5 Effective Affiliate Marketing BFCM Strategies to Increase Sales

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are right around the corner, and for ecommerce brands, the holiday season represents the biggest opportunities of the year to boost sales. With millions spent over just a few days, this is prime time for ecommerce brands to maximize visibility and revenue. While you might be excited about the discounts you're offering, how do you make sure your marketing campaigns and offers are reaching the right audience?

Many businesses focus on different BFCM strategies to tap into the high demand, especially paid ads. However, they often overlook some of the most cost-effective, high-ROI strategies to increase sales, such as leveraging your existing customers and influencers within your affiliate network.

In this blog, we are going to focus on affiliate marketing for BFCM. We’ll look at seven effective strategies that will help you engage your affiliates and drive significant sales during this peak holiday shopping season. Let’s get started!

Strategy 1: Turn your customers into affiliates 

Turning customers into affiliates is a powerful marketing approach that leverages your brand’s most loyal supporters. By allowing them to promote your products and BFCM deals, you gain genuine endorsements and social proof, which can build trust with potential customers and often outperform traditional advertising.

With the influx of customers during BFCM, brands have a prime opportunity to convert new buyers into affiliates who can promote the brand year-round. Social Snowball makes this easy by allowing you to automatically turn customers into affiliates with just two clicks and zero manual intervention. Simply go to “programs” on your dashboard, toggle the blue button on, and voila — you’re all set!

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For example, Outway Socks—a brand dealing in all-day performance socks—wanted to boost BFCM sales without high ad costs and reach new audiences effectively. They used Social Snowball to automatically enroll new customers into their affiliate program, creating unique referral codes on the thank-you page and promoting the program via email.

This led to a strong increase in sales through word-of-mouth referrals and helped them drive revenue more effectively during BFCM.

Strategy 2: Offer exclusive, time-limited affiliate deals

Affiliate deals can be two-sided—one for your affiliates and one for the customers you’re getting through your affiliates. 

• For customers: When customers know they can get a discount for a limited time, they’re more likely to act fast. For example, if you usually offer a 10% discount for affiliate referrals, increase it to 15% during BFCM.
• For affiliates, Increase their commission rates during BFCM for a limited time. For example, if affiliates usually get $10 for every order they refer, increase their commissions to $15. This will encourage affiliates to keep promoting your brand.

Remember, you’re also competing with the offers and programs that other brands set out. Encourage your affiliates to promote your brand instead of others. And encourage new customers to buy from your store.

Strategy 3: Gamify affiliate participation with leaderboards and giveaways 

Simply enrolling more affiliates is not enough. You also need to keep them motivated to refer more customers. Here are some actionable steps to gamify your affiliate program during BFCM:

• Run giveaways for affiliates: Hold contests with exciting prizes for top performers, such as free gift cards, special products, or bonus cash for those who refer the most customers during the contest period.
• Create leaderboards: Show top-performing affiliates based on metrics like total revenue generated or new customers acquired. Recognize the top affiliates in your BFCM campaigns with dedicated emails. This will also encourage other affiliates to participate.

Strategy 4: Build a tier-based affiliate program

Creating a tier-based affiliate program during the BFCM season can effectively boost your sales and reach. Here’s how to structure it for maximum impact:

• Tier 1: Default program with a 15% commission.
• Tier 2: After referring 10 customers, increase the commission to 20%.
• Tier 3: After referring 20 customers, increase the commission to 25%.

Make sure your reward structure is communicated effectively to all affiliates. Use clear messaging. Here’s an example email outlining the different tiers: 

Strategy 5: Give your affiliates early access to BFCM sales 

Giving affiliates early access to your products or promotions can significantly boost their engagement and drive sales. It allows them to create hype and prepare their social posts ahead of your BFCM sale so that your affiliate strategy can hit the ground running as soon as your sale launches.

Here's how to implement this strategy effectively:

1. Define early access benefits: Give affiliates exclusive access to your products, promotions, or discounts before the general public. This creates a sense of urgency and exclusivity.
2. Set a clear timeline: If your BFCM sale starts on November 29, allow affiliates to access early discounts on November 20.

This way, by the time BFCM starts on November 29, affiliates have already driven significant traffic and sales, all of which your affiliates would likely make content around. 

Alternatively, you could also seed your products to your influencers before the big sales period. 

Tips and best practices for your affiliate program this BFCM

Tip 1: Communicate with affiliates

Whether adjusting the affiliate program or reinforcing your brand presence, consistent communication is crucial. Send them e-mails before your BFCM offer, reminding them of their incentive, and send them e-mails during the promotion to keep your brand at the top of their minds. 

