Interview with Jean-François Ferro, affiliation expert: How to effectively manage KPIs and control production costs?
When it comes to affiliation, mastering KPIs (key performance indicators) and production costs is essential to optimize campaigns and maximize results. Jean-François Ferro, Business Development Manager for Le Point media and an affiliation expert for the past 15 years, shares his experience and tips for success.
What are the main difficulties encountered by companies in managing affiliate campaigns?
Jean-François Ferro: Affiliation is a very rich universe, with a multitude of partnerships to create links between merchants and affiliates. For a merchant, the main difficulty lies in identifying relevant affiliates, a manual and human process. On the other hand, content sites have to produce quality content, identify the right merchants, integrate tracking links and generate sales. The major complexity lies in connecting to all the platforms, centralizing information and being efficient in research.
What are the most important KPIs to track for a successful affiliate campaign?
The most important KPIs to track for a successful affiliate campaign are :
- Audience and page views, which reflect the interest of the content;
- Click-through rate, which measures the relevance of the content and the interaction it generates;
- The conversion rate, which indicates the number of visitors who have made a purchase on the merchant's site;
- EPC (Earnings Per Click), which measures affiliate program profitability
These KPIs vary according to the sector of activity and the mechanics used by affiliates (content sites, good deals, cashback, emails, influencers, etc.).
What are the best practices for tracking and analyzing KPIs on a daily basis?
To effectively monitor and analyze KPIs, it's advisable to think ahead and build a dashboard with the indicators to be tracked and the way to collect the data. The use of Excel is commonplace, but too time-consuming, so it's best to equip yourself with suitable tools. One such tool is Affilizz, which allows you to centralize data, measure priority KPIs, track performance by publication and export data. Affilizz's open API means you can connect the tool to your own analytics or ERP tools, saving time and improving responsiveness.
💡 Tutorial: Export your affiliate data from Affilizz to Google Sheet or Excel
In this tutorial, discover how to easily export your affiliate data from Affilizz to Google Sheet or Excel in three simple steps. This method not only saves time, but also simplifies the process of tracking and analyzing performance, giving you a clear and precise view of the effectiveness of your campaigns.
How do you strike the right balance between optimizing performance and controlling production costs?
To find the right balance between optimizing performance and controlling production costs, it's vital to monitor the performance of the content produced and calculate the ROI in terms of sales gains. If the ROI is negative, this means that the content is not performing well, and that the strategy needs to be adjusted.
How can you reduce production costs while maintaining satisfactory results?
It is possible to use generative artificial intelligence tools, such as AI, to reduce production costs. However, it's important to use them sparingly, as Google is increasingly prioritizing relevance and personalization in its display calculations. Content produced by AI must be used in very specific cases, and cannot transcribe the point of view (angle, opinion, opinion) that a journalist/editor may express between its lines.
What are the pitfalls to avoid and tips for a successful affiliate program?
The main difficulty in managing affiliate KPIs and production costs lies in data recovery. To avoid the pitfalls and ensure the success of your affiliate program, it is essential to :
- Think about tracking in advance and understand how it works;
- Analyze the customer experience of its main merchants/partners
- Create value through content by answering readers' questions
- Meet with partners and exchange ideas on developing synergies
- Testing new content and worlds;
- Use a tool like Affilizz right from the start to get a clear view of the statistics;
- Spend time analyzing performance rather than building a dashboard.
Key points to remember
- Affiliate marketing is a painstaking business that relies on strong partnerships between merchants and affiliates. Identifying the right partners and centralizing information are major challenges in this field.
- To effectively manage an affiliation campaign, it's crucial to monitor priority KPIs. On the media side, audience, page views and clicks are important, while on the merchant side, conversion rate, average basket and cost of acquisition are key performance indicators.
- Daily KPI analysis is essential for making informed decisions in real time. Automated dashboard tools facilitate this task and enable proactive performance optimization.
- Striking the right balance between optimizing performance and controlling production costs is essential. You need to assess the profitability of the content produced in relation to the performance generated, and explore innovative solutions with caution.
- One of the pitfalls to avoid is the difficulty of retrieving data. It's crucial to have a detailed understanding of performance, thanks to specialized tools such as Affilizz. Finally, practical advice is given on how to launch or optimize an affiliation program, particularly in terms of tracking, audience knowledge and performance analysis.
By following these tips and relying on best practices, you can make a success of your affiliate program and optimize your results while keeping your production costs under control.
