5 Powerful Strategies to Increase Customer Lifetime Value with Affiliate Marketing

Tyler Ryan, a former NASA data analyst and current CEO of LTV Numbers, is our featured guest In this episode, we explore the art of determining your ideal customer acquisition budget in affiliate marketing. With a diverse client portfolio, spanning from SaaS to digital products, Tyler shares valuable insights into Lifetime Value (LTV) and its profound impact on online businesses. Our discussion covers setting clear customer expectations, optimizing product usage, and nurturing robust customer-brand relationships on this episode of the Affiliate Nerd Out Podcast.

Tune in to uncover strategies for enhancing LTV, scaling affiliate programs, and increasing customer lifetime value. Tyler's innovative loop method and customer evangelism insights are a must-listen for unlocking hidden ROI in the customer journey.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Amhh0THGNaBSptwYacQVd?si=3ECz_EBUTrG8_wBohG81Dw

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In today's digital business landscape, understanding lifetime value (LTV) of a customer is crucial. In a recent podcast episode, we were privileged to host Tyler Ryan, former NASA data analyst and current CEO of LTV Numbers. Tyler delved deep into the concept of LTV, sharing how it profoundly impacts online businesses and how businesses can leverage it to their advantage.

https://youtu.be/29H4f9MG1tY

What is LTV in affiliate marketing?

LTV or Lifetime Value is a critical metric in the field of affiliate marketing and e-commerce. It represents the total revenue a business expects to earn from a customer throughout their entire relationship. It is an essential metric because it helps businesses understand the long-term value of acquiring and retaining customers.

“If you know your LTV better than anybody else, you will win. That's how we got to 150 million in 18 months.”

Tyler Ryan emphasizes the importance of LTV and how optimizing it can help increase customer lifetime value. He mentions that to achieve this, businesses need to have a strategic and repeatable customer journey in place. This customer journey should be optimized to deliver value to the customer continuously and make them feel supported.

5 powerful strategies to increase customer lifetime value with affiliate marketing.

To increase customer lifetime value, a business should focus on the following key points:

1. Strategic customer journey:

The customer journey should be designed strategically to ensure customers have a positive and consistent experience from the moment they make their first purchase. This experience is controlled by the business, and its quality significantly impacts LTV.

2. Deliver on promises:

One of the key strategies to increase customer lifetime value is to fulfill the promises made during the marketing and sales process. By consistently delivering on these promises, businesses can enhance the LTV of their customers, creating a mutually beneficial long-term relationship.

3. Setting clear expectations:

Transparency in setting clear expectations for customers regarding the product, shipping, and what they can expect from the business helps create trust and confidence.

4. Continuous support:

Delivering Ongoing Support and Engagement through content, instructions, and best practices ensures that customers can derive maximum value from the product, which is an essential step to increase customer lifetime value.

5. Creating accountability:

To increase customer lifetime value (LTV), building a sense of community and providing customers with opportunities to ask questions and receive assistance can play a pivotal role in enhancing their overall experience. By creating a supportive community and offering assistance, businesses can solidify their relationships with customers, ultimately boosting their LTV.

Tyler Ryan also discussed the idea that when businesses focus on improving the customer journey and providing real value, their LTV increases. This strategy is not only about extracting as much money from customers as quickly as possible but also about creating a lasting and meaningful relationship with the customer.

In essence, the podcast highlights that businesses can increase customer lifetime value by creating a customer journey that is centered around delivering value, support, and engagement to customers over the long term. This approach leads to higher LTV and ultimately benefits both the business and its customers.

How does a strategic, repeatable customer journey boost LTV?

Having a strategic and repeatable customer journey matters in increasing LTV for several reasons:

• Ensures consistency: It provides a consistent and positive experience for customers, making them more likely to return for additional purchases.
• Builds trust: It helps build trust between the customer and the business, as customers know what to expect, which encourages loyalty and repeat business.
• Supports the value proposition: It allows the business to deliver the value it promised to customers. When customers receive the value they were expecting, they are more likely to continue doing business with the company.
• Encourages long-term engagement: It focuses on the first 30 days of the customer's journey, a critical period for making a positive impression. When the initial experience is excellent, customers are more likely to stay engaged over the long term.
• Fosters customer retention: By crafting a customer journey that focuses on providing a good experience, the business can retain more customers. High customer retention leads to a higher LTV.
• Promotes repeat purchases: A well-optimized customer journey increases the chances that customers will make additional purchases for them to increase lifetime value.

A strategic and repeatable customer journey sets the stage for long-term customer relationships, which are key ingredients to increase customer lifetime value. It ensures customers have a consistent and positive experience, fostering loyalty and ongoing engagement.

What is a “Loop Method” and how does it increase the customer Lifetime Value (LTV)?

