4 Strategies for Affiliate Marketing

Are your members really your members?

Regarding affiliate marketing , there is a phenomenon: more and more merchants and consumers consider affiliate marketing to be a "burden".

Merchants don’t know why they should do affiliate marketing, but they see other peers doing it, so they want to do it too to see if it can increase sales.

Consumers don’t know why they should become members, and either they have no interest in participating or they just do it to get by.

The result is that merchants have many members but cannot convert them, and consumers also have memberships in many merchants but forget about them as soon as they turn around.

It is a torture for both parties. How can this be considered affiliate marketing?

Why do we do affiliate marketing?

To do affiliate marketing, we must first understand the significance of affiliate marketing and what goals we want to achieve.

Affiliate marketing has the following functions for marketers:

1. Stable passenger flow

2. Cultivate fans

3. Attract new customers

4. Understand members

5. Reduce costs

6. Increase sales

7. Improve competitiveness

8. Build brand power

9. Accurate and efficient marketing

Affiliate marketing has the following effects on consumers:

1. More convenient experience

For example, with airline memberships, members can enjoy fast security checks and priority boarding, which improves travel convenience; in the catering industry, members can make reservations and order meals in advance and have priority in queuing/skip the queue, which improves dining convenience.

2. Enjoy better service

Compared with non-members, members can enjoy better services, such as exclusive customer service, dedicated hotline, free returns, VIP channels, etc.

3. Get more value

For example, convenience store and supermarket members can receive exclusive coupons, and the accumulated points can be used to deduct cash; beauty salon members can enjoy gift quotas and member discounts.

Another example is the 88VIP of a certain e-commerce platform. Users can activate it for 88 yuan/year if they meet a certain score, but if they do not meet the score, it will cost 888 yuan/year. Use 888 yuan to compare the value of joining for 88 yuan if the conditions are met, and only the membership of a certain video platform, a certain music platform, and a certain food delivery platform are worth more than 100 yuan.

4. Membership privileges

Depending on the membership level, you can enjoy certain privileges. It's not just about price, but also about privileges in terms of respect and superiority, satisfying members' needs for respect.

For example, members of the video platform can skip advertisements; members of the music platform can listen to paid songs; members of the e-commerce platform can enjoy price protection, exclusive discounts, exclusive coupons, etc.

For example, senior members of a certain hotpot restaurant brand can enjoy privileges such as skipping queues, exclusive service signs, free dishes and exclusive desserts. In the hotel industry, senior members generally enjoy privileges such as exclusive check-in, late check-out, free breakfast, room upgrades, and executive lounge access.

Membership level benefits of an e-commerce platform

Membership level benefits of an international hotel chain

After establishing the purpose of membership marketing and what you are prepared to provide to members, you can build the four dimensions of the membership system to help the positive operation of membership marketing.

Do a good job of member marketing from four dimensions:

1. Member Care

Member care is an effective way to improve member experience, starting from the following two aspects:

1) Full-process service

Provide full-process service according to the pre-sales, transaction and after-sales processes.

For example, the offline store service process: before coming to the store, you can use tools such as SMS/WeChat to invite you to events, pre-purchase, and make appointments to come to the store; greetings, tea, shopping guides and other services when you come to the store; communication and assistance during transactions; farewells and greetings when leaving the store, etc.

For example, the service process of an online store: pre-purchase consultation, promotional preheating through tools such as SMS/WeChat; caring reminders based on the order status and logistics package nodes, and timely notification of express status information to alleviate members' anxious waiting; after the goods are signed for, guide members to sign for good reviews, collect members' opinions, and at the same time increase the product's good review rate.

We can use many tools of SUBMAIL cloud communication to improve the efficiency of the entire service process. For example, point-to-point SMS, voice call notifications, smart SMS, short URL groups, etc.

2) Member-level care

Since you are a member, you need to be given member-level care. By selecting 8 key scenarios from multiple scenarios in the member's life cycle, we can provide automated and personalized member care through SMS/email/WeChat, etc., to enhance the member's value and sense of presence.

First purchase gift - join the membership and get a gift for the first purchase

Repeat purchase gift - Nth purchase will receive a gift

Upgrade to get gifts - get gifts after upgrading your membership level

Birthday gifts - gifts on birthdays

Holiday gifts - gifts for major holidays

Anniversary Gifts - Gifts for Anniversary Celebrations

Gifts for new customers - gifts for new customers who purchase or join the club

Sleep wake-up - dormant members who have not purchased for a long time will receive gifts when they purchase again

2. Win word of mouth

Building good member reputation will help improve brand image and influence, and further enhance activity and loyalty.

