Did you know? The global revenue of the iGaming industry will cross $100 billion by 2025, highlighting its rapid growth.
As an affiliate manager, this presents a massive opportunity to maximize player acquisition and revenue generation.
However, standing out in this cluttered market is easier said than done. With the stakes at an all-time high, you need sheer precision to identify metrics that ensure targeted campaigns and boost profitability.
With so many KPIs—like FTD rates and player LTV—already on your plate, juggling additional metrics can be overwhelming.
One metric you cannot afford to ignore is earnings per click (EPC).
So, what is EPC in affiliate marketing, and why does it matter?
We will break down everything you need to know about EPC in affiliate marketing, from how it’s calculated to top tactics to increase your EPC.
Let’s dive in.
What Is EPC in Affiliate Marketing?
Earnings per click (EPC) in affiliate marketing measures the average revenue earned for each click on an affiliate link.
Mathematically –
| EPC = Total earnings from affiliate links / Total clicks on affiliate links |
Here’s how it works:
- Total Earnings: The total revenue generated from affiliate links over a specific period.
- Total Clicks: The total number of clicks on those affiliate links during the same period.
EPC is a valuable metric for affiliate managers, often referred to as a “moneymaker” metric due to its role in gauging the effectiveness of affiliate campaigns and overall profitability.
Let’s understand what is EPC in affiliate marketing with an example.
See the table below. It provides an overview of the earnings per click (EPC) for different campaigns, channels, and affiliate partners.
The EPC value is calculated by dividing the total earnings by the number of clicks for each campaign, channel, and affiliate. Here, managers can compare the revenue generated per click across various sources and identify top performers.
For instance, if you notice that “Poker 2” consistently has a higher EPC across all channels, you can allocate more resources to these campaigns or incentivize these affiliate partners further.
What’s more? Tracking EPC can help you with –
- Selecting Profitable Programs: EPC allows you to track the affiliate programs that convert traffic into revenue. The higher the EPC, the better the campaigns generate income per click. This insight can help you choose the most profitable programs to participate in and invest your resources wisely.
- Recruiting Affiliates: Affiliates would consider joining and promoting programs with significant earning potential. Highlighting a high EPC can make your platform more appealing and help recruit new affiliates.
- Incentivizing Affiliates: EPC provides a transparent way to motivate and reward affiliates. High EPC rates allow affiliates to see the revenue potential of their efforts, encouraging them to drive more clicks.
EPC Is Not an Affiliate Commission
Now that we are clear on what is EPC in affiliate marketing, let’s make sure not to confuse it with affiliate commission, as they represent entirely different entities.
EPC measures the average revenue generated per click on an affiliate link, offering a broader view of a campaign’s effectiveness. On the other hand, affiliate commissions are the specific payouts your affiliate partners receive for each conversion or sale they generate.
In short, EPC helps you evaluate the efficiency of your campaigns, and affiliate commissions are the direct rewards you can offer for affiliate partners’ contributions.
Understanding this difference can help you improve campaign performance and strengthen affiliate partner relationships.
Why EPC Matters in Affiliate Marketing?
Now that you have understood what is EPC in affiliate marketing, leverage this metric to identify which affiliates are driving the most value for your platform. This can help you optimize the performance of your affiliate partners, leading to more effective and profitable marketing campaigns.
Here are more key reasons highlighting the significance of EPC in affiliate marketing.
1. High-Quality Content Creation
Not all traffic is valuable. Players who don’t engage or deposit aren’t profitable.
High-quality content resonating with potential players is more likely to lead to conversions, such as sign-ups or deposits. EPC can help measure the effectiveness of the content produced by your affiliate partners.
For instance, creating a detailed guide on strategies for a specific online casino game, such as poker, can attract players who are likely to convert.
It might generate a few clicks, but the EPC will be high because it appeals to players looking to strengthen their gameplay and improve their chances of winning.
Understanding what is EPC in affiliate marketing can thus help you identify the content types and strategies that are most effective in converting clicks into revenue. Sharing insights about what works, such as detailed game guides, promotional content, or bonus offers, can help you guide partners to create high-quality content that attracts the target audience.
2. Optimized Affiliate Link Placement
In iGaming, where player acquisition is key, strategically placed links can drive more valuable clicks.
As an affiliate manager, you can analyze EPC data to understand where links perform best (within articles, banners, or email campaigns) and then share these practices with partners.
For instance, you observe that links placed within iGaming strategy articles have a higher EPC. So, guide your partners to implement similar placement strategies that can lead to more sign-ups and deposits.
3. Data-Driven Affiliate Performance
Tracking EPC across various campaigns can help you identify top-performing affiliate partners. Similarly, you can leverage data-driven insights and share these findings to help others improve.
For instance, an affiliate consistently has a high EPC due to targeting high-value players. Sharing this strategy with multiple affiliate partners can boost the program’s overall performance.
This enhances the partners’ earnings and increases the revenue for your iGaming platform.
Top 4 Tactics to Improve EPC
Understanding what is EPC in affiliate marketing is not enough. You need to implement the right strategies to enhance it. Let’s look at the top four tactics that can help improve EPC in affiliate marketing.
1. Include Affiliate Links
Integrating affiliate links across various digital touchpoints can prove a game-changer in improving EPC.
Here’s how you can do it effectively –
- Email Campaigns: Real money players often wait for promotions before signing up. So, adding affiliate links to emails promoting offers and iGaming updates can be an intelligent move.
Encourage your partners to add affiliate links within their email campaigns, particularly in newsletters highlighting exclusive offers or game updates. Share email templates with appealing CTAs and tips to craft personalized and compelling messages.
Here’s an example. The email template below leverages these tips to increase the chances of signing up.
- Video Descriptions: Video content, especially gameplay tutorials, live streams, and review videos, is highly popular among iGaming players.
Viewers often look at the video description for additional details or special offers, making it a prime spot for adding affiliate links.
Here’s a quick example highlighting how the right link placement can grab the target audience’s eyeballs.
So, guide your partners to include affiliate links tactfully in video descriptions, as shared in the example, to improve EPC.
- Social Media Posts: Sharing gaming tips and tricks on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram can help engage the iGaming community.
Moreover, adding affiliate links in these social posts allows your affiliate partners to capitalize on real-time engagement.
Observe how the below-shared example leverages this tactic.
Encourage your partners to track the posts’ performance using analytics. This can help optimize content strategy and lead to increased traffic and a higher EPC.
2. Re-Engage Exit-Intent Visitors
Re-engaging website visitors by displaying exit-intent popups can be a powerful tool to increase EPC.
These pop-ups offer a strategic way to capture the attention of users who are about to leave your iGaming website.
There’s a plethora of exit-intent tools in the market to detect the audience’s mouse movements or actions while navigating away from the page or website.
Leveraging such tools can help you experiment with different popup designs and messages to find what resonates best with your iGaming audience. You can thus re-engage users at the right moment with relevant and personalized offers.
This leads to higher earnings per click (EPC) as they target users on the verge of leaving, converting them with a timely and relevant offer.
3. Always Review EPC with CPC
Understanding the relationship between earnings per click (EPC) and cost per click (CPC) is vital to optimizing campaign profitability.
EPC higher than CPC reflects your business is making more money per click than spending to acquire that click.
This primarily indicates a successful campaign.
For instance, if your EPC is $2.50 and your CPC is $1.00, the earning is $1.50 per click, reflecting the campaign is profitable.
So, review the EPC and CPC metrics to ensure the campaigns deliver good returns.
4. Track Campaign Performance Regularly
Tracking campaign performance regularly can help you effectively manage your marketing programs and achieve revenue growth.
However, tracking the ROI of an affiliate program is tricky, especially if you have multiple channels and data streams. Leveraging iGaming affiliate software with advanced tracking and analytics capabilities can be a game-changer.
Affnook is the one-stop solution for all your affiliate management needs. With Affnook, you can gain deeper insights into affiliate performance with comprehensive reporting and data visualization tools.
Explore Affnook’s tracking features to see why it’s the best choice for your business.
- Intuitive Reporting Dashboard: It offers a clean, intuitive dashboard that lets you easily assess what’s working in your campaigns and what’s not.
- Omnichannel Tracking: The affiliate software allows tracking of online and offline customer acquisition and events.
- S2S Postbacks and Pixel Tracking: It allows for monitoring of multiple customer journey events using server-to-server postbacks and pixel tracking.
- Real-Time Reports: Get real-time reports depicting detailed campaign performance in an easy-to-digest format.
- Offline Reports: Download campaign or partner reports as CSV/PDF files for offline use and easy sharing.
- Advanced Segmentation and Filters: Quickly filter reports by GGR, NGR, depositing customers, and more with Affnook’s advanced segmentation.
- Chargeback Tracking: Affnook enables tracking customer chargebacks, helping you identify and manage fraud in iGaming.
This way, Affnook allows brands, operators, and affiliate managers to effortlessly track and optimize marketing campaigns, driving higher player acquisition, retention, and overall profitability.
Summing Up
Earnings per click (EPC) is a crucial metric in affiliate marketing, specifically within the rapidly growing iGaming industry.
Prioritizing EPC with other key metrics like CPC ensures a data-driven approach to identifying profitable campaigns, optimizing affiliate link placements, and creating high-quality content that resonates with real money players.
Moreover, leveraging advanced affiliate marketing software like Affnook can make your journey hassle-free. The platform helps you refine strategies and improve partner performance. This can ultimately drive higher player acquisition, retention, and profitability.
Take a live tour of how Affnook can be your partner when tracking performance and automating workflows.
Talk to our team now to gain a competitive edge in the iGaming market!
