Spring is here, meaning it’s the perfect time to review your affiliate program and plan for the months ahead. Holiday marketing is effective, but to run a successful spring affiliate program you can take advantage of more than just popular ecommerce dates to drive affiliate sales.
As an advertiser, leveraging seasons as a whole is an effective way to increase revenue and brand awareness. With the hustle of Q4 a thing of the past, it’s also the perfect time to spring clean your affiliate program to see if any updates need to be made.
Seasonality and its Effects on an Affiliate Program
Seasonality refers to a shift in shoppers’ behaviors and attitudes due to certain events and seasons. The weather is warmer, families are planning for Spring Break, and travelers are beginning to book their getaways. A few months have passed since winter holiday spending, so shoppers are becoming more eager to open back up their wallets.
Using seasons in alignment with consumer habits gives you an advantage when marketing your products. If done correctly, your seasonal campaigns excite affiliates and customers with fresh material inspiring new sales and increased revenue.
Spring Holidays & Occasions to Be Aware Of
St. Patrick’s Day – March 17th
Ramadan begins – April 2nd
Easter – April 17th
Cinco de Mayo – May 5th
Mother’s Day – May 8th
Memorial Day – May 30th
Father’s Day – June 19th
Aside from calendar holidays, Prom, Graduation, and Spring Break are excellent marketing opportunities. Shoppers are also eager to get outside, increasing sales for workout gear, gardening equipment, grilling, and other outdoor activities.
For specific Spring-inspired campaign ideas, check out UpSellit’s Spring Marketing Guide to get inspiration for the occasions ahead.
How to Leverage Spring Seasonal Marketing in Your Affiliate Program
Spring is a great time to take a look at your affiliate marketing program, analyze your KPIs, and determine what’s working and what needs to shift. Let’s review the four steps you should take this spring to clean up your affiliate program, create new campaign strategies, and ensure success the rest of the year.
1. Plan Ahead and Prep Your Partners
Early bird gets the worm. Planning your upcoming marketing campaigns early will give you a huge advantage when things get busy. If you did plan ahead, it’s important to cross-check with previous data to see if those strategies are still the most effective route to take.
Next, take a look at your partners, and see if any publishers have been dormant over the last six months. Check-in with those partners and see if there are new opportunities for collaboration. Even creating a newsletter for all of your publishers is a great touch to start the conversation up again.
Once you’ve established your campaign strategies, connect with your affiliates to give them all the material they’ll need. Giving them enough time to prepare helps avoid mistakes and miscommunication.
2. Create Seasonal Messaging and Imagery
You’ll also want to go through banners and affiliate links to make sure everything is up to date. Check that your creatives and offers are cohesive so your brand identity stays consistent. Scan for expired offers, coupons, and landing pages to confirm nothing was overlooked after the winter holiday rush.
Even your most loyal customers like to see something different from time to time. Mixing up your marketing materials for the season shows you’re invested in staying current and providing value in a new way. If you’re a hardware store, design special creatives for gardening tools. If you’re a fashion retailer, call attention to spring collections or prom dresses. Put yourself in customers’ shoes and align with your brand identity to create content that stands out.
3. Implement Strategies That Make Sense
Now that you’ve considered how to align your affiliates with new marketing campaigns, consider these strategies for new on-site ideas for spring. Working with a technology partner like UpSellit is an easy way to implement these strategies without any heavy lifting on your end.
Incentives
Rotating incentives is a solid strategy to bring something fresh to the table. Offer a small seasonal incentive on abandonment with spring creatives to regain the shopper’s attention and move them to checkout.
Gifts With Purchase
Offering a gift with purchase recovers 44% of otherwise lost sales with the use of UpSellit’s Exit Detect technology. If shoppers are unsure or buying gifts for someone else, there’s value in adding more to their purchase. Review your inventory and consider what could appeal to a variety of audiences.
Low Stock Alerts
Low stock can be common this time of year. Many fashion retailers get an early spring line, but not a huge quantity. Common gifts for graduation or Father’s Day also run out quickly, so using Low Stock Alerts let the shopper know to get their gifts while they still can.
Urgency
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day tend to sneak up with nearly 1 in 5 shoppers purchasing these gifts within 48 hours. Leveraging UpSellit’s countdown timers provides a 60% increase in conversions by creating urgency and reminding shoppers it’s time to buy. Travel companies can also use timers or social proofing to remind travelers to act fast and book their flights.
Gamification
Gamification is a fun strategy to engage your shoppers with something new. Considering over 80% of Americans celebrate Easter, take this Easter egg hunt concept from our Spring Marketing Guide. Hide a handful of virtual eggs throughout your website, and offer tiered incentives with each egg.
For example, if you hide five eggs offering 5% Off per egg, shoppers can redeem a 25% Off discount if they collect them all. This also will get shoppers to explore your website deeper and purchase items they would have potentially missed.
4. Review Your Results
Spring cleaning also means analyzing. As we reviewed, it’s never too early to plan, and once the summer is over, winter holidays quickly arrive. Take a look at how your creatives are performing within your partnerships to see what’s going well so you can use seasonality for success.
Spring into Strategy with UpSellit
Looking to update your affiliate program with seasonal strategies? Speak with an Affiliate Growth Expert to unlock conversion-boosting strategies for your website. Email hello@upsellit.com or download our Spring Marketing Guide to bring your spring strategies to life.
