Setting Up Affiliate Marketing For Ecommerce

Here's the new rule of GTM for 2025: it's about about TRUST not DISTRACTION. In 2024 and earlier, most companies were STILL playing the volume game: More cold emails More ads More noise But here's what I learned building partner programs at WeWork and Amex: 1. Identify Trusted Advocates Customers are more likely to trust recommendations from voices they already know and respect. Who influences our target audience? Who already has their attention and trust? These could be industry leaders, complementary solution providers, or niche communities. Build partnerships with those who already have a strong connection to your ideal customers. 2. Collaborate to Add Value, Not Noise Instead of interrupting your audience with another cold email or ad, collaborate with partners to create meaningful, value-driven touch points. - Co-host a webinar addressing a shared customer pain point. - Develop a joint white paper showcasing both brands’ expertise. - Offer bundled solutions that make life easier for the customer. 3. Leverage Existing Trust to Open Doors Partners are amplifiers AND bridges. They help you cross the “river of distraction” and reach customers without the noise. A well-placed introduction or co-branded recommendation carries far more weight than another outbound message. 4. Measure the Shift from Interruption to Influence If trust-building is your new GTM focus, your success metrics need to change too. Track things like: - Partner-Sourced Leads: Leads generated through trusted partner referrals. - Engagement Rates: How customers interact with co-created content or campaigns. - Pipeline Velocity: How quickly partner-driven deals progress compared to direct sales efforts. Breaking through the noise requires genuine relationships. It's no longer about whose voice is the loudest, it’s whose voice your audience already trusts. The future isn't about interruption and distraction. It's about trust.

Would you prefer to acquire more customers at your target average cost, even though some might be unprofitable? Or would you prefer fewer customers, but with guaranteed profitability on each one? This is a crucial decision when it comes to shaping your advertising strategy on platforms like Meta. If you opt for more customers at your target cost average, then cost caps may be the right strategy for you. By setting a cost cap, you can average out the cost of acquiring customers over time. Some customers will be profitable, while others might not be, but overall, you’ll hit your target cost per acquisition (CPA). This approach works well when you’re aiming for volume and are willing to tolerate some level of inefficiency in customer acquisition. On the other hand, if your focus is on repeatable unit economics, where each customer must be profitable, then bid caps in Meta might be the better approach. By implementing a bid cap, you ensure that you’ll never pay more than a specific amount to acquire a customer. This strategy is ideal for businesses that need to maintain strict profitability and can't afford the risk of unprofitable customers. So, how do you determine your bid cap? It depends on a few key factors: Average Order Value (AOV) – the average value of each sale. Margin % – your profit margin on each sale. Lifetime Value (LTV) – if you’re in a subscription-based model or if you have high customer repeat purchase rates, then applying an LTV factor can help you determine a more precise bid cap. Ultimately, understanding these variables will allow you to optimise your strategy to either scale with a bit of risk or guarantee profitability on each customer. It's all about finding the right balance for your business goals.

Brands, we need to talk about the “try our product for free, post about it, and here’s your affiliate link” approach. For creators, this can feel like a one-sided deal. Testing a product, creating thoughtful content, and sharing it with an audience we’ve worked to build involves effort. When the ask is for a free review in exchange for a commission-only affiliate link, it’s one of the quickest ways to get a “no, thank you.” If you’re genuinely interested in partnering with creators, consider approaching things a little differently: 📌 Instead of diving straight into commission details, start by asking if we’re genuinely interested in the product. Have you seen us use it before? What sets you apart from competitor products we already share? Taking the time to connect and do a little research shows you see us as partners — not just promoters. 📌 Real partnerships go way beyond just free products and affiliate links. Compensating creators shows you truly value the time, effort, and expertise they invest in creating engaging content. Expecting a quick product review with deliverables but without any pay? That’s a full campaign, not just an affiliate opportunity. 📌 Focus on genuine connection — it goes a long way. Offering products without expectations builds a foundation for authentic relationships and can lead to rewarding partnerships. Sometimes, that means hopping on a call to understand how your brand fits into a creator’s content calendar. Bottom line? Be mindful in your initial outreach. The creator-brand relationship should be built on respect and mutual value. Lean into creating partnerships that feel like a win-win for everyone involved. #creators #brandpartnerships #influencermarketing 

