If you've had success with a single affiliate campaign, it's natural to wonder if expanding to multiple campaigns could yield even greater results.
However, replicating success isn't as simple as copying and pasting.
You're going to need a solid affiliate management strategy.
In this article, we'll help you find what works, and reveal what doesn't in multi-affiliate program management.
We'll be honest about the pros and cons of managing multiple affiliate campaigns, the sweet spot in terms of numbers, and how you can use Rewardful to keep all your campaigns running smoothly.
When Is a Good Time To Set up Multiple Affiliate Campaigns?
Managing just one affiliate campaign might seem straightforward, but as your business grows, you’ll likely need to create multiple campaigns. Why? Because not all affiliates are created equal, and neither are their audiences.
Different campaigns allow you to tailor your approach more granularly. For instance, you can offer higher commissions to top performers, test different promotional strategies, or target specific regions with localized content.
Pro tip: Our affiliate marketing expert shares some dos and don’ts of expanding your affiliate program internationally.
Additionally, creating multiple campaigns gives you the flexibility to adapt to your growing business needs. You can experiment with various strategies, target niche markets, and provide personalized experiences for different affiliate groups.
The Pros and Cons of Managing Multiple Affiliate Campaigns
Before we jump into the nitty-gritty of how to set up and manage multiple affiliate campaigns, it’s important to weigh the benefits and drawbacks. You need to know why you're doing it and how to do it properly.
The Benefits of Managing Multiple Affiliate Campaigns
- Targeted strategies. By running separate campaigns tailored to specific audience segments or regions, you can optimize your affiliate marketing efforts. This allows you to customize commission structures, messaging, and promotions to better resonate with different groups.
For example, you can implement distinct affiliate recruitment strategies for LinkedIn and YouTube users, experimenting with varying email content, tone, and messaging to achieve maximum engagement. Not sure how to find your best affiliate? This affiliate recruitment guide can help. - Increased flexibility. Multiple affiliate campaigns allow you the flexibility to test different strategies without affecting your entire affiliate program. Want to try a higher commission rate for a select group of VIP affiliates? Easy. Need a separate campaign for an international market with different pricing structures? No problem.
- Better data segmentation. With separate affiliate campaigns, you can get more granular data on performance. This segmentation makes it easier to analyze what’s working and what’s not on your affiliate program, so you can optimize each campaign individually.
- Tailored affiliate experiences. When you segment your affiliates into different campaigns, you can offer a more personalized experience. For instance, you can create a campaign specifically for high-performing affiliates with exclusive perks and higher commissions.
The Challenges of Managing Multiple Affiliate Campaigns
- Increased complexity. More affiliate campaigns mean more moving parts. To help out, you'll need powerful affiliate management software that makes scaling up and managing multiple affiliate campaigns easy.
- Resource intensive. Managing multiple campaigns will require more time, effort, and resources. You’ll need a dedicated team, like affiliate managers, to keep everything running smoothly.
- Risk of confusion. To prevent confusion and potential misattribution of sales or leads, ensure that both you and your affiliates are clear about which campaigns they are involved in. This clarity will help maintain a smooth and effective affiliate marketing program.
- Risk of overlap. With multiple campaigns running simultaneously, there’s a chance that affiliates might cannibalize each other’s efforts, which could lead to inefficiencies and potential conflicts. Make sure to set up your campaigns properly to prevent this.
How Many Affiliate Campaigns Should You Run?
We'll get straight to it: there is no magic number for running multiple affiliate campaigns simultaneously. The right amount depends on your business, its goals, the size of your affiliate program, and the resources you have available. That said, here are a few guidelines to help you find your sweet spot:
- Start small. If you’re new to managing multiple campaigns, start with two or three. This will give you enough room to experiment without becoming overwhelmed.
- Test and iterate. Start with a few campaigns and see how they perform. If you’re seeing positive results and can handle the workload, you can start adding more. But if you’re struggling to keep up, it might be better to scale back, or look at what is the main challenge that you need to solve to keep things on track.
- Align with business goals. It's not simply a case of the more, the merrier. The number of affiliate campaigns should make sense with your overall business strategy. If your goal is to expand into new markets, you might need multiple campaigns to cater to different regions. But if your focus is on deepening relationships with your existing affiliates, fewer campaigns with more personalized attention might be the way to go.
Related: See what affiliate marketing metrics you should track to see the real impact of your affiliate management on your program’s growth.
Setting up Multiple Campaigns With Rewardful: a Step by Step Guide
Now that you’ve decided to run multiple affiliate campaigns, let’s talk about how to set them up in Rewardful.
