Affiliate Marketing Metrics and KPIs to Track in 2024

Phonexa

21 minute read

Affiliate marketing is all about tracking the right metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure success. KPIs for affiliate marketing are measurable values that show how well your affiliate marketing efforts are achieving your business goals. By tracking these indicators, you can make informed decisions, optimize your strategies, and ultimately drive better results.

However, with so many potential metrics to consider, it can be challenging to know which ones are truly important. Especially taking into account the fact that year-by-year affiliate marketing is becoming more and more successful. As of 2023, it was worth more than $17 billion. By 2027, some projections indicate that the market will reach the size of $27.78 billion.

This article will guide you through the essential affiliate marketing metrics and KPIs to track, helping you focus on the ones that will make the biggest impact on your success.

Explore Phonexa’s affiliate marketing software suite by booking a demo and discover how it can elevate your performance, or build your plan now to tailor Phonexa’s tools to your business needs.

Revenue-Based KPIs

Total Affiliate Revenue

Tracking total affiliate revenue is crucial for understanding the overall health and performance of your affiliate program. This metric reveals how much revenue your affiliates generate collectively, offering a clear snapshot of the program’s financial impact.

Key insights you can gain from monitoring total affiliate revenue include:

• Overall performance: Measure the effectiveness of your affiliate marketing efforts by seeing the total revenue generated.
• Program growth: Assess whether your affiliate program is growing by comparing total revenue across different periods.
• Trend analysis: Spot trends and patterns over time to inform future campaign planning.
• Campaign effectiveness: Evaluate the success of new campaigns or promotions by observing changes in total revenue.
• Optimization opportunities: Identify areas for improvement if total revenue is lower than expected, such as enhancing communication or adjusting commission structures.
• Budget allocation: Justify and set realistic budgets based on revenue data.

By tracking total affiliate revenue, you gain a comprehensive view of your affiliate program’s performance, ensuring it contributes positively to your bottom line.

Revenue by Affiliate

Keeping an eye on revenue by affiliate helps you understand which partners are driving your success. This metric shows exactly how much each affiliate is contributing, allowing you to focus your efforts where they matter most.

Key insights you can gain from tracking revenue by affiliate include:

• Top performers: Spot your star affiliates and invest in those relationships. These high achievers play a key role in driving significant revenue. By nurturing these partnerships and providing them with the best resources, you can maximize their contribution and ensure sustained growth for your program.
• Performance gaps: Identify affiliates who aren’t performing as well and figure out why. Keeping high-performing affiliates and reconsidering underperformers is essential because good affiliates can make a huge difference.
• Motivation and incentives: Use revenue data to create targeted incentives that reward top performers and encourage others to step up their game.

Average Order Value

Tracking average order value (AOV) helps you understand the quality of sales generated by your affiliates. This metric measures the average amount spent by customers per order, giving you insights into consumer behavior and the effectiveness of your affiliates’ promotions.

For example, if affiliate A has an AOV of $150 and affiliate B has an AOV of $75, you can analyze what Affiliate A is doing right and apply those tactics across the board to boost overall AOV.

AOV can vary strongly depending on the industry, the types of products being sold, and the promotional strategies employed. Understanding these distinctions helps you to adjust your strategy and make the most of your affiliate program.

The Power of Revenue KPIs

Keeping a close eye on total affiliate revenue KPIs can transform your affiliate marketing program from good to outstanding. By tracking key affiliate marketing metrics like total affiliate revenue, revenue by affiliate, and average order value, you unlock the secrets to what’s working and what’s not.

Imagine knowing exactly which affiliates are your rock stars and which ones need a little push. Or spotting trends that tell you when to ramp up your campaigns for maximum impact. These insights don’t just sit on a spreadsheet—they drive action, helping you allocate resources smartly, fine-tune your strategies, and ultimately boost your profits.

When you focus on the right KPIs for affiliate marketing, you set the stage for your affiliate program to thrive and significantly boost your bottom line.

Performance KPIs

Conversion Rate

This KPI displays the proportion of visitors that complete the intended activity, such as completing a purchase, after clicking on your affiliate link. It’s a direct measure of how effective your affiliates are at turning interest into action.