Six factors that affect member reputation :

Product - the foundation and prerequisite for building word of mouth.

Service ——Intimate and exclusive membership service.

Price – Make members feel they are getting great value for money/better value than similar products.

Expectations - whether the product basically meets or even exceeds members' expectations when compared with their own psychological expectations and similar products.

Experience – the sense of respect and exclusivity that members feel.

Gifts - Member-exclusive gifts to keep in touch with users and build emotional connection.

If you want to win the reputation of members, grasping these six points and gradually improving and perfecting them will definitely bring more and more traffic to your store.

3. How to improve member activity?

Member upgrade mechanism

The use of gamification mechanisms for member upgrades is already an old routine. With the help of a set of game mechanisms such as completing tasks, accumulating experience, upgrading levels, and obtaining rewards, members can actively participate in fun.

In recent years, Pinduoduo's bargaining and cash withdrawal, Alipay's scanning and tree planting and other game mechanisms have not only made innovations but also produced results beyond imagination. They are worthy of study and reference for every friend engaged in membership marketing.

Personalization

Consumers' preferences are constantly changing, and consumption concepts are shifting from monotony - pursuing famous brands, authority, and trends - to personalization, precision, and customization. Member marketing should keep pace with the times and meet the different needs of different members.

You can use some private traffic tools and SUBMAIL cloud communication tools to timely investigate the preferences and types of different members, organize and classify them, and then launch activities and products in a targeted manner.

Wake up dormant members

Dormant members refer to members who have no consumption records for a long period of time. We have two operating strategies for dormant members:

1. Collect feedback from members through communication and research, find out the reasons for dormancy, and make targeted improvements;

2. Attract dormant members to visit again through coupons, promotions, and exclusive gifts.

Many friends may have questions. Dormant members have not come to consume for a long time. Isn’t it much more difficult and costly to wake them up than active members?

That's true, but membership operations are like a funnel. We not only add sand into the funnel, we also have to find ways to plug the leak, or even add back the sand that has already leaked out. Waking up dormant members can help us analyze the reasons why members are dormant and continuously improve and optimize the operating system and product service levels. The membership user system has also been able to maintain healthy growth.

In addition to narrowing the gap in the user funnel, operating dormant members also provides us with countless data showing that the cost of retaining an old member is much lower than the cost of acquiring a new member.

Therefore, the operation of dormant members is an indispensable part of the entire membership marketing system.

4. How to cultivate member loyalty?

Members have different levels and types of loyalty to brands. We can divide membership into four types:

Rational loyalty - after comparing and understanding various products, the most suitable and best one is considered after comprehensive comparison.

Emotional loyalty - liking a certain aspect or characteristic of a brand.

Inertial loyalty - this type of members have formed habits and preferences, tend to make repeated purchases, and have become dependent on the brand.

We can establish different strategies for different loyalty types.

Aiming at rational loyalty, we continuously upgrade and optimize product services, create a better service experience, and enhance member awareness.

Targeting emotional loyalty, we build and maintain the original personality and highlight the qualities that members care about.

Targeting inertial loyalty, we understand members’ habits and preferences, and do not change or influence them easily, so as to meet more user needs and enhance multi-level member stickiness.

For example, a certain fruit company, as a company with a market value of over 3 trillion US dollars, fully satisfies the different loyalty types of users.

Rational loyalty lies in the outstanding and leading experience and functions of its various products; emotional loyalty lies in its innovative, simple, and unique brand personality; inertial loyalty lies in its unique system experience, multi-product synergy, and excellent software and hardware integration.

Summarize

Finally, we can summarize with a chart. First understand why you want to do it and what you can bring to consumers, and then establish the four dimensions of membership marketing.

This article has said so much, but it actually just wants to illustrate one thing: only when you truly provide members with the value and services they need, will they be your members.

A new term in recent years - private domain traffic, to put it bluntly, is also the evolution of the membership marketing system. Its essence is still to manage and serve its own members. Only by keeping your original intention in mind can you achieve your goal.

Establishing a deeper relationship with customers requires operational methods and means, as well as time to accumulate. If you really want to have your own loyal members, only by working hard can you ultimately gain not only business benefits, but more importantly, achieve stronger brand strength and have a group of members who believe in you, support you, and appreciate you.