The Loop Method, as explained by Tyler Ryan, is a strategic approach that businesses can use to increase customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and effectively scale their affiliate programs. Here's a breakdown of what the Loop Method entails:

• Enhancing LTV: The primary objective of the Loop Method is to consistently elevate the LTV of customers. To accomplish this, businesses must prioritize improving customer retention, encouraging repeat purchases, and nurturing stronger customer relationships.
• Elevating commissions: An important consequence of an increased LTV among customers is the ability for businesses to raise commissions for their affiliates. By increasing commission rates, businesses can not only attract more affiliates but also motivate existing ones to actively promote their offerings.
• Attracting more traffic: With higher commissions in place, businesses can effectively attract more traffic through their affiliate marketing programs. More traffic translates to a larger audience exposed to the business's products or services.
• Acquiring more customers: With increased traffic and a more effective affiliate marketing strategy, businesses can acquire more customers. This continuous influx of new customers reintroduces them into the optimized customer journey, perpetuating the cycle.
• Continuous optimization: It's crucial to understand that the Loop Method doesn't conclude when new customers are acquired. This ongoing optimization strives to enhance the customer experience further, leading to an even greater increase in their LTV.
• Repeating the loop: The Loop Method is designed for repetition. The ultimate goal is to cycle through these stages multiple times, resulting in a cumulative increase in the LTV of customers and an expanding customer base. This continuous loop reinforces the business's success to increase customer lifetime value.

The Loop Method is a cyclical approach that starts with an optimized customer journey, increases customer LTV, and subsequently raises commissions for affiliates. This, in turn, attracts more traffic, helps acquire more customers, and involves the continuous optimization of the customer journey. Businesses can repeat this loop to continually improve their affiliate marketing efforts and maximize their profitability.

The power of customer lifetime value.

The concept of LTV can be complex and nuanced. However, businesses that understand and leverage it can reap significant benefits. By understanding how much customers are worth at different stages of their journey with the business, companies can identify good and bad affiliates and adjust commissions to strengthen relationships with the best affiliates.

The journey of a customer, from the day they make their first purchase to the day they make their last, is a crucial component of LTV. This journey is under the control of the business and can be optimized to maximize LTV. By crafting a strategic and repeatable customer journey, businesses can improve their relationships with their customers and increase their LTV.

In conclusion, the understanding and harnessing of LTV is a game-changer for businesses, especially those operating online. It allows businesses to optimize their customer acquisition costs, scale their affiliate programs, and ultimately, maximize their profitability. It provides businesses with a roadmap to identify their best affiliates and offers insights into how to strengthen relationships with these affiliates. With LTV, businesses can truly unlock the full potential of their customer base.

Episode timestamp.

Timestamp	Summary
1:03	Introduction to Tyler Ryan, CEO of LTV Numbers, committed to increase customer lifetime value.
1:49	Tyler aims to bring spacecraft precision to online marketing to boost customer lifetime value.
3:14	Discussing live Q&A and the significance of customer lifetime value (LTV) for businesses.
4:11	LTV, measuring lifelong customer spending, explored by Tyler, highlighting its intricacies.
5:30	LTV Numbers' mission: helping businesses understand customer lifetime value to invest in customer acquisition.
8:32	A minimum of 12 months of historical data is crucial for optimizing LTV to increase customer lifetime value.
11:54	Just 1% of professionals grasped LTV's depth, underscoring the need for customer understanding.
14:11	Tyler explains why LTV is essential for affiliate marketing, offering insights to improve affiliate programs.
17:07	LTV curve evaluation aids individualized commission adjustments, facilitating strategic affiliate program scaling to increase customer lifetime value.
19:27	Filtering affiliates tied to customer quality issues helps protect brand integrity and reduce chargebacks, and increase customer lifetime value
20:23	Tyler and Dustin discuss the importance of optimizing the customer journey to increase customer lifetime value.
21:55	Tyler presents a strategic and repeatable customer journey designed to increase customer lifetime value.
25:36	Tyler shares insights on how to make customers more receptive to offers in the second phase of the journey.
27:31	Tyler suggests that an ideal 90-day LTV increase should be 25% from the initial acquisition value.
36:44	Tyler introduces the Lifetime Loop Method, emphasizing the importance of optimizing the customer journey and increasing commissions to attract more customers.
41:15	Dustin playfully teases Tyler about wearing dad gear before having a child, and Tyler shares how he was preparing to be a dad.
43:18	Tyler directs listeners to tryltv.com/pod to access the Scale Ready Scorecard for assessing data visibility and optimizing affiliate programs.

Wrap it up, Dustin.

Tyler Ryan is way ahead of the rest of the affiliate industry in terms of finding the true value of affiliate partners. The customer lifetime value is an underrated and underutilized part of this industry. This is an affiliate marketing trend that will be blowing up over the next few years. Check out LTV Numbers and hire Tyler to find the most valuable partner in your program.