Affiliate marketers have long been undervalued by both the networks and brands that they promote. Here at FanFuel, we work to change that and put the power of affiliate marketing back in your hands.
Repeat order tracking is a big part of the puzzle. We want to change your relationship with FanFuel from “get us new customers” to “thank you for helping us build these amazing brands.”
History Of Repeat Orders In Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate’s involvement in repeat customer orders has historically been seen as a profitability leak by many brands. Brands often pay a lot of money to acquire new customers and expect repeat customer orders to be more profitable and increase their margin.
Last click attribution doesn’t align the interests of affiliate marketing with brands very well. Because of this, brands notice that repeat customers finding discount codes or cashback through affiliates doesn’t really benefit them. Because of this, many brands pay lower commissions on any orders that are repeat customers.
Affiliate marketing’s reliance on last-click attribution has created a mindset that repeat orders are for the brand to profit from rather than affiliates.
A few networks stand apart in this regard and value the contribution of affiliates more. They realize that affiliate marketing built their brands and customer base and are happy to reward affiliates for repeat customer sales.
These networks still work on a flawed model relying on cookies. With the lifetime of cookies getting shorter and shorter, many repeat customer sales are never tracked to affiliates.
Our Mindset On Repeat Orders
As the owner of brands built thanks to the promotion by affiliate marketers, we see things differently and treat affiliates as equal partners in these brands.
Let’s be honest affiliate marketing isn’t without investment – you need to create great content and build links, neither of which are cheap. We believe in rewarding affiliates for their investment, hard work and perseverance in ranking organic content.
We also know that Google loves changing the rules, and even the strongest websites don’t rank forever. Enhanced repeat customer attribution ensures that you still have an income if you get hit by a Google update. This gives you vital funds to recover your site or invest in new projects.
Not only does it create a more stable income it also increases the value of your digital assets. In recent years flipping (selling) websites has become common, with sites such as Empire Flippers and Flippa allowing for the safe sale of websites for up to 40x their monthly profit.
In March, the top affiliate earned $7,622.94 in repeat customer commissions, with a 40x multiplier that would add up to $300,000 onto the value of their website if they were to sell it.
We know that we wouldn’t be where we are today without affiliates, so you deserve to share in the rewards of repeat customer orders.
How Repeat Tracking Works
When it comes to repeat customer tracking, we don’t rely on cookies, here’s why:
- 17% of global internet traffic is private browsing. This means after the initial order, there is no cookie stored to track repeat customer orders.
- 27% of first-party cookies are lost after 30 days. This would be over 50% in 14 days if we relied on third-party cookies like many networks. The average customer orders two months’ supply per order, which means a large proportion of customers return after their initial cookies are lost.
- Cookies don’t work across devices. We live in a world where people are comfortable ordering on a wide range of devices. If their first order is on their laptop, but they reorder on mobile, cookies won’t allow you to track these sales. This frequently happens, especially for people who open our email campaigns on their mobile devices but order otherwise on desktop.
Instead of relying on cookies, we match customers primarily on their email addresses. From reviewing our extensive database of historical orders, we’ve discovered that this is the most consistent piece of customer data, even more so than their delivery address.
When we receive an order that isn’t tracked using Everflow. We check if their email address was used on any previous orders and automatically assign the commission to the affiliate that made the first purchase. You’ll see these repeat orders that wouldn’t otherwise have tracked recorded against a separate offer and clearly visible on your weekly invoices.
If you want to learn more, you can read the full details here.
What Comes Next
We love our repeat customer tracking and plan on improving your visibility even further. Soon you’ll be able to see how many customers you have for each brand and how frequently they reorder. We’ll also show a history of your earnings that relate to the improved repeat customer tracking.