Let’s say 100 people click on an affiliate link, and 5 of them actually make a purchase; then your affiliate marketing conversion rate is 5%. But what if you could increase that to 10%? Or even 20%? Doubling your conversion rate means doubling your sales without increasing traffic—a huge win for your affiliate program.

Why is this so exciting? Because improving your affiliate marketing conversion rates is often more achievable than you think. Simple tweaks like optimizing landing pages for user experience, offering compelling incentives, and ensuring a seamless checkout process go a long way.

High-quality content is very important in this process. Relevant content engages your audience, builds trust, and effectively promotes products or services. In fact, almost 40% of all affiliate commissions in the United States were earned through content and blogs in 2019.

A higher conversion rate means maximizing the impact of your affiliate traffic. Considering that the average affiliate marketing conversion rate is about 0.5% to 1%, any improvement can significantly boost your bottom line. It ensures that the traffic you’re getting from your affiliates is as effective as possible, translating directly into higher revenue and a stronger bottom line.

Phonexa’s Lynx is a sophisticated tracking and analytics platform designed to optimize your marketing campaigns. It offers detailed insights into customer interactions, helping you track conversions, measure performance, and make data-driven decisions to enhance your marketing strategy and achieve better results.

Click Traffic

Affiliate marketing click traffic is the lifeblood of your affiliate marketing efforts. It measures how many people are actually clicking on your affiliate links, showing you the volume of potential customers your affiliates are sending your way. This is the first crucial step in turning interested visitors into paying customers.

To put it simply, more clicks mean more opportunities for conversions. High click traffic indicates that your affiliates are effectively engaging their audience and encouraging them to visit your site.

However, it’s not just about the quantity of clicks but also the quality. You want traffic that is likely to convert into sales. If affiliate A drives 1,000 clicks per month while affiliate B drives 500, at first glance, affiliate A seems more valuable. However, if affiliate A has a conversion rate of 1% and affiliate B has a conversion rate of 5%, affiliate B is actually driving more sales. This shows the importance of balancing click traffic with affiliate marketing conversion rates to measure true performance.

Gross Orders vs. Net Orders

To get a true picture of your affiliate marketing performance is hardly possible without gross orders vs net orders KPI. Gross orders represent the total number of orders generated through your affiliate links before any returns, cancellations, or refunds. Net orders, on the other hand, reflect the actual number of completed and successful transactions.

A report from Statista found that the average return rate in e-commerce is around 20%. If your gross orders are high but your net orders are significantly lower due to returns, it’s a signal that you might need to re-evaluate your product descriptions, quality, or even the type of affiliates you’re partnering with.

Focusing on net orders helps you understand the actual revenue your affiliates are bringing in. It also allows you to identify patterns and areas for improvement, such as reducing return rates through better product information or more targeted marketing efforts.

Harnessing Performance KPIs for Success

By closely monitoring KPIs for affiliate marketing, you can understand not just how many visitors your affiliates are sending but also how many of those visitors are genuinely interested and converting into loyal customers. This knowledge allows you to ensure every click is a step closer to a sale. Recognizing the difference between gross and net orders keeps you grounded in reality, highlighting the true impact of your affiliates’ efforts after returns and cancellations are accounted for.

Performance KPIs aren’t just numbers in your data; they tell the story of your customers’ journey from interest to purchase. They reveal which strategies are working and which need adjustment, enabling you to optimize your campaigns for maximum impact. Keeping a pulse on performance KPIs empowers you to stay ahead of the curve, continually improve, and achieve sustainable growth.

Growth KPIs

Year-Over-Year Growth

Year-over-year (YoY) growth measures the percentage change in your program’s performance compared to the same period in the previous year. This KPI helps you see beyond the month-to-month fluctuations and focus on long-term progress, and it tells you whether your program is consistently improving.

This formula is essential because it shows the rate of change, helping you understand how much your program has improved or declined over a year. For example, if your affiliate program generated $80,000 in revenue last year and $120,000 this year:

This 50% growth indicates a significant improvement, showing that your strategies and partnerships are effective.

Monitoring YoY growth provides a reality check on your affiliate program’s progress, enabling you to celebrate success, identify areas for improvement, and set ambitious yet achievable goals for the future.

New Customer Percentage

One of the most exciting affiliate marketing metrics is the percentage of new customers it brings in. Affiliate marketing isn’t just about driving sales; it’s also about expanding your customer base. Imagine having a steady stream of new customers discovering your brand through trusted affiliate partners. This is exactly what makes affiliate marketing so powerful.

