Affiliate marketing in the beauty sector: a lever for Influencer Marketing

What is Affiliate Marketing for Influencers?

Affiliation consists in paying an influencer according to the sales he or she generated. The process is simple: a commission per sale is defined, then an affiliate link and a URL tracker or a promotional code will allow to follow the sales generated by the influencer. Affiliate marketing is an asset in an Influencer Marketing campaign and simplifies performance measurement. It can be done in the context of a short—or long-term partnership as well as with brand ambassadors.

In the case of a campaign with multiple influencers, the best is to create different codes or links to track the performance of each KOL. Brands can choose different affiliation options:

3 ways to use affiliation in influencer marketing

1- Affiliation Link

KOL’s can embed an affiliate link in their bio or post description, or use the “swipe up” option in stories for accounts with more than 10,000 followers. The linkin.bio service is also widely used in the bio of influencers. It is a link referring to a page where there are several clickable links: blog or website of the influencer, link to a product, a brand’s website… It allows them to follow the traffic of subscribers and to know what interests them.

2. Affiliation Promotional code

An affiliate marketing method appreciated by subscribers because it allows them to obtain advantageous discounts on beauty products.

3. Amazon shop

Since 2019, influencers have the possibility to create a shop on Amazon in order to propose the products they have tested or recommended. Influencers then include the link to the shop in their bio, post, or story.

Benefits from affiliation for beauty brands

Affiliation offers many benefits to both influencers and beauty brands. Many beauty brands are combining affiliation and Influencer Marketing to boost their performance. As an example, Mademoiselle Bio offers an affiliate program with promotional codes and links. With affiliation, a brand takes fewer risks because all or part of the influencer’s remuneration will depend on his or her performance. The influencer, on the other hand, benefits from an additional incentive because he or she will be paid according to sales. The principle of affiliation in the beauty sector is particularly effective but, to work, it must be based on a common trust between advertiser and influencer.

This trust is not innate. It is essential to build a relationship between influencer and brand, to adapt the campaign to the influencer’s universe and to communicate throughout the whole partnership. For an influencer campaign to be a success, the partnership must therefore be based on a contract with great conditions of collaboration. This is even more true in the case of affiliation—a contract allows to set the conditions of remuneration and partnership, the details of the campaign and the commitments of the influencer as well as the brand.

How to integrate affiliation into Influencer Marketing with Kolsquare?

Kolsquare has partnered with Affilae, the affiliate marketing, tracking and acquisition software, to help advertisers optimise their Influence Marketing campaigns with affiliate marketing. The tool directly integrated into the platform offers them better visibility on the performance of their collaborations with KOLs. It is thus possible to access the data required to successfully complete a project of this type with:

• Searching for KOLs by keywords to make it easier for you to find profiles that can represent your world or allow you to target a very specific community,
• Real-time tracking of the affiliate campaign with a complete dashboard showing the click rate, the conversion rate but also the affiliate ROI and the ROI of affiliate and Influence campaigns, as well as other data (EMV, average basket, commissions…),
• A feature to measure the share of sales achieved through Influencer Marketing,
• Reporting at the end of the campaign to find out what worked and what didn’t and try to understand why.