If you’re already using the Sovrn Commerce platform, you know that it’s the fastest, most flexible way to build and manage your affiliate marketing program. You’ve probably used our UTM tools to develop a smart, trackable link-building strategy. You may have tried different ways of selecting affiliate partners from our network of more than 30,000 merchants. You’ve likely optimized your merchant mix to earn higher commissions and capitalize on limited-time promotions. And hopefully you’ve leveraged the Commerce dashboards and reporting capabilities to keep your program running smoothly.
But even if you’re taking advantage of all this robust functionality, there may be ways you can get more out of the Commerce platform. Here are a few tips about lesser-known features that can help take your affiliate marketing to the next level.
1. Build smarter links
Many affiliate marketers create commerce content by building hard-coded links to products on specific merchant sites. But what happens if the product goes out of stock or the merchant stops selling your featured product altogether? Combing through all of your site content and social media posts to find those links can be a nightmare.
Instead, try building affiliate links with the Commerce “Create Links” tool. This easy-to-use feature lets you create and manage all your links in one centralized location. When you need to make a change, you can simply scan through your list of affiliate links and edit the target URL to a different affiliate merchant. The link will be automatically updated in your content, across every location where it’s been used.
Pro tip: To save yourself some time and reduce manual edits, avoid mentioning merchants by name in blog posts, product reviews, and other affiliate content.
2. Use custom tracking IDs
We’ve talked about the benefits of UTM-optimized links in previous blog posts, but there’s another simple and flexible way to add tracking information to your affiliate links. Within the advanced settings in the “Create Links” tool, you can build custom tracking IDs that can be attached to an individual link — or as many links as you’d like.
Custom tracking IDs are “named” using up to 32 alpha-numeric characters (rather than a complex series of UTM codes), so they’re easy to create and manage. They are especially useful for tracking things like:
- Activities of a specific user across your site
- Performance of a single link across all channels
- All links associated with a specific campaign, event, or merchant
3. Get deeper performance insights
The Commerce reporting and analytics functionality becomes even more powerful when you use it to analyze performance trends over time. The Analytics Dashboard includes powerful, flexible functionality to deliver custom insights like week-over-week, month-over-month, or year-over-year performance for any number of metrics. Just select your desired timeframe to see trends in clicks, sales, revenue, EPC, CTR, and more. You can even get merchant-level insights to help optimize your mix of affiliate partners.
4. Add users to your account
As your business grows, you may add more people to your team — and you’ll likely want to give them access to the Commerce platform. Rather than sharing credentials (which creates a security risk), it’s easy to add new user accounts with the “Manage Users” tool. Just select “Manage Users” from the account menu in the Sovrn Platform, then click the “+User” button in the upper right corner of the screen. Enter the new user’s email address and they’ll automatically receive an invitation to create an account.
You can add as many new users as you need — and they can be removed at any time. (Note: The primary user on your account cannot be removed. Contact Sovrn support if you need to select a different primary user.) Just keep in mind, all users on your account will share the same permission level, including access to payment settings.
5. Get a holistic view of your monetization strategy
Sovrn offers a variety of products and services to help publishers earn more revenue and accelerate business growth. If you’re also using our other products — like Advertising or Signal — the Sovrn platform makes it easy to view and manage all your accounts in one place, with a single login. That’s one central location for all your data insights and monetization tactics, including programmatic advertising, affiliate marketing, and user engagement — without clicking around to different tools and logging into multiple accounts.
Ready to start driving more affiliate revenue?
These are just a few of the many ways Sovrn can help you optimize your affiliate marketing program. If you’re not already earning with Sovrn Commerce, sign up now! It only takes a few minutes, and once you’re approved you can start earning right away.
If you’re currently a Sovrn Commerce affiliate partner, feel free to reach out with questions. Our support team is standing by to help you reach your audience — and your revenue goals.