A whopping 63% of marketers strongly agree that affiliate marketing is effective in bringing in new customers. This underscores the immense potential of affiliate programs to reach fresh audiences and convert them into loyal customers.

Seeing such a high percentage of marketers vouch for affiliate marketing’s effectiveness in acquiring new customers should be a wake-up call for any business not yet leveraging this strategy. It’s not just about the immediate ROI; it’s about creating lasting relationships with new customers who could become long-term advocates for your brand.

Incorporating affiliate marketing into your growth strategy can significantly enhance your reach and customer acquisition efforts. So, if you’re looking to expand your customer base, it’s time to seriously consider the power of affiliate marketing.

Number of New Affiliates

Growing the number of new affiliates in your program is like planting seeds for future success. Each new affiliate brings a fresh perspective and a unique audience, expanding your reach in ways you might not have imagined. The more diverse your pool of affiliates, the greater the potential for tapping into new markets and driving sales.

New affiliates might start with modest earnings, averaging around $636 per month in their first year. However, this is just the beginning. As affiliates gain experience, their potential for income increases significantly; in fact, the average affiliate marketer earns $8,038 per month.

Here are a few tips to help you to attract new affiliates:

• Start by offering competitive commissions that stand out in your industry
• Provide high-quality marketing materials to make promotion easy and consistent
• Create a compelling landing page for your affiliate program that highlights its benefits
• Consider offering incentives for referrals from your current affiliates
• Offer webinars, tutorials, and dedicated support to help your affiliates succeed
• Showcasing the success stories of top-performing affiliates can motivate others and attract new talent
• Promote your affiliate program on social media and attend industry events to network with potential affiliates

Fueling Expansion with Growth KPIs

Growth KPIs like year-over-year growth, new customer acquisition, and the number of new affiliates highlight trends, validate your efforts, and reveal areas needing attention. When you see positive growth trends and a steady influx of new customers and affiliates, it confirms that your approach is effective and resonates well.

A diverse and expanding pool of affiliates not only broadens your market reach but also brings innovative promotional methods to the table. New customer acquisition shows that your affiliates are successfully attracting fresh audiences, ensuring a continuous stream of potential buyers.

Engagement KPIs

Affiliate Engagement

Affiliate engagement is not just about how many affiliates you have but how active and invested they are in promoting your products. The more engaged your affiliates are, the more successful your program will be. Active affiliates are those who consistently create content, share your promotions and drive traffic to your site.

Did you know that 5% of your affiliates do 80% of the work? This highlights the critical importance of nurturing and supporting your most active affiliates.

The key to boosting affiliate engagement lies in regular communication, offering incentives, and providing the resources they need to succeed. This can involve sending out a monthly newsletter that highlights top-performing affiliates, shares new promotional materials, and announces upcoming product launches. Offering bonuses or higher commission rates for affiliates who reach certain milestones can also incentivize them to stay active.

Tracking affiliate engagement can involve metrics like the number of clicks they generate, the frequency of their promotional activities, and the quality of the traffic they send. By quantifying and encouraging active participation, you can significantly enhance the performance of your affiliate program. Keeping your affiliates engaged ensures they remain committed to promoting your brand, ultimately driving more traffic and sales.

Category Performance

Affiliates can be categorized into various types, including content creators, coupon sites, loyalty programs, and more. Each type brings unique strengths and can drive traffic and sales in different ways:

1. Content affiliates, such as bloggers and influencers, often provide high-quality traffic. They build trust with their audience through engaging content, which can lead to higher affiliate marketing conversion rates. For example, a well-written review or a compelling video can significantly influence purchasing decisions.

2. Coupon sites, on the other hand, are masters at driving large volumes of traffic quickly. They appeal to bargain hunters looking for the best deals, which can result in a spike in sales, especially during promotional periods. However, the conversion rate might be lower compared to content affiliates since the traffic is often more price-sensitive.

3. Loyalty programs are a powerhouse in driving repeat business and fostering brand loyalty. On average, American consumers belong to 16.7 customer loyalty programs, highlighting the widespread appeal and effectiveness of these initiatives. Affiliates who run loyalty programs focus on retaining customers and incentivizing them to make repeat purchases, thus increasing their lifetime value. These affiliates play a crucial role in your long-term strategy by building a loyal customer base that consistently returns to your brand.

