Use Co-Branded Landing Pages to Increase Affiliate Conversions

Co-branded landing pages are a pretty simple, yet an extremely effective, way to increase individual affiliate conversions. It is also one of the frequently-overlooked affiliate program optimization techniques.

The most compelling reason to start working in this direction is the immediate conversion improvement. Here’s the data — reported on the performance of co-branded affiliate landing pages versus regular (often homepage) ones — by two different affiliate networks:

• Affiliate Window — Three- to four-fold increase in conversions (from 8.56% to 23.21% for a cashback affiliate, 2.5% to 10.9% for a coupon affiliate) upon introduction of co-branded landed pages [more here].
• Rakuten LinkShare — 66.45% conversion increase, nearly 44% revenue boost, and 132% difference in new customers acquired [more in this case study].

Also:

• Google Affiliate Network — Recommends “creating co-branded landing pages… to align an advertiser’s brand with the publisher’s brand” thereby increasing the “likelihood of a of a transaction or action” [source].

So, what should a good co-branded affiliate landing page contain?

Here are the 5 key elements to cover:

1. Affiliate’s logo alongside with the merchant’s/advertiser’s logo (assures the end user that there’s a clear tie/relationship between the two);
2. Verbiage which welcomes the affiliate-referred visitor as one who arrived to the merchant’s site from a concrete affiliate website;
3. Affiliate-exclusive promo/deal, if there is any involved;
4. Clearly visible calls to action (don’t be overly intrusive, but don’t be too shy either), making sure it’s the action that the affiliate will be compensated for;
5. Restrictions and/or additional instructions that the end consumer may need to be aware of.

Important: ensure that all of the above fit above-the-fold.

Here are also a couple of examples of co-branded affiliate landing pages:

FTD.com’s page for RetailMeNot

AJ Madison’s page for Coupon Cabin