In almost every industry, referrals are the gold standard of customer acquisition. Research has repeatedly shown that referred leads close faster, buy more, and stay longer — all with significantly less effort and at a much lower CPA than non-referred prospects. A University of Pennsylvania study[1] found that referred customers are more loyal and profitable — by a 16% margin — than their non-referred counterparts.

Developing measurement, management, and analytics functionality in-house for an automated affiliate marketing program is certainly possible, but it requires a laborious process that typically involves many internal departments, especially your technical development team. In addition to the internal infrastructure and tools necessary to scale affiliate marketing, your manually managed program will require significant investments of time and resources.

Most savvy marketers today are driven by data. And the numbers don’t lie: eCommerce referral programs work. Having a referral program can help your brand keep up in an industry where word-of-mouth travels far and wide.

Affiliate management isn't an easy task. It's not about having a ton of members in your affiliate marketing program that may or may not share your links. It's not about having a popular influencer mention your product, which may or may not lead to conversions. It is all about developing the right relationships with the right types of affiliates. 

While not all effective referral programs yield the same results, there are some steps you can take to set your brand’s referral program up for success. Long story short, your goal is to help your brand ambassadors help you.

While affiliate marketing has been around since the early nineties, we are now seeing more and more companies getting smart about their affiliate program management. What exactly does this mean? Brands are taking affiliate marketing seriously as a means of customer acquisition. They are investing more in this strategy; they are spending more time and resources to understand best practices; and most importantly, they are shifting how they manage their campaigns.

With marketers adopting more personalized strategies, like nurturing via email workflows or developing a partner program, B2B buyers are looking beyond traditional methods of engagement and are pursuing building relationships with organizations.