The 10 Best Affiliate Marketing Strategies

Affiliate Marketing Strategies

This article was written in collaboration with Ecommerce Bridge.

✔️ Segment Your Affiliate Types And Plan Your Strategy

Not all affiliates are the same—and neither should your strategy.

• Content affiliates require messaging, visuals, and content guidelines from bloggers, influencers, and review sites.

• Performance affiliates (coupon sites, cashbacks, and CSS partners) require refreshed product feeds, technical documentation, and clear attribution rules.

👉 Segment partners from the start and deliver them materials, tracking, and communication appropriate to their type.

✔️ Use the Correct Banners for the Right Affiliate

• For Content Creators: Go for native-looking banners, with soft CTAs such as “Learn more” or “See product details”.

• For deal sites: Emphasise urgency, pricing, and discounts. Add countdowns and bold “% OFF” messaging.

• For Google CSS partners: Structured product feeds optimised for Shopping Ads – no banners required

👉 Don’t bombard affiliates with too many creatives at once. Deliver 3–5 proven banners in sizes 300×250, 728×90, and 160×600.

✔️ Incorporate UTM Parameters to Track All Affiliate Activity

All of your affiliate links must use UTM parameters so you can:

• Navigate to Google Analytics · Track campaigns

• Content vs. coupon vs. CSS traffic

• Accurately attribute sales across all your channels

Example UTM structure:

? utm_source=aff&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=partnername

👉 Make sure affiliates know UTM tags, and even better, send them pre-tagged URLs.

✔️ Clean, Structured, Affiliate-Ready Product Feeds

For partners focused on performance — whether that be Google CSS, marketplaces, or cashback — a good product feed is crucial:

• Product title & description

• Image URL (high quality)

• Special Price, Special Price, Currency, Stock (sale_price parameter for example)

• Brand, category, product type

• GTINs

👉 Verify that your feed is refreshed every 24 hours and includes all the required fields for filtering, as well as for display purposes. Do not send highly complex unstructured data.

Source: Depositphotos

✔️ Establish Clear and Tiered Commission Models

Only a fool would put money into flat commissions. Instead, reward performance:

• Base commission (e.g. 5%)

• Tiers are higher for volume (ie: 7% after €1,000)

• Time-limited bonuses

• Top performers get exclusive deals

👉 This incentivises affiliates to plan and work harder, particularly during major campaigns or launches.

✔️ Guide Up Affiliates with a Simple, Structured Guide

In new affiliate onboarding, include:

• Who the affiliate program is for (what kind of people, what kind of product)

• How and what they can promote

• Include banners, links and data feeds

• Promo code and other ad rule specifics, PPC bidding, branding

👉 You may provide a short training session or walkthrough to strategic partners (such as CSS or elite content creators).

✔️ Partner with Google CSS Partners Strategic

CSS partners are not “just another affiliate”. They are data-driven, high-performance partners that run optimised shopping ads.

❗️Avoid onboarding too many CSS partners at once—traffic will be split among them, making it difficult to evaluate performance properly and limiting your ability to scale with any individual partner.

Work with a few strategic partners on the CSS side and define key KPIs for them (ROAS, COS, budgets).

Don’t forget to evaluate the performance monthly together and course-correct if needed.

👉 When structured with a mutual objective, a solid CSS partnership can enhance your affiliate programme.