How do Collective Voice links work for my mobile shoppers?

Curious about how your Collective Voice affiliate links work for your mobile shoppers? Need a refresh on best practices to ensure you’re maximizing all affiliate earning opportunities with our mobile tools? We’ll break it down below.

How do Collective Voice links work on mobile devices? 

When it comes to affiliate linking on your mobile devices, Collective Voice links operate using a technology called App-to-App Linking*. This allows a user (your shoppers) to go from the app where your links are shared (e.g. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok), directly to the specific page, product, or content on the shopping app of a supported retailer -  if the app has already been installed, is up to date and is actively used. If your shopper: a) doesn’t have the retailer app installed and/or b) more frequently shops on their mobile web browser, the Collective Voice link will take them to the intended page on the retailer website instead of linking in-app. 

With supported retailers**, we ensure that your links in Collective Voice’s shoppable content tools are optimized for app-to-app linking to continuously provide a seamless shopping experience for your shoppers. Research shows a majority of consumers prefer in-app shopping/checkout over a mobile browser and this optimized linking experience has been proven to show higher conversion rates. One of our retailers’ conversion rates nearly doubled once they enabled the app-to-app linking capability on their end (from 5.22% to 10.23%). 

Collective Voice App-to-App linking makes it even easier for your shoppers to continue their shopping journey, with orders attributed to your original link, driving higher AOV and ultimately, more earnings for you! 

*Please note, we advise leveraging our Shoppable Content Tools (TapTo.Shop, Widgets, Looks, Collections) to best ensure that your shoppers will be driven into the intended shopping apps. With text links, there are additional limitations where retailers will need to further enable the app linking capability from their end. 

**Please refer to our Limitations section for more information on retailers which support Collective Voice’s app-to-app linking. 

Here’s how your mobile shoppers can go from your IG Story directly into a retailer app (for example, Target)! 

What are some best practices to maximize affiliate earnings using App-to-App Linking?

Take advantage of our easy-to-use, creator-friendly tools. 

• TapTo.Shop: This is Collective Voice’s free, customizable link-in-bio content hub where you can authentically showcase all commissionable products, shoppable photos and videos, and links for your audiences to easily discover and shop through. 
  • Pro Tip: Keep adding your Links, Widgets, Looks, and Collections to your TapTo.Shop so your shoppers can easily discover all your content in one place. Then, simply add your TapTo.Shop link to your bio to drive traffic to your shop. 

• Widgets & Looks: These Collective Voice Tools are the easiest way to share out a group of shoppable products, either in a Listicle or photo format. 
  • Widgets are the best way to share content like gift guides, seasonal faves, and top sale items. Currently, Widgets can only be created on desktop. Once a Widget is created, it can be added as a Widget Section to your TapTo.Shop!
  • Looks are the simplest way to share content like #OOTDs, Daily Makeup Looks, and Shop My Room. 
  • Pro Tip: Once you’ve created a List, you can easily convert it to a Widget, or tether the List to a photo to create a Look. Then, Widgets and Looks can be shared out as links to drive your shoppers to, or embedded as code in your ‘personal websites/blogs. 

Keep your audience up to date!

• Show your audiences just how easy it is to shop through your TapTo.Shop so they can experience the most seamless shopping journey, from your aesthetically designed TapTo.Shop, right into a retailer app. 
• Do you share links from one retailer more frequently than others? Remind your shoppers to update your top linked retailer apps so Collective Voice links are more guaranteed to keep shoppers in-app shopping vs. mobile web. 

Refer to Collective Voice’s resources. 

• We recommend checking each retailer’s Special Terms page (found in the Discover > Retailers page) to confirm that purchases made via the retailer’s app are commissionable.

What are some limitations of App-to-App Linking?

While Collective Voice links are designed to drive shoppers into retailer apps, there are some instances where the shopper may still land on mobile web. This can be due to a variety of factors outside of Collective Voice's control:

• Retailers don’t enable links to drive directly into their app. 
  • We’ve included the retailers that do drive into a retailer app below! 
• Shoppers/users don’t have the retailer app downloaded AND up to date.
• If an app is rarely used, the user’s mobile device may temporarily disable links from opening in the app, causing links to open in the browser instead.

Check out the following retailers where app-to-app linking is supported: