TRAFFIC
Operators know:
● ●Lifetime value of all customers versus the affiliate’ s referred customer’ s lifetime value
● ●Specific user behaviour. For example, affiliates will often just see‘ sports’ in their affiliate reporting software, whereas operators will be able to see extra detail: ice hockey, first division football, greyhounds, etc.
●●User statistics: age, gender and location
● ●Betting trends: where there’ s been increased betting activity in recent months.
For example, wouldn’ t it be great if the operator approached the affiliate with some insights such as these:
● ●Your website is mostly talking about football. However, a lot of your referred players go on to bet on horse racing. Have you considered diversifying into other sports?
● ●Did you know that 35 % of customers you have referred are women aged 25-35? You could set up a Facebook advertising campaign targeting this demographic.
● ●We’ ve noticed an increase in betting on politics in the past six months. Would you consider adding a political betting section to your site?
Issue 4: regulation and relationships The current environment between operators and affiliates, with regards to regulation, isn’ t a pleasant place to be. Affiliates work hard to promote the operators, they send the operators many customers and make them a significant amount of money. Now that there are onestrike policies in place it only takes a single slip-up and that could spell the end of a long-term mutually beneficial relationship. Operators being more involved with affiliates and their websites will invariably mean that sites are more likely to be compliant and thus relationships between affiliate managers and affiliates improve.
Now that we’ ve highlighted the issues, what are the possible solutions?
“ The affiliate industry is great at arranging conferences where affiliates and operators discuss performance, financials and their plans. There should be more focus on the technical side”
Solution 1: technical affiliate managers A technical affiliate manager would work for the operator or could be part of an external agency. Their responsibility would be to work with affiliates to improve their websites and ultimately increase conversions for the operator. They would manage this in the following ways: 1. Leverage internal teams to review affiliate sites. This would involve SEO, UX, design, development and copywriting. The internal teams wouldn’ t need to spend a great deal of time on each site— a highly trained professional should be able to offer more insight in 10 minutes than months of Googling for answers.
2. Drill down into operator data on affiliate-referred customers to look for opportunities.
3. Compile a report for the affiliate site once every couple of months or once per quarter. This report would contain recommendations from the internal teams, detailing opportunities uncovered in the data.
4. Measure and track the growth of the affiliate. This shouldn’ t just be customers, but also affiliate site visitors, conversion rate and user engagement metrics such as time on site and pages per visit.
Solution 2: affiliate workshops The affiliate industry is great at arranging conferences where affiliates and operators discuss performance, financials and their plans. Again, there should be more focus on the technical side of the affiliate industry.
Technical affiliate workshops would allow affiliates to speak directly with operator technical experts and figure out where they need to improve their sites and how to go about doing it.
I’ ll wait for someone else to do it As an operator you might be reading this and thinking:“ If my competition goes ahead and helps these affiliates then I’ ll see the benefits without having to spend the money.” Perhaps this is true, but then as an affiliate you’ re more likely to help the operator who’ s helped you.
Conclusion I believe operators getting more involved with affiliates and helping them improve their websites can only be a good thing. It would mean increased conversions and fewer untrustworthy-looking websites, and would hopefully contribute to a more favourable public opinion of the gambling industry as a whole.
OLIVER LIEBSCHER is head of design for Digital Fuel Marketing, owner of Comparethelotto. com and formerly head of design for Betfred.
10 iGB Affiliate Issue 66 DEC 2017 / JAN 2018