This Omdia poll tells a story every partner leader should sit with for a moment. Partners aren’t asking for more swag. They’re asking for access, relevance, and proximity to decisions. When 40% say the most valuable non-monetary incentive is exclusive access to resources and enablement, that’s not a training problem — that’s a time-to-value problem. Partners want to be better, faster, and more credible in front of customers. --> Enablement is currency. The next tier is even more revealing. Relationship-building events, recognition, and strategy sessions with leadership all cluster tightly together. Translation: partners want to be seen, heard, and trusted. Not managed. Not processed. Included. What ranks lowest? Personalized merchandise. Swag doesn’t move pipelines. Access does. This mirrors what we see across partner ecosystems more broadly. As buying journeys fragment and deals surround themselves with more influencers, partners are optimizing for signal over stuff. They want insight before it’s public, alignment before the deal is registered, and a seat at the table before the customer decides. In fact, recognition beyond the point-of-sale is the #1 thing they are asking for. If incentives can follow, even better. The takeaway is simple: the best partner programs don’t lead with money or merch. They lead with information, influence, and intimacy. In the next era of partnerships, incentives won’t be transactional. They’ll be strategic.

I've spent $100M+ on Meta in DTC space And I use 3 attribution models: Ad platforms are notorious for taking credit for view-through conversions they didn't drive. They do it to bait you into spending more. The issue is that your top 1-2% of ads should drive ~50% of your spend and revenue. If you're relying on bad attribution, you won’t be able to find them. This is why 8-9 figure brands (that NEED their tracking to be faultless), use 3 attribution models: 1. Multi-touch attribution (MTA) - for ad and campaign level optimization. This is your Triple Whale or Northbeam. Great for knowing which ads are performing best, which ones to scale, which to cut. Not as good for comparing channel to channel. It also will overcount total revenue, which you need to be careful about. To make sure your account is well optimized, plot CPA vs Spend on a scatter plot. The top ads should be in the low CPA, high spend zone. 2. Post-purchase survey - for channel level allocation. Get a 35%+ response rate, extrapolate to all new customers, and calculate your cost per new customer response per channel. This tells you which channel to push into. Click-based attribution overvalues lower-funnel performance by up to 250%. Post-purchase surveys catch what click attribution misses - top-of-funnel creative can drive 13X more incremental acquisitions than bottom-of-funnel. 3. Marketing Mix Model (MMM) - for validating direction. You can't use this daily, but it confirms your post-purchase survey is sending you the right way. Then you use post-purchase on a daily basis to optimize channel allocation. Some channels drive low-quality customers that look good on ROAS but don't stick around. MMM helps you optimize for 12-month profit as opposed to just immediate return. The other thing to know is that view-through attribution is poor signal. Make sure your attribution is set up for 7 or 14 day click, depending on your purchase funnel. One day view will overcount. Here's what this gives you: When performance drops, you know exactly where to pull budget to create the smallest impact on revenue while keeping the company profitable. When things are going well, you know exactly where to push budget to scale effectively. Bottom line: -> Use MTA for ads and campaigns. -> Use post-purchase surveys for channel allocation. -> Use MMM to validate you're heading the right direction. This is how 8-9 figure brands figure out where every dollar should go.

𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗮 #5. 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗟𝗧𝗩-𝗖𝗔𝗖 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼 Understanding the relationship between customer acquisition costs (CAC) and lifetime value (LTV) is a fundamental challenge for all digital commerce businesses. But all too often, we’re looking at numbers that seem healthy but in reality are hiding serious profitability issues. I recently worked with a UK ecommerce business boasting an LTV-CAC ratio of 15x …until we uncovered that 50% of its paid media spend was loss-making.  How can an impressive average mask a significant underlying problem? The truth is, relying on a single, aggregate LTV-CAC number is a dangerous oversimplification that blinds you to: • Hidden profit leakage:  It's just an average. It doesn’t tell you anything about significant variation in customer value and acquisition cost across different channels, campaigns or keywords. • Scalability limits: A high LTV-CAC doesn’t tell you if you can increase spending on your current channels or if you need to find new ways to acquire customers. You might have already maximised efficient spending. • Marginal inefficiency: It doesn’t reveal what percentage of your total marketing spend is inefficient. Understanding the distribution of LTV vs. CAC is key here. • Opportunities to optimise: Without looking deeper, you can't identify which acquisition sources are potentially profitable but have broken journeys, high bounce rates or other issues such as poor product availability.   • Cashflow risks: A high LTV-CAC might involve a very long payback period, which has implications for cashflow and risk, especially if revenue per customer increases over time. There’s a complex trade-off between cash, growth, and profit. Moreover, the calculations behind the ratio are often opaque and flawed.  How exactly are CAC and LTV defined? >> CAC should be simple at the overall level (total marketing spend / new customers acquired).  However, a more granular view of CAC involves complexities such as allocation, attribution, incrementality, and the measurement of retention marketing efforts. >> Calculating LTV involves several complexities: determining the appropriate timeframe, discount rate, how to account for uncertainty, and precisely which variable costs should be included. So, what should you do instead? 1. Measure at the most atomic level: Money is spent at a granular level (e.g., per click or impression). De-average your CAC calculations to understand costs by channel, sub-channel, and keyword type. 2. Look at the distribution: Analyze the distribution of both CAC and LTV, and the alignment of CAC vs LTV (see example below). Understand the spread of customer value and the cost to acquire customers through different sources.     𝘉𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘭: 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘧𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘧𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦!

We changed one button on a client’s website and watched acquisition costs drop by a third overnight. Same ads, same audience… just tracking what Meta ACTUALLY values instead of what everyone thinks it values. Here’s the exact framework: 1. Fix Your Funnel Mechanics Standard e-commerce flows create massive inefficiencies when they don't align with platform event schemas. Multi-page checkouts, delayed confirmation signals, and fragmented purchase paths all force algorithms to work harder to find your customers. 2. Implement Strategic Conversion Paths Single-page checkout flows increase "InitiateCheckout" events by 20%, giving Meta earlier signals that immediately improve auction performance. Email-capture modals treated as "Lead" events let you optimize for actions Meta can deliver at a fraction of "Purchase" event costs. Progressive form fields create additional data points that feed algorithms the optimization signals they crave. 3. Optimize for Predictive Events While everyone obsesses over "add-to-cart," events like "complete registration" often predict lifetime value more accurately and convert at substantially lower costs. The accounts we've restructured around these insights consistently see 30%+ CPA improvements within weeks. 4. Sequence Your Channels Strategically Start with Pinterest/YouTube for cold reach. Transition to Meta Lead/Form campaigns, optimizing toward micro-conversions. Finally, move to Meta Conversion campaigns using fresh "AddToCart" seed audiences. This sequence leverages each platform's attribution window to maximize incremental lift while preventing platform competition for conversion credit. The brands beating CAC benchmarks in competitive markets have simply restructured their funnel mechanics to align with how algorithms really value conversions. This approach requires zero additional spend; just a strategic reconfiguration of your customer journey.

Great B2B partnerships don’t just fall into your lap. You have to build them just like a sales pipeline. But here’s where a lot of companies get it wrong. They expect partners to start sending leads from day one. No trust, no alignment, just instant results. That’s not how it works. A partner pipeline follows the same journey as a marketing funnel. ✅ Awareness Partners can’t work with you if they don’t even know you exist. Get on their radar. Be visible. ➝ Make sure your brand and expertise show up in the right conversations. ➝ Position yourself as someone worth partnering with, not just another company in the space. ✅ Discovery Not every company is a fit. Just like in sales, you need to qualify partners based on your Ideal Partner Profile (IPP) before jumping in. ➝ Take the time to understand who will truly complement your business, not just who is available. ➝ The best partnerships come from shared values and long-term alignment, not just a quick opportunity. ✅ Intent A little interest isn’t enough. You need to nurture the relationship, build trust, and make it clear why partnering with you is a win-win. ➝ Stay engaged, provide value, and show that you are invested in their success too. ➝ The strongest partnerships are built before you ever sign an agreement. ✅ Decision Partnerships aren’t just a handshake. They take negotiation, alignment, and a real commitment to making it work. ➝ Set clear expectations and ensure both sides see the long-term opportunity. ➝ A great partner isn’t just looking for a deal; they’re looking for a relationship that grows over time. ✅ Loyalty Signing the deal is just the start. The real magic happens when you activate, engage, and grow together over time. ➝ Keep communication strong, celebrate wins, and continuously look for ways to deepen the collaboration. ➝ The best partnerships evolve. Keep investing in them, and they’ll keep delivering value. Great partnerships don’t happen by accident. They are built with intention. So, are you treating partnerships like a transaction or actually building something that lasts?