4. Comparison sites, another popular type, allow consumers to compare products and prices across different retailers. These sites drive traffic by offering detailed comparisons and reviews, helping users make informed purchasing decisions.

5. Email marketing affiliates use newsletters and targeted email campaigns to promote products. They can drive significant traffic and sales by reaching out to a subscribed audience directly in their inbox. Given that email marketing revenue is estimated to reach almost $13.69 billion by the end of 2025, it’s clear that this channel remains incredibly effective. These affiliates can deliver personalized content and offers, ensuring high engagement and conversion rates.

To enhance your affiliate marketing email campaigns, consider using E-Delivery by Phonexa. This platform offers advanced tools for optimizing your email marketing efforts, ensuring higher engagement and better conversions. With E-Delivery, you can streamline your email campaigns and achieve more effective results.

By comparing the performance of these different affiliate categories, you can tailor your approach to maximize the strengths of each type. Diversifying your affiliate mix ensures a balanced strategy that leverages the unique advantages of content, coupon, loyalty, comparison, and email marketing affiliates.

Embark on a product tour with Phonexa to uncover how its innovative marketing solutions can enhance your affiliate strategy and significantly boost performance. 

If you’re ready to dive in, start building your plan now to customize Phonexa’s powerful tools to meet your unique business requirements.

Customer Lifetime Value

Another important KPI that will help you to understand the true impact of your affiliates is the customer lifetime value (CLV). High CLV means your affiliates are bringing in customers who keep coming back, turning one-time buyers into loyal advocates.

Imagine an affiliate who introduces a customer to your brand. This customer makes a purchase, loves the product, and then continues to buy from you over the next few years. This ongoing relationship increases their lifetime value, making each initial referral significantly more valuable. Affiliates who can consistently attract these kinds of customers are worth their weight in gold.

CLV can be calculated using this straightforward formula:

Where:

• Customer value is the average amount a customer spends per year.
• Average customer lifespan is a number of years a customer continues to buy from your brand.

For example, if a customer spends $150 per year and stays with your brand for 5 years, this means the lifetime value of that customer is $750.

Focusing on customer lifetime value ensures that your affiliate program isn’t just generating sales but cultivating lasting relationships that drive long-term success. It’s about finding those affiliates who bring in the most loyal customers, ensuring that your brand continues to thrive.

Maximizing Impact with Engagement KPIs for Affiliate Marketing

Engagement metrics go beyond immediate sales to reveal the quality and longevity of your affiliate relationships and customer interactions.

Engaged affiliates are the cornerstone of your program, consistently driving traffic and conversions. When your affiliates are actively promoting your products, it reflects in the overall health and growth of your program. Category performance helps you understand which types of affiliates are most effective, allowing you to optimize your affiliate mix and maximize returns. Meanwhile, customer lifetime value sheds light on the long-term benefits of your affiliate efforts, highlighting the importance of attracting and retaining high-value customers.

Vanity Metrics to Avoid

Impressions

Impressions are a common metric in affiliate marketing, representing the number of times an ad or affiliate link is displayed to potential customers. While a high number of impressions might initially seem like a good thing, it’s important to dig deeper to understand their true value.

Imagine your ad gets 10,000 impressions in a week. At first glance, this sounds impressive—it means your ad was seen 10,000 times. But here’s the catch: impressions alone don’t tell you if those views are translating into clicks, leads, or sales. An ad could be shown thousands of times without driving any meaningful engagement or conversions.

Focusing solely on impressions without considering their impact on actual business outcomes can be misleading. It’s crucial to balance impressions with other performance metrics like click-through rate, conversion rate, and customer acquisition cost. By doing so, you can ensure that your affiliate marketing efforts are not just seen but are effective in driving real, measurable results.

A good example is measuring impressions and click-through rate KPI. A high number of impressions with a low click-through rate will tell you that while your ad is visible, it’s not compelling enough to prompt action. This insight can lead you to tweak your content, design, or placement to better capture interest.

Social Media Followers

Social media followers are a valuable asset in the world of affiliate marketing. Having a large and engaged follower base can amplify your reach, drive traffic, and boost sales. But it’s not just about the numbers—it’s about how you leverage these followers to achieve meaningful engagement and conversions.

