Non-gaming, Performance Marketing
Digital marketing can often feel like a daunting challenge, especially when it comes to effectively reaching and engaging a target audience. This is where mobile affiliate marketing emerges as a powerful solution.
I’m Simon Baptist, Director of Commerce Business at AppLovin. In this blog, I’m going to explore the world of mobile affiliate marketing, distilling the challenges and solutions my colleague (Karthik Kannan, Global Account Manager Lead of Commerce Business) and I have come to understand over almost a decade while uncovering its potential as a transformative tool for brands seeking to connect with users more effectively.
The amount of retail sales through m-commerce is projected to nearly double from $362bn in 2021 to more than $710bn in 2025 in the US alone. This accounts for more than 73% of all online shopping orders.
Today’s users have high expectations for deals on mobile. In fact, 9 out of 10 seek coupons or cash back while shopping and a whopping 78% will abandon their cart if they’re not offered a coupon or some other discount incentive (sources: Statista; Capterra).
The problem? Presenting and attributing coupons and cash-back programs on mobile is a persistent challenge that is causing brands to leave billions of dollars in revenue on the table.
There are a few fundamental challenges facing m-commerce brands that have wanted to scale their mobile affiliate marketing efforts:
Fragmented mobile ecosystem – Hurdles like lack of attribution, faulty deep linking, and user permissions render affiliate marketing all but ineffective on mobile.
Broken user journeys – Deep linking can be error-prone, leading to disrupted user journeys.
Siloed teams and misaligned KPIs – Multi-disciplined teams end up with competing goals, duplicated efforts, and disconnected measurements that make data less reliable.
All of this culminates in frustrated users, abandoned carts, negative brand opinions, dysfunctional business operations, and lost revenue.
Those challenges can be frustrating, but in our work these last eight years, we’ve found ways for developers to overcome them that other companies are also practicing:
Use mobile-focused solutions – Use an MMP and try next-generation solutions for mobile platforms (i.e., cookieless data collection and/or server-side tracking).
Streamline user journeys – Validate deep link use cases and automate linking whenever possible.
Work with innovative publishers – Partner with publishers investing in solutions that can find where your audience is shopping.
Align teams/KPIs – Create and align a cross-functional mobile team with executive sponsorship and ensure they use measurement tools and techniques that translate across all platforms.
We have seen those best practices work, but they take time to put in place, and then there is the question of execution.
In the meantime, there’s a potential to unlock a way forward that has an immediate impact, and we built it.
Plus! by AppLovin is a mobile affiliate marketing solution designed to benefit both you and your customers. Leveraging unique phone permissions, Plus! seamlessly showcases coupons and cash-back opportunities across native app and mobile web environments. Shoppers can effortlessly activate these incentives without disrupting their traditional purchase process, offering you increased opportunities to convert shoppers into buyers and encourage bigger, more frequent purchases.
Learn more about Plus! here.