1. Creating a New Affiliate Campaign
To create a new campaign, simply click the New Campaign button in your Rewardful dashboard. You can either point this campaign to the same website as your default campaign or use a different website altogether. Each campaign generates a unique signup link, so affiliates who sign up through that link will automatically be added to that specific campaign group.
2. Customizing Commission Structures and Cookie Windows
One of the biggest advantages of multiple campaigns is the ability to customize commission structures and cookie windows. For example, you might offer a higher commission rate for affiliates in a private campaign or extend the cookie window for a specific promotion.
To customize these settings, go to your campaign’s settings page and adjust the options as needed.
3. Moving Affiliates Between Campaigns
Affiliates are automatically assigned to your default campaign when they first sign up. However, you can manually move them to a different campaign anytime. This can be useful if you want to reward high-performing affiliates by moving them to a campaign with better commission rates.
To move an affiliate, go to the Affiliates page, find the affiliate you want to move, click “Edit profile,” select the new campaign from the dropdown, and click “Update Affiliate.”
When you move an affiliate to a new campaign, all future commissions, even for existing referrals, will be based on the new campaign’s commission structure. This can be a great way to incentivize affiliates to continue performing well.
Visit this knowledge base for more information on working with multiple campaigns within Rewardful.
3 Best Practices for Managing Multiple Affiliate Campaigns
How do you ensure that all your campaigns are running successfully? We've looked at how successful SaaS businesses are handling multiple affiliate campaigns, and there are some clear winning practices.
1. Segment Your Affiliates Strategically
When segmenting affiliates into different campaigns, don't rely solely on obvious categories like influencers, bloggers, and traditional affiliates. Delve deeper into these segments to uncover strategic opportunities and tailor your affiliate recruitment strategies accordingly. Effective segmentation isn't just about grouping affiliates; it's about identifying unique potential within each group and maximizing their contributions to your overall affiliate marketing efforts.
2. Invest in High-Quality Content for Each Affiliate Campaign
Maintain the highest quality standards across all your campaigns, regardless of the target segment. As you expand your affiliate marketing efforts, prioritize quality and effective communication with your existing affiliates to ensure their continued satisfaction and success.
This ‘Ongoing Affiliate Program Management’ guide will show you how to nurture and keep your affiliates happy.
3. Review and Iterate Your Campaigns Regularly
Running multiple campaigns requires ongoing attention and management. That is why you need to regularly review your campaign performance critically to identify what's working and what's not. Be proactive about making necessary changes, even if it means temporarily pausing a campaign to reevaluate and refine your strategy.
Amplify the Impact of Your Affiliate Campaign Strategy With Rewardful
Managing multiple affiliate campaigns can be overwhelming. That's why a robust affiliate management software like Rewardful is essential.
Rewardful simplifies your efforts by allowing you to easily segment affiliates based on specific criteria. This enables you to run separate campaigns, experiment with different strategies, and avoid potential risks to your primary campaign.
Explore Rewardful's pricing plans to find the best fit for your business and take advantage of a 14-day free trial to experience its benefits firsthand.
How to Run Multiple Affiliate Campaigns - Rewardful’s FAQs
Answering your questions about running multiple affiliate campaigns on Rewardful affiliate management software.
1. Can I Add One Affiliate to Multiple Campaigns?
Unfortunately, a single affiliate can only belong to one campaign at a time. If you need an affiliate to participate in more than one campaign, they’ll need to create multiple accounts using different email addresses. A workaround is to use the “+” trick in email addresses (e.g., someone+campaignA@gmail.com and someone+campaignB@gmail.com), which allows them to sign up with different “email addresses” that all route to the same inbox.
2. How Do I Keep Track of Performance Across Multiple Campaigns?
With multiple campaigns running, it can be tricky to keep track of performance. Rewardful makes this easier by providing a high-level summary of each campaign on your Campaigns page. From here, you can see key metrics like total commissions, number of affiliates, and overall performance.
For a deeper understanding of your affiliate marketing efforts, delve into each campaign's analytics to identify top-performing affiliates, evaluate campaign effectiveness, and pinpoint areas for improvement.
3. How Do I Handle Affiliate Communication Across Multiple Campaigns?
When running multiple campaigns, it’s important to keep your affiliates informed and engaged. Rewardful’s integrations with email service providers make it easy to send targeted communications to affiliates based on the campaign they’re in.
Pro Tip: Use automation to streamline your communication efforts. Set up automated emails that trigger when an affiliate reaches a milestone or achieves a certain level of performance.
4. What’s the Best Way To Prevent Fraud Across Multiple Campaigns?
Rewardful’s built-in fraud detection tool automatically flags suspicious activity (e.g., self-referrals) and deactivates the accounts. You can also monitor your campaigns closely for any unusual patterns in affiliate behavior.
