover partner/channel contributions and ensure they receive credit for their part in the conversion path.
Optimizing your marketing budget with incremental tracking
With effective tracking and reporting through a platform like impact.com, you save time and funds on underperforming strategies and dead ends. Incrementality proves what is working well and driving awareness/sales, ensuring your brand remains cohesive and competitive.
Learn more impact.com resources to help you build clarity around the true value of your partnership program to drive confident decisions and incremental value.
