Since 80% of my “Ladies Let’s Talk Money Virtual Series” income comes from this strategy, I highly recommend for virtual summit organisers to implement Affiliate Partnerships to attract event attendees simply because: a) It’s a super easy - literally 2 steps on the event platform b) It's FREE - well, with a small paid upgrade depending on which package you subscribe to
c) It takes very little time to set up compared to other marketing strategies So let's dive in deeper and explore what affiliate partnerships are all about!
What is an Affiliate Partnership?
You probably see affiliate marketing in action a dozen times a day. When a beauty blogger reviews a new makeup collection and links the product on her blog. When a Youtuber encourages fans to purchase a product with a unique promo code. When a website displays an ad in the sidebar for a camera.
What happens is the affiliate will receive a commission for every purchase through their unique link. From what I see in the industry, 20% to 50% commission for every event ticket sold is very common.
Who can be Affiliate Partners?
Anybody with a substantial list of followers and subscribers who happen to fit your event attendee profiles can be your affiliate partners. It can be your event’s speakers, other event organisers, marketing partners, bloggers and social media influencers.
How do I manage Affiliate Partners on the platform?
(Since I’m using Kajabi, I’m going to use this platform as a reference point but check your events platform to see how it works.)
It only takes 2 steps to create affiliate partnerships on the event platform:
1. Set the amount or percentage of commission each affiliate partners get in the check out page
2. Create unique links for each affiliate partner
And that’s it! You can send affiliate partners your Affiliate sign-up link (which your platform will provide) so that they can create their own dashboard to access to their unique links. Other than that, you don’t have to do much system wise to manage an affiliate.
How does the platform ensure the clicks and conversions are accurate?
This is one of my biggest priorities in choosing my event platform because I know that ensuring the accuracy of the number of clicks and conversions are SUPER important (especially when money are involved!). Your platform must have a feature that is very reliable when it comes to serving your affiliates - imagine how frustrating or even unethical it can be to have a conversions counter that have technical glitches or are easily manipulated by external sources.
Since every affiliate have to create their very own dashboard where they can get access to their unique links, they get real time updates on the clicks and conversions. Whenever the affiliate copy this link and place it in their email and send it to someone, what they are doing is placing a cookie to the browser of the person who clicks on this link. The cookies then capture registrations and payments within 30 days of being placed in the browser.
Who process the payments?
The event organiser usually will have to manually transfer the payment via Paypal to the affiliate partners within a specified number of days after the event. You can access your organiser’s dashboard to keep track on the different incoming payments tagged to the different affiliates.
Bonus Tips in Managing Your Affiliate Partners
Here's some bonus tips to help you manage your affiliate partners well so that they feel very comfortable in working with you AND help you build trust (every partnership needs those!):
a) Create an Affiliate Partnership Agreement that outlines when the payout is due, how much commission they will get and crystal clear terms
b) Give time for the Affiliate Partner to test out their links and dashboard before using it for real audiences - what I do is create a 100% discount code for them to enter so they get to see the conversions numbers go up without paying any money
c) Create a Visual Info Kit that includes the step by step process to sign up and test the links so that it's super easy for them to be your affiliate partner!
I hope this helps! Till next time (:
Cheerios,
Rashidah
P.S: If you want to take out the guesswork of planning your online event, check out my Virtual Summit Planning Kit (with editable affiliate agreement template that I personally use as bonus!)
