In this interview, Lucy Lu, Business Development Manager at IObit, shares her experience working with Avangate’s affiliates, providing actionable recommendations on the ways that the Affiliate channel offered IObit a significant opportunity for tremendous growth. Together with the Avangate Affiliate Network account team, Lu explains, IObit secured strong performances year after year in affiliate sales and achieved significant growth.
Q1: Could you share with our readers a few insights about IObit and how affiliate marketing stands out within your overall strategy?
IObit was founded by two creative and passionate programmers in 2004. The idea of creating IObit was inspired by the vision “Simplifying life with technology.” The very first version of our flagship product, Advanced SystemCare, was made for personal use at the beginning until it was shared online accidentally, which aroused the interest of many media sites and received tons of positive user feedback. We were surprised to learn there was almost no such smart system utility in the market that could fit the urgent need for users to clean, speed up, and protect their computers in a simple and efficient way. This gave our two founders the inspiration to do something big and different.
After the launch of Advanced SystemCare, we released other popular no-brainer system utilities including award-winning Driver Booster, IObit Uninstaller, Smart Defrag, IObit Software Updater, IObit Malware fighter, etc., which are helping billions of users worldwide solve various kinds of Windows issues with ease. Besides the paid version, we also make a free version with basic functionalities to benefit everyone.
What attracts us most to affiliate marketing is its commission-based model, which allows us to reward the affiliates for every purchase brought by their marketing effort. This is an ideal business model for both parties, because the affiliates who send targeted, high quality, and credible traffic deserve higher earnings, and we are more than willing to pay for real and qualified traffic. Comparing to other ad types, affiliate marketing helps make the most of our budget with a lower risk. That’s why it’s turned out to be a great channel for us to acquire new customers.
Q2: What is your role at IObit.com? How does an ordinary day look while managing your affiliate relationships?
My role at IObit.com is managing the affiliate program and keeping it growing steadily. My main responsibilities include setting the reasonable growth target for IObit affiliate program, developing the growth strategies, making the work plan for team members, recruiting new affiliate partners, and managing affiliate relationships.
My work day is busy but fulfilled. The first thing I do when arriving at the office is to check the affiliate sales report. This helps me better learn the campaign performance of my affiliate partners and find issues in the first place, things like the fact that broken affiliate links are always accompanied by a sudden drop in sales, that irrelevant traffic always leads to a low conversion rate, and more. Then I share the performance data with my partners and give suggestions to assist them to make adjustments and then optimize ad campaigns. Besides that, I also spend time looking for opportunities to build a long-term, mutually beneficial partnership with the website owners who have targeted traffic.
Q3: What makes the IObit affiliate program unique and different than others from the same vertical?
First, we give a higher commission rate, starting at 60% up to 75% on each sale.
Second, we offer four tiers of commission rates: 60%, 65%, 70% ,and 75%. When affiliates hit a certain sales goal, their commission rate will be increased accordingly. It helps incentivize affiliates to put more effort into promoting our products and continuously improve their campaign performance.
Third, we provide various kinds of promo materials, including but not limited to landing pages, ad banners, and custom-build version. The best ad materials are well-optimized and passed our conversion tests. We also help our affiliates customize the promo materials according to their special marketing requirements.
Fourth, we have a professional affiliate management team, and all of our affiliate managers are experienced and well-trained. They monitor the campaign performance, keep in close touch with affiliates, and assist affiliates to solve all kinds of problems they might encounter and find the best ways to make the most of their traffic.
Fifth, we periodically check our website, landing pages, and the custom-build version to make sure affiliate cookies are recorded correctly. Comparing to the default cookie life of 30 days, we offer a longer cookie duration of 120 days. The custom-build version also allows affiliates to write their affiliate ID into the programs so their cookies won’t expire.
Q4: Nurturing and growing a successful affiliate program such as yours can demand a lot of effort. What tools or which technologies help you to achieve your goal?
First, work with the right affiliate network – 2Checkout’s Avangate Affiliate Network.
It’s very important to choose a good affiliate network that fits your company best, and luckily we found it! The Avangate Affiliate Network has what we need: targeted affiliates, fast-responding support, a professional affiliate manager, a powerful risk management system to monitor and prevent fraud affiliates, and it’s easy to operate interface. It helps us connect with top performing affiliates and reduces lots of our workload. Because of its excellent support, we’re able to put more energy into growing our affiliate program and achieving our goals. This is not just paying lip service to 2Checkout’s team! The Avangate network is driving 28% of sales for IObit – check out more details on our joint affiliate projects in this recent case study.
Second, Google analytics help us track affiliate campaign performance by analyzing the behavior and in-depth details of users on our websites. With this data, we can better assist affiliates to optimize their campaigns and increase the sales conversion rate.
Finally, our “affiliate install & uninstall analytics” can track the number of installations and uninstallations in different geos. For affiliates who run install campaigns, it helps them find the best performing traffic channel and make the correct adjustment on their campaigns.
Q5: Nowadays there is a lot of buzz around the term “partnerships marketing” – is this something you are looking at more to drive revenue and acquire new customers?
Yes, “partnerships marketing” is a cost-effective way to reach new customers and drive revenue. That’s what we’re working on right now and we expect to explore more in this area.
Q6: What does the future hold for IObit for the affiliate business stream?
We’re looking to maintain an annual growth rate of 30% on new orders compared to last year. To achieve this goal, we will focus on extending our collaboration with top performing affiliates to drive more quality traffic. Besides that, we will continually recruit new affiliates and improve the sales conversion rate of affiliate marketing traffic.
Learn more on how the Avangate Affiliate Network drives 28% of sales for IObit.
