“The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up.”
I used this quote in one of the first pitches I did to a prospective client at Acceleration Partners. It delighted me that the recipient commented this was the first time they had ever seen a Chuck Palahniuk quote in a pitch. Chuck Palahniuk is the genius behind the novel Fight Club.
Nearly three years later, this quote still sums up perfectly what we do at Acceleration Partners. We’ve worked with leading brands to take a step back out of the day-to-day of running their affiliate programme and look at the bigger picture of what has been successful, what they are doing well, what they could do better.
Why get an independent audit of your affiliate programme?
It’s hard to criticise the activity your people have invested their time and effort into. It’s even harder to be honest about your weaknesses.
We offer an independent view to analyse your affiliate programme without bias, identifying what you are doing well, as well as what you can do better.
We’ve run independent audits for a wide range of leading brands. Every programme is different. We take the time to understand your drivers, barriers and what you are looking for from an audit.
For some of our clients, the requirement is to assess how well the affiliate programme is performing. For others, it’s finding efficiencies and cost savings, and for many, we’ve been given growth targets and tasked to find opportunities to help support those.
In our experience, no programme is perfect, including those we run ourselves, so we perform the same audits on our own managed programmes. We believe there is always an opportunity to find more efficient ways of doing things, new ideas and marginal gains.
How do we run an audit?
We start by collecting all the relevant data required for the review; this includes key metrics such as sales, revenue, costs and active partners. We break this down by individual partner so we can assess the value at a granular level and identify any gaps in your network of partners. We then use this data to analyse the structure, costs, and health of the affiliate programme, Identifying strengths, opportunities and gaps in your current activity,
With this information, we construct an actionable plan designed to dramatically improve your programme performance which you can implement yourselves, or ask us to support.
Can an audit deliver a return on investment?
Without a doubt. Here are a few case studies from clients that we have worked with recently:
- For a retail client we worked with, we found new opportunities that delivered over $200k in incremental revenue growth over 3-months.
- For a fashion client, we found £0.5m additional annual revenue through the affiliate channel.
- For a travel client, we found potential cost savings of nearly €1m annually.
- For a subscription client, we found an additional 20% revenue from new affiliate partners recruited to the programme.
We have a team of affiliate marketing experts that can offer an independent review of your programme. Contact us to discuss your requirements, and we can tailor an audit to meet your needs.
