Affiliate marketing can transform the way you track the success of your influencer campaigns, but choosing the right affiliate partners is where it all starts.
Not all influencers are created equal when it comes to driving conversions and building brand loyalty.
A great affiliate influencer helps boost visibility and delivers tangible results, like more sales and higher ROI.
In this post, we’ll walk you through five things to look for when selecting an affiliate influencer to make sure your affiliate marketing program is a success.
Table of Contents
#1: Find Trusted Influencers
Reliability is one of the most crucial aspects of finding the right affiliate.
You want to make sure that affiliates are aligned with your brand values and have a consistent track record of producing high-quality content.
Most importantly, their audience should trust their opinions and recommendations.
Trust is at the heart of affiliate marketing. Influencers whose audiences believe in their recommendations are far more likely to drive sales and engagement. Unreliable influencers who post inconsistent or questionable content can harm not only your campaign but also your brand’s credibility.
Later Influence’s Brand Safety Feature
One tool to help rule out unreliable partners is Later Influence’s brand safety feature. This feature uses machine learning to evaluate whether a creator’s content falls into categories you might want to avoid. These categories include:
Adult
Spoof
Medical
Violence
Racy
By using this tool, you can sift through influencer profiles more efficiently and avoid creators whose content might jeopardize your brand’s reputation. Finding an influencer who fits your brand’s tone and ethos is the first step toward a successful affiliate partnership.
Book a demo with Later today to see how our influencer marketing tools can support your brand’s affiliate marketing efforts.
#2: Review Engagement Rates
Engagement rates offer valuable insights into how an influencer’s audience interacts with their content.
An influencer with millions of followers might seem like an ideal affiliate, but if their audience isn't engaging with their posts, the influencer’s reach might not translate into real results.
What is a “Good” Engagement Rate?
A “good” engagement rate depends on the size of the influencer’s following and which platform they’re on.
Micro influencers, for example, often have higher engagement rates than macro-influencers because they tend to have closer relationships with their followers.
Below, you can see a chart of the average engagement rate for Instagram influencers based on their number of followers.
Macro influencers may have the most followers, but their 4.69% engagement rate is lower than that of a nano influencer with less than 5K followers, with an average engagement rate of 11.16%.
Don’t just focus on follower count—engagement is a much stronger indicator of how well an influencer can convert followers into customers.
By focusing on engagement, you can better predict how likely an influencer’s audience is to click on affiliate links and ultimately make a purchase.
You can easily calculate an influencer’s engagement rate with Later’s Instagram Engagement Rate Calculator.
This tool gives you a clear picture of how engaged an influencer’s followers are. A high engagement rate indicates that the influencer’s audience trusts their content, making them more likely to interact with affiliate links.
#3: Look for Creators Who Already Love Your Brand
Choosing creators who have an authentic connection with your brand or industry can make a huge difference in the success of your affiliate campaign.
When influencers genuinely love your products, their promotions feel more natural and engaging. This authenticity leads to higher engagement rates and greater trust from their audience.
Later’s social listening tool can help you find creators who are already organically engaging with your brand or discussing topics relevant to your products.
You can use this tool to set specific key topics, and it will provide you with a list of creators who have posted about those topics.
This means you can connect with influencers who already have an interest in your industry, making your partnership feel more genuine and less transactional.
The Benefits of Social Listening
Influencers who already know and love your brand are more likely to create content that resonates with their followers.
Their passion translates into more authentic endorsements, which leads to better results in terms of clicks, conversions, and overall engagement.
Influencers who genuinely appreciate your products may be more invested in the long-term success of your affiliate partnership, helping build lasting relationships that benefit both parties.
#4: Assess Previous Campaign Performance
When evaluating a potential affiliate, it’s important to look at how they’ve performed in past campaigns:
What results have they delivered for other brands?
Were they able to drive meaningful engagement or conversions?
Past performance is one of the strongest indicators of future success. If an influencer has proven they can deliver conversions for similar brands, they could be more likely to bring similar results to your affiliate campaign.
Look at their performance metrics carefully, paying close attention to how well they’ve engaged their audience and driven affiliate sales for other companies.
This will give you a clearer idea of how they might contribute to your affiliate program.
With Later Influence, you can review a creator’s stats and campaign performance. This allows you to see key metrics, such as how many conversions or clicks their previous campaigns generated.
If an influencer has worked with your brand before, you can also use Later’s influencer database, the Influencer Index, to track their affiliate performance with your company.
This historical data helps you make informed decisions about which influencers to work with in future campaigns.
#5: Evaluate Campaign Performance with Trackable Links
While it’s important to assess current metrics like engagement rates and past performance, you’re also going to want to evaluate whether an influencer will fit well into your overall campaign strategy.
Are they skilled at integrating products naturally into their content?
Can they weave your brand messaging into their existing style without it feeling forced or inauthentic?
Even the most successful influencer might not be the right fit for your brand.
Finding an influencer who can seamlessly incorporate your products into their content is important for making your affiliate program feel authentic.
Trackable links provide the data needed to evaluate how well an influencer fits into your overall strategy and whether their campaigns are leading to the kind of results you expect.
Later & Mavely: Your Answer to Proving the Value of Influencer Campaigns
With Later’s Mavely integration, brands can track performance and manage campaigns with ease.
If you’re an influencer marketing manager, here are a few perks you’ll love about this integration:
Track performance with custom affiliate links: Later and Mavely allow you to generate custom links for influencers that track sales and engagement.
Access real-time insights: Track and report on essential campaign data such as clicks, conversions, and commissions. These insights help you see exactly how your influencers are performing and make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns.
Automated payouts: Mavely automates influencer commission payouts, so you no longer have to worry about manually processing payments. This ensures timely payouts and reduces the admin burden.
Work with existing affiliate networks: Already working with an affiliate network? Mavely supports multiple networks, so there’s no need to overhaul your current system.
Currently, we support the following networks: Rakuten, Impact, Commission Junction (CJ), Partnerize, Ascend, AWIN, ShareASale, and AvantLink.
Sell products at major retailers: Later and Mavely support 1,200+ brands, including nationwide retailers like Walmart and Target, so you can send consumers where they’re already shopping. This is just another way this collab boosts conversion rates!
Ready to Look for the Right Affiliate Influencer?
Selecting the right affiliate influencer can significantly impact the success of your affiliate marketing program.
By looking for reliable influencers, reviewing engagement rates and previous campaign performance, and evaluating how well they fit into your campaign strategy, you can make sure you’re partnering with the right creators.
Tools like Later Influence and Later and Mavely’s linking tools help you find the best affiliates, create trackable campaigns, manage those campaigns and optimize your performance.
Ready to take your affiliate program to the next level? Book a demo with Later Influence today to see how we can power your affiliate strategy and help you find the best creators for your brand.