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad. Learning takes time and humility. The fastest way to grow is to listen to the people who’ve already taken the hits, learned the lessons, and earned the wisdom. If you’re starting your journey as a Channel Manager, here are the lessons I wish I’d learned sooner: 1. IT’S NOT SALES You can’t push, charm, or buy your way into true partner loyalty. Real relationships are built on value and trust. Partners can spot a salesperson from a mile away because they are sales professionals. 2. REAL RELATIONSHIPS TAKE REAL TIME I burned bridges early by chasing my own quota instead of understanding what partners actually wanted. Learn what drives them. When they win, you win. 3. PARTNER ENABLEMENT IS NOT SALES ENABLEMENT Partners don’t care about your internal decks. They run their own businesses with their own priorities. If you want your enablement to stick, simplify it massively and tailor it to their world. 4. QUALITY OVER QUANTITY Sales taught me to play the numbers. Partnerships taught me that fit matters more. Prioritize mutual value and a strong “better together” story over volume. 5. DATA IS YOUR BEST FRIEND I used to be too busy doing to track what mattered. My VP taught me that you optimize the road ahead by studying the one behind. Leading indicators beat lagging indicators every time. 6. TRUST THE PROCESS There are no shortcuts. If you skip foundational steps, it will catch up to you. Start at step one and build deliberately. 7. INVEST IN INTERNAL PARTNERSHIPS I assumed internal alignment happened automatically. It doesn’t. Build relationships across your org early. You will need them to remove blockers, delegate busywork, and stay proactive instead of reactive. 8. PARTNER EXPERIENCE MATTERS Every touchpoint shapes how partners feel about working with you from the first interaction to the handoff to support. Make your value and ease of partnership obvious. 9. ALWAYS ASK “WHAT’S IN IT FOR THEM?” Partners don’t owe you anything. My relationships transformed when I stopped thinking about what I wanted and started asking what mattered to them. 10. IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT Partners are not buying your features. They are betting on your company. Make sure they understand who you are, not just what you sell. Ruben Pina Jr. Tim Hammer Elan Crane Chance Crane

If you’re still building your ecommerce strategy around ROAS, you’re missing the bigger picture. ROAS tells you how efficiently you spent your ad budget, not whether you actually made any money. I’ve seen brands celebrate a 5x + ROAS, only to realise their cost per acquisition was higher than their margin and their customer never bought again... That’s not performance. That’s noise. The metrics that really matter are CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) and LTV (Lifetime Value)... I love talking about this stuff as i know there will be loads of opinions on this! CPA keeps you honest: It forces you to understand what it really costs to acquire a customer. Not just the ad spend, but the shipping, fulfilment, discounts, and support that come with it. If your CPA creeps up past your contribution margin, your “growth” is just expensive turnover. LTV tells you if it was worth it: When you understand how much a customer is worth over 3, 6, 12, or 24 months, you can afford to make smarter, longer-term bets on acquisition. McKinsey found that brands using LTV-driven acquisition modelling grow retention 20-25% faster than those optimising for single-purchase ROAS! Together, CPA and LTV show sustainability: When you track both, you can find your true LTV:CAC ratio eg your profitability multiplier. Healthy ecommerce brands sit around 3:1. Anything lower means your business is eating into its future to fund today’s sales. ROAS will tell you how your ad did last week. LTV and CPA will tell you if your business will still be here next year. If you want to really understand growth, start asking: “What’s the quality of the customer we’re buying, not just the cost?” Because the goal isn’t to get clicks... It’s to build something that lasts (or at least it should be)!