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Social Snowball offers ready-made email templates for affiliates.

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To have more control over the e-mails that you send your affiliates, Social Snowball also integrates with Klayvio or any other Email Service Provider (ESP). You can customize the emails completely while still adding custom fields into the e-mail with specific program information. 

The important emails to have this BFCM are the following: 

• Post-purchase e-mail. This e-mail will be sent out to any new customer who bought from your store. It jumpstarts their participation as an affiliate. 

• Program-change e-mail. Send them an e-mail letting them know that you’ve increased their incentives, and for how long. Get them excited about their new program, and get them excited to refer your brand.

• Strategic reminder emails: Remind them to share their codes or links during the sale, or other high-season, periods. 

• Educational content: Explain to your affiliates and creators exactly how the program works. What do they need to do? How often should they expect to be paid out? 

• Inspirational content: Showcase other successful affiliates and how they are killing it. Show them examples of high-performing content and creatives to use to promote during BFCM.

Tip 2: Prevent codes from lashing

Typically, referral and affiliate programs use discounts as new customer incentives. I.e.: share this code with your audience and they’ll receive 15% off their first order. Since you’ll likely already be offering customers a discount during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you want to make sure the discounts don’t clash. If they do, this can result in affiliate attribution errors and a drop in conversion rate from confused customers.

To prevent your BFCM and affiliate codes from clashing with each other, there are a few ways you can structure your affiliate’s offer:

• Make discount codes stackable. This method depends on your margins, and how much you’re already giving off in the first place. But, you’re going to want to make sure that both your BFCM discount code and your affiliate’s discount code, work at the same time. This is configurable in Shopify.

• Make sure your BFCM discount is applies automatically. If you want to give your customers the option of using both the BFCM and the affiliate’s discount code, it could be easier to make sure that your BFCM offer automatically applies, and then they’d be able to just use their friend’s discounts. This only works if the codes are stackable.

• Use affiliate links instead of codes. The links are for tracking purposes only, and don’t offer an additional discount to referred traffic. If your brand has less wiggle room, and you’re uncomfortable with giving customers a discount on top of your BFCM discount, then this is the way to go. 

If your program usually runs on affiliate discount codes, and you decide to switch to affiliate links for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions, make sure that this is communicated effectively to your affiliates. Also, make sure they know that they’ll still be getting a commission on all of the orders that they refer. Communicating any temporary program changes during the BFCM period is crucial.

Conclusion

As the holiday season approaches, implementing these seven affiliate marketing strategies for BFCM will set your business up for increased sales and customer engagement. These strategies will help you come up with great deals and offers, strengthen your affiliate relationships, and ultimately boost your revenue.

To further streamline your affiliate efforts and tap into the golden opportunity during this time of the year, you need a robust affiliate marketing tool such as Social Snowball to create and manage all the aspects of your campaign. From creating tiers to gamifying programs, and turning customers into affiliates, you can do it all from one dashboard.

The platform also allows for painless cash and store credit payouts, guaranteeing that your affiliates feel valued and motivated.

Create a seamless experience for both you and your affiliates, and drive higher conversions this BFCM season. Book a demo now! 

Frequently asked questions 

What are affiliate-based influencer partnerships?

Affiliate-based influencer partnerships involve collaborating with influencers who promote your products or services in exchange for a commission on sales generated through their unique referral links. This model aligns the interests of both the brand and the influencer, incentivizing them to drive sales effectively.

Why should you work with micro-influencers?

Working with micro-influencers can be beneficial due to their highly engaged and niche audiences, often leading to better trust and authenticity in recommendations. They typically have lower fees compared to larger influencers, making it a cost-effective option for reaching targeted customer segments.

How does gamification increase your sales?

Gamification increases sales by engaging customers through interactive experiences, such as rewards or challenges, that make shopping more enjoyable. This approach encourages repeat visits and purchases, as customers are motivated to participate in game-like activities that offer tangible benefits.

Are affiliates alone enough to drive BFCM sales?

While affiliates can significantly boost your reach and sales during BFCM, relying solely on affiliates may limit your potential. Combining affiliate marketing with other channels, such as SMS campaigns, email marketing, and social media ads, can amplify your efforts and help you connect with different audience segments. A multi-channel approach ensures that your promotions reach both new and existing customers, maximizing your results for BFCM.