The evolution of the COD Ecommerce model in affiliate marketing has been revolutionary in the past few years. This trend has created a new wave of opportunities for both brands and affiliates, providing an efficient, profitable, and scalable means of generating sales and developing businesses.
Recently, Parul Bhargava, Co-Founder & CEO of vCommission, hosted an insightful webinar with affiliate social featuring two professionals from Google: Shrey Kapoor (Affiliate Partnership Lead) and Gunjeeta Jaju (Affiliate Partnership Manager). The session, titled “Rise of Affiliate COD ecommerce,” explored the growing trend of COD in the Indian market and how affiliates can capitalise on it.
This blog takes you through the key takeaways from this session, highlighting the benefits for brands and affiliates, the proven profitability of the COD model, and how Demand Gen can further optimize campaigns. Let’s dive in!
The Birth of COD Ecommerce in India
India’s ecommerce ecosystem has been growing at a fast pace, with a distinct emphasis on the COD model. Although online payments initially became an obstacle for consumers, the entry of India COD ecommerce introduced a smooth trajectory for buyers to pay only after receiving their products. Not only did this minimise the fear of fraud, but ecommerce also became more popularised, particularly in smaller towns and rural regions where credit cards were not widespread.
Cash on delivery in ecommerce helps gain customers’ trust while increasing the company’s customer base. This was further supported by the increasing use of affiliate marketing to attract more customers. Affiliates could promote products via multiple channels and earn commissions on COD sales.
Advantages of the COD Model for Brands
India COD ecommerce has several benefits for brands. By having the products sold by affiliates, companies can expand rapidly and tap into more consumers without the expense of upfront marketing fees. How it works:
- Low Consumer Risk: Because the customer only pays once they have already received the product, consumers are protected against scam orders or non-payment by choosing cash on delivery in ecommerce.
- Ability to Access a Large Base: By leaving the promotional work on marketing through multiple platforms (social sites, blogs, websites) for affiliates, the brands get access to large bases that could not be covered otherwise.
- No Upfront Investment Needed: Conventional ad models require a payment upfront, but COD-based affiliate marketing enables companies to pay after the sale has been completed. This saves them capital and brings in higher profitability.
- More Leeway in Campaigns: Having fewer limitations with the Cash on delivery in ecommerce than other payment options present, brands have the freedom to try innovative campaigns, including video-centric campaigns, offer-based promotion, and bundles, to get sales.
Advantages of the COD Model for Affiliates
Affiliates have a lot to benefit from marketing COD ecommerce products. Among the major advantages are:
- Greater Profitability: The COD model provides an effective and profitable solution for affiliates. Since payment is made on delivery, affiliates are more assured of generating sales without fear of payment fraud or delay.
- Fewer Policy Problems: There are fewer payment dispute and rule conflict issues in the COD model compared to CPS models. This makes it easier for affiliates to optimise their campaigns without dealing with complex policies or compliance matters.
- Less Competition: Since the COD ecommerce model is relatively new in certain areas, there’s not as much competition among affiliates. This allows newcomers to establish a niche for themselves and begin earning commissions without having to deal with considerable competition from well-established marketers.
- Simple Tracking and Optimization: COD order tracking allows affiliates to track orders in real time. With transparency in order staging, affiliates can simply track orders from the moment they are ordered, confirmed, and shipped until the moment they arrive on the customer’s doorstep. Such transparency in India COD ecommerce facilitates the optimisation of campaigns and performance.
vCommission’s Breakthrough Solution for COD Ecommerce
vCommission offers a breakthrough solution for affiliate marketing, particularly for India COD ecommerce. Here’s what vCommission does differently:
- Direct Linking & URL Tracking: vCommission supports direct linking and transparent URL tracking, which means that affiliates can easily track sales and conversions.
- Sub ID Tracking: Sub ID tracking is available for affiliates to track their campaigns in detail through simple yet efficient sub ID tracking, which allows for improved management and optimization of their marketing campaigns.
- Order Staging: vCommission provides an open order staging system:
- Step 1: Order placed
- Step 2: Order confirmed & shipped
- Step 3: Order received
- Fast Payment: vCommission provides fast bill processing, wherein affiliates receive their payments within 7 days after the delivery acknowledgement.
