Step #6: Drill Down Into Affiliate Placement Reporting

This is the sixth step of the 7 Steps To Upgrade Your Affiliate Program For 2021 series.

Check out the first five steps in the series:

• Step #1: Monitor and Stop Coupon Poaching
• Step #2: Use First Touch Attribution for Content Publishers
• Step #3: Track Both Purchases And Events
• Step #4: Track Influencers Through Coupons and Coupon Site URLs
• Step #5: Use QR Codes to Track Offline Affiliates & Partners
• Step #7: Catch More Fraud & Automate Prevention‍
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As autumn settles in, festive folks like myself love to visit local farms for some cider, gift shopping, and to try our luck at navigating a cornfield maze.

Driving by one of the 30+ cornfield mazes near me, “How tough could this really be?” is my typical thought.

Whether it’s not being able to see over the corn stalks, a seemingly endless number of paths to take, or just mind-crushing terror, my cornfield maze trips are mostly fails.

Success always seems easier, too, after seeing an aerial shot of the maze post-fail. Taking a step back to view the entire maze easily points out the clear exit paths.

Sadly, perspective-shifting info like the aerial shot above of the Davis Mega Maze can’t be used while inside of a maze. However, information that provides the path to smarter decisions is available in partner marketing via partner placement reports.

With Everflow, it only takes a few quick taps to drill down into these reports, allowing you to gain new perspectives on how your partners can optimize conversions.

Let’s dive into how partner placement reports can provide a big picture overview of your program!
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What Are Partner Placement Reports?

Most moderately successful affiliate programs have thousands of partners, while larger affiliate networks often have tens of thousands of affiliates. These partners all have the same goal, which is promoting offers-- yet they go about this task in a massive variety of ways.

Some partners drive traffic via paid search, some via coupon codes, others specialize in email campaigns, and so on. With such a large mix of partner types, it can be difficult to tell which areas of your program are thriving, and which need improvement.

This is where partner placement reports can help you step out of the cornfield maze.

With standard affiliate platform reporting, you’re not able to get answers to questions that can directly lead to affiliate program scale.

Partner placement reports allow you to quickly generate program performance data that centers around partner performance, partner type (content site, coupons, paid social, etc.), and placement type (e.g. native ad, email blast, paid search ad).

Once you execute a partner placement report in Everflow, you’ll be able to get answers to questions that can create “aha” moments for your program, like:

• Which types of placements are most successful for my offers?
• Which specific creatives are driving the best results?
• Which landing pages are converting best?
• How is a specific partner achieving success via placement types, locations, or via specific landing pages?
• Which specific placements are performing best for my top partners?
• Are there any potentially incentivized placements with unnaturally high conversion rates?

The data provided above should definitely give you new clarity about how to best optimize your program. That’s just the beginning of the insights that you can glean from drilling down into partner placement reports.

Everflow’s partner placement reports are known as dimensional analytics reports and can yield a virtually unlimited amount of data on partner placements. This data definitely helps make big picture program decisions easier -- like viewing a cornfield maze from 10,000 feet.

Best of all, it only takes a few quick steps to generate these insights with dimensional analytics reports. Let’s run through the basics of how to run a dimensional analytics report in Everflow.
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Getting Insights Via Everflow’s Dimensional Analytics Reports‍

It really only takes a few steps to create a dimensional analytics report in Everflow and learn what is needed to move the needle for your program.

Here’s How It’s Done:

1. Log into your Everflow platform dash. (Don’t have an account? Get started here.)
2. Head over to the Analytics tab and select Dimensional.
3. Choose your date range, metric, and dimension type.
4. Bask in the glow of reports like this:

Note: You can dive deeper into any of the dimensions (for example, Offer, Partner, Country, etc. shown above) simply by clicking on the individual results. You’ll then get the exact data for what’s behind it:

In the image above, I drilled down into the partners driving traffic to the “Women’s Winter Peacoat 2020” offer to determine which partners were driving the most clicks, events, and conversions.

From here, I could dive even further into the performance of placements per partner type, and into dozens of data combinations. It’s really up to your program needs on which types of placement data you want to analyze (though your Everflow account manager is always happy to provide suggestions).

In the end, unlike traveling through a cornfield maze, you’ll be able to find clear paths to success for your affiliate program through partner placement reporting.
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Ready To Get Started With Partner Placement Reporting?

Book a demo today and we’ll be happy to walk you through all aspects of Everflow’s dimensional analytics reports, including use cases for your specific affiliate program, popular data combinations, and show you just how easy these reports are to set up.
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Up Next: The Final Step In The 7 Steps To Upgrade Your Affiliate Program For 2021 Series

Check out Step #7: Catch More Fraud & Automate Prevention.

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Go Back: Step #5: Use QR Codes to Track Offline Affiliates & Partners