Social media is the second largest traffic source for affiliate marketers, accounting for 67.32% of their traffic.

The potential of platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok in driving affiliate marketing success is immense. But…

Consider the difference between passive followers and engaged followers. Passive followers might scroll past your posts, while engaged followers actively interact with your content—liking, commenting, sharing, and clicking on your affiliate links. These engagement metrics provide a clearer picture of your affiliate marketing success. Focusing on genuine interaction rather than follower count ensures your efforts drive real results and meaningful connections.

Pageviews

Pageviews metrics alone don’t tell you if visitors are engaging with your content or if these visits are leading to conversions. A page with thousands of views but no conversions might indicate that your content isn’t resonating or that there’s a disconnect between the page and your affiliate links.

To get the most out of your pageviews, focus on the quality of the traffic. Are visitors spending time on your site, reading multiple articles, or clicking on your affiliate links? Tools like Google Analytics can help you dive deeper into user behavior, showing metrics such as average session duration and bounce rate. These insights can guide you in refining your content to better engage your audience.

Caution Against Optimizing for Surface-Level Metrics

Vanity metrics might easily inflate your ego, but they don’t necessarily translate into meaningful engagement or revenue.

The real power lies in actionable affiliate marketing metrics that reflect genuine user interaction and conversion. Affiliate marketing metrics like click-through rates, engagement rates, and conversion rates provide a clearer picture of how your marketing efforts are performing. By focusing on these, you can better understand your audience’s behavior, optimize your strategies, and ultimately drive more meaningful results.

Instead of getting caught up in vanity metrics, prioritize quality over quantity. This shift in focus will help you build stronger connections with your audience and achieve sustained growth. In the end, the true measure of success in affiliate marketing is not how many people see your content but how many engage with it and convert into loyal customers.

Mastering Affiliate Marketing Metrics for Success

Mastering affiliate marketing means focusing on metrics that truly matter. By tracking key KPIs for affiliate marketing, like total affiliate revenue, conversion rates, and customer lifetime value, you gain powerful insights for effective affiliate program monitoring. Affiliate marketing experts emphasize avoiding vanity metrics like impressions and follower counts that don’t drive real results. Instead, zero in on the affiliate marketing metrics that reveal genuine engagement and growth.

Understanding how to track affiliate sales accurately helps you fine-tune your affiliate program, boost conversions, and achieve sustained success. Keep your eyes on the prize—meaningful data that elevates your affiliate marketing game.

Here’s more to learn about how Phonexa can improve your affiliate marketing:

Here are the eight exclusive solutions you will get for your affiliate marketing initiatives, all for a single charge beginning at £100 per month (price calculator):

Book a demo to learn how Phonexa’s marketing solutions can enhance your strategy and boost performance, or build your plan now to customize Phonexa’s tools for your business needs.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the most important KPIs for affiliate marketing?

Tracking the right KPIs for affiliate marketing is essential for optimizing your strategy and achieving success. Key performance indicators to focus on include total affiliate revenue, conversion rates, customer lifetime value, and click traffic. These metrics help you understand the effectiveness of your affiliates and make informed decisions to improve your program’s performance.

How can I measure affiliate marketing success?

To measure marketing success, monitor affiliate marketing metrics that reflect both engagement and conversion. Key KPIs for affiliate marketing include conversion rates, average order value, and revenue by affiliate. Additionally, tracking the number of new customers and year-over-year growth can provide insights into the overall health and expansion of your affiliate program.

What is the average success rate in affiliate marketing?

The success rate in affiliate marketing can vary widely depending on the industry, niche, and the strategies employed. On average, affiliate conversion rates range between 0.5% to 1%. However, by focusing on high-quality content, targeted promotions, and optimizing key KPIs for affiliate marketing, you can significantly improve your affiliate marketing success rate.

What is a good conversion rate for affiliate marketing?

A good affiliate marketing conversion rate typically falls between 0.5% to 1%. However, achieving higher rates is possible with effective strategies and optimization. Focus on high-quality content, targeted promotions, and engaging user experiences to improve your affiliate marketing results. Affiliate marketing analytics helps to monitore key KPIs to identify opportunities for increasing your conversion rate and driving better overall performance.