New To File

New customer acquisition is a key metric for many merchants in their campaign to drive new customers and then keep those customers returning. The affiliate channel provides plenty of opportunity to connect with publishers who can encourage consumers to purchase your products or services for the first time. As the affiliate marketing channel continues to grow, many of the publishers have become brands on their own, with many consumers making publishers the beginning of their online shopping experience.
 

What does New to File mean? New to file is broad in its term and can be best defined by several factors based on your specific business. You will need to consider the following:
 

• What is your business size and how easily recognizable is your brand?
• What is the lifetime customer value?
• Consider the length of time between purchases
  • A car purchase vs purchasing a pair of shoes
• How are you defining New to File?
  • Is it someone who has never purchased, not purchased in 6 months, 12 months, or 2 years?

Overall New to File Program Strategy Tips

• If you value new to file customers over returning customers, make it worthwhile for publishers to drive new sales
  • Make it clear in your terms and conditions and any publisher communication how you define new to file customers.
  • Provide publishers with new to file only offers, free gifts, free shipping, discounts for consumers.
  • Increase publisher commission terms. If you are currently utilizing our Dynamic tracking, you have the ability to offer higher commission for transactions where the customer is new to file.
  • Create newsletter groups with new to file publishers so you can provide updates on offers, commission increases, etc
  • Keep in mind of the value of retaining your existing customer base while building your new to file campaign.

Defining the New to File Strategy based on Publisher Type

• Coupon – these publishers utilize coupons, promotions, and value propositions to share with their customers. This is a great way to introduce your brand to unfamiliar consumers who may need additional incentive to purchase your product or service.
  • How to partner?
    • Secure placements through featured emails, category page placements, and exposure on peak shopping days.
    • Use a specific offer to incentivize the publisher to aggressively push your brand

• Loyalty – these publishers pass along a portion of their commission to the consumer. Loyalty sites encourage returning consumers by offering the cash back. Often times, consumers who are joined with a loyalty site will purchase from unfamiliar brands during increased cash back offers or because they trust the loyalty site’s discretion in choosing high quality brands.
  • How to partner?
    • Secure solo or category email placements. Since loyalty sites require an account, they can track purchasing habits of their members and sent targeted emails
    • Monitor the cash back offers of your competitors to ensure you can meet or exceed offers
  • Niche – Niche publishers, or content creators have websites that promote a specific range of products or services within specific verticals. These publishers may list products, conduct reviews, and promote brands.
    • How to partner?
      • Niche publishers are typical operated by one person or a small group of people. Direct, open communication is key to successful relationships. Open with an introduction of your brand – including who you are and what you offer as well as what they goals of both you and the publisher are during the partnership.
      • Offer to provide them with giveaway promotions to share with their readers or viewers, send products for them to review.
      • Content creators are often higher in the clickstream of a purchase; losing commissions to last second coupon code sites. Use the In-Cart attribution feature to credit the content publisher instead of a coupon publisher.

• Cart Abandonment – these publishers can utilize technology to address shopping cart abandonment through email remarketing, lead captures, chat, or cart item saving features.
  • How to partner?
    • Use lead captures to send targeted remarketing campaigns to those who shopped but didn’t purchase
  • Sub Affiliate Network – a sub affiliate network provides services to bloggers and website owners which can help them to monetize their websites.
    • How to partner?
      • Share your offers with numerous small blogs and sites without having to have a direct relationship with them.
      • Sub-affiliate networks can drive significant traffic and sales for brands and can be a great resource for bloggers who aren’t very tech savvy or just don’t want to deal with manually inputting affiliate links into their copy.

New to File Commissioning
 

As part of Dynamic Commissioning, you can incentivize publishers to drive new to file sales by creating bonuses for you can incentivize publishers for driving new to file customers by deciding to either add a percentage or flat payout to the default payout when the transaction is for a new to file customer.

• New to File (NTF):
  • If you have added parameters to track new to file customers you can incentivize publishers for driving new to file Customers by deciding to either add a percentage or flat payout to the default payout when the transaction is for a new to file customer.
  • Example: Default payout 8%, if the new to file customer rule applies an extra 2% will be added totaling 10% final payout for the transaction.
  • You can also decide to have a equals payout when tracking new to file customers by creating the rule to apply a total percentage or flat payout when the new to file customer rule applies
  • Example: Default payout 8%, if the new to file customer rule applies the system will bypass the default payout and equal the new to file payout of 10%

When integrating this condition, you will want to determine what your pixel will track as a new customer vs an existing customer. For example, you may say that a customer is new only when they are using completely new email/info for their purchase; however, you might also consider a new customer someone who has not purchased from your site for a year or 6 months. Develop this strategy based on how you value new customers and make sure your pixel is set up to track new to file customer information correctly before using this condition.
 

You will want to use this option to incentivize publishers to drive new customers to your site.  Once finished click save condition. Now that you have a new to file condition for your rule you will need to choose an action that will apply when this condition is met, after hitting Save Condition.
 

Learn How to Create Dynamic Terms in Your Account
 

Analyze the Data: New to File Reporting

Review your new to file data by going to Reports section of your interface. Click Transactions Transaction Details Report Transaction Details tab. In the Filters box, select the New to File dropdown and click Generate Report for the date range.
 

• What to look for?
  • Which publishers are driving the highest number of new to file customers?
  • Which publishers are driving the lowest number of new to file customers?
  • Which new to file incentives are working?
  • Which new to file incentives aren’t working?
  • How can I further incentivize or reward the top tier publishers?
  • How can I optimize publishers who are struggling to drive new to file?

• New to File Key Performance Indictor (KPI) Goal***
  • Percentage of New Users is the percentage of consumers that are new to the site compared to the percentage of consumers that are returning.
  • Once you have created your New to File goal, navigate to the Reports KPI Goals New Users tab to review your goal against the actual percentage for the history of the goal lifespan.

***As you set up your KPI goals, you may note you do not have access to this KPI goal. Percentage of New Users, or New to File, requires Dynamic tracking/commissioning*. To enable this KPI, contact your account manager or Ascend by Partnerize representative.