Affiliate Marketing Metrics That Actually Matter. . The experts we surveyed highlighted six key performance indicators as the best metrics to measure your affiliate program’s success.:

1. AFFILIATE MARKETING
METRICS THAT
ACTUALLY MATTER
Most commonly tracked affiliate
program metrics
@NUPURANDWORLD

2. The experts we surveyed highlighted six key performance
indicators as the best metrics to measure your affiliate program’s
success.:
“Brands can brag about their sales, unique visitors, and rankings, but
all of this information is a little vague without insights into the
conversion rate.
“There are several ways to break down the conversion rate data to
help businesses understand their weaknesses, strengths, and
challenges. For example, businesses can measure the conversion rate
of all affiliates on average, of a particular affiliate landing page, or a
specific affiliate’s conversion rate.
6 expert-recommended affiliate marketing metrics
1. Conversion rate
One of the most commonly used affiliate
marketing KPIs, conversion rate is the
percentage of affiliate link clicks that
eventually result in a purchase. You can
keep track of this metric to compare an
individual affiliate’s performance and
locate your top affiliates.

3. “One of our favorite metrics to track is sales per affiliate trends. We
have set up automated reports in Google Analytics for our top earning
affiliates to keep track of their sales on a daily to weekly basis. This
allows us to see if we need to reach out to the affiliate with sales, new
items, or just to catch up and see where we can help them.
“It’s helped us catch issues too. A big affiliate of ours had about five
days go by where our reporting showed no sales. We reached out to
them and found that somehow an update on their website had broken
our links.
2. Sales per affiliate
Who are your top affiliates? Which affiliates
have potential, but may need more assistance?
Are any affiliates actually hurting your bottom
line?
Tracking each affiliate’s sales over a given
period gives you that point of comparison. You’ll
be able to reward your best affiliates. You’ll also
see trends in each affiliate’s sales over time and
be able to investigate the reasons behind them.

4. “Revenue allows me to decide which of
my affiliates needs the most time and
attention. The best earners are more
likely to get exclusive discounts at a
more generous rate and qualify for
stock/products to demonstrate and
review.
“Analyzing how your affiliate program is
affecting revenue growth is very
important in understanding how useful it
is to your company. Measuring this over
time gives you the ability to see where it
is falling short of expectations and where
you may need to put in work to improve
it.”
The first is the overall revenue growth of the affiliate program over
time.
The second is incremental revenue, or revenue you wouldn’t have
generated without an affiliate program, and that you can’t attribute to
another channel (such as email or paid ads).
3. Revenue
Tracking how much your affiliate program earns seems like an obvious
move, but many businesses get so wrapped up in measuring other affiliate
marketing KPIs that revenue takes a backseat. This shouldn’t be the case.
Besides measuring affiliate revenue during a specific period of time, there
are two other m beneficial ways to measure revenue:

5. 4. Return on investment
(ROI)
Return on investment (ROI) is sometimes referred
to as return on ad spend (ROAS). This is the
revenue you generate from your affiliate
program after you’ve covered the costs of your
program (i.e., affiliate commissions, the cost of
affiliate program software or an affiliate
network, the salary of an affiliate manager, if
you have one).
“There are lots of ways to spend marketing
dollars. Tracking ROI lets you know if affiliates
are working for you, or if you need to find some
other way to market.”
“Return on investment is the bottom line. All the
other metrics matter and they’re interesting and
even important to track. But ROI sums up
everything else.

6. 5. Percentage of active
affiliates
You may have a lot of affiliates registered in
your program, but how many of those
affiliates are actually putting in the work
and generating leads or sales? Measuring
your percentage of active affiliates tells you
exactly how many affiliates are helping to
increase your bottom line.
“Tracking the percent of active affiliates
gives you the best insight on how to reach
maximum sales. You can have a wide
audience but still not get a lot of attention
due to a higher portion of the affiliates not
being active in promoting you.”

7. “In order to understand the value and ROI of your affiliate programs,
you need to know how much a customer from the affiliate channel is
worth to you. By knowing the CLV of customers coming from affiliate
programs, you will be able to calculate whether it’s a viable strategy for
your business.”
6. Customer lifetime value (CLV) of
customers from affiliate programs
Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the
revenue a customer brings in throughout
the years they remain a customer, minus
the initial cost of acquiring them.
If a customer acquired through an
affiliate becomes a loyal customer, they
not only cover what you spent to acquire
them, they also bring in much more
revenue throughout the years.