Three Key Affiliate Models for COD Ecommerce
Shrey Kapoor, during the webinar, elaborated on three key models that are popular among affiliates in the India COD ecommerce space:
- Shopify Site Model: This model focuses on creating simple ecommerce sites with 5-10 high-converting products. The approach is video-heavy, and affiliates typically target niche markets that respond well to visual content.
- Coupon/Promo/Comparison Sites for Search-Heavy Traffic: Affiliates targeting search-heavy traffic often create coupon websites that offer discounts or special deals. By incorporating cash on delivery in ecommerce as a payment option, these sites can effectively convert visitors looking for great deals into paying customers.
- Advertorial Style Pages (Video-Heavy): These pages focus on combining editorial content with product promotions. Video plays a key role in engaging the audience, making it easier for affiliates to drive action and sales.
These models allow affiliates to experiment with different strategies and target audiences more effectively. With the flexibility of video-heavy campaigns, affiliates can create compelling content that resonates with consumers and drives higher engagement.
Google’s Video Action Campaigns: A Game Changer for Affiliates
One of the most exciting takeaways from the webinar was the power of video action campaigns (VAC) in driving conversions. Shrey Kapoor discussed how VAC leverages Google and YouTube’s tech capabilities to help affiliates reach their target audience, drive action, and measure success. The platform enables affiliates to run video-driven campaigns that can be automated for greater efficiency.
Shrey said that VAC campaigns will soon be upgraded to Demand Gen campaigns in April 2025. Demand Gen combines Google’s search engine and YouTube’s advanced technologies, making it easier for advertisers to create and convert demand.
Shrey shared that advertisers who added Demand Gen to their search or Performance Max campaigns saw an impressive 14% increase in conversions on average.
Some of the additional features that make Demand Gen more powerful than VAC for affiliates include:
- Channel Control: Affiliates can control where their ads appear, ensuring they reach the right audience.
- Image Ads: In addition to video ads, affiliates can include image ads to diversify their creatives.
- Audience Targeting: Lookalike segments allow affiliates to reach the most relevant audience.
- Maximising Click Bidding: The platform provides tools to optimise bidding strategies for better ROI.
- Creative A/B Testing: Affiliates can test different creatives to determine which ones perform best.
- AI-Generated Image Ads: Google’s AI can now generate image ads based on text prompts, allowing affiliates to create visually compelling ads quickly.
Demand Gen Best Practices for Affiliates
Gunjeeta Jaju took a deep dive into how affiliates can leverage Demand Gen to run successful campaigns. Here are some of the best practices she shared:
- Minimum Viable Requirements for Google Auctions: Build campaigns that meet the minimum requirements to serve in Google auctions. This ensures your ads will be shown to the right audience.
- Optimised Targeting: Use lookalike segments or optimised targeting to increase your chances of reaching the most relevant users.
- Bid and Budget: Set a daily budget of over $100 to enable your campaign to achieve maximum reach and performance.
- Creative Diversity: Utilize at least one image and horizontal and vertical videos to support different devices and ad formats.
- Conversion Tracking: Implement conversion tracking on every page of your website to monitor the success of your campaigns accurately. Additionally, using data-driven attribution (DDA) helps optimise conversions.
- Campaign Optimization: Allow for at least 50 conversions before exiting the learning phase. Also, limit bid changes during the campaign to avoid disrupting the process.
Landing Page Hygiene Guidance
Gunjeeta further emphasised the importance of landing page hygiene, including:
- Affiliates must ensure that their landing pages are well-designed and free from issues such as broken links or redirects, 404 errors or pages that don’t load properly, and inaccessible navigation.
- Ensure the domain owner and the paying entity match in the account.
- Have a detailed privacy policy page that includes all user data that is being collected.
- The website must have the name of the registered company along with an authentic address and phone number.
- A website should not be an exact replica of another website owned by the same or a different company.
- All the information on the footer should be clearly visible.
- Must-Have- Shipping Times, Return & Refund policy mentioned.
- Use corporate email IDs for all business-related communications.
- Include trademark symbols only if you have a valid certificate.
- Check that your Google Tag implementation is functioning properly.
Concluding Thoughts
India COD ecommerce growth is generating a treasure trove of opportunities for affiliates. Affiliates are well-positioned to benefit from this new market because of the low level of competition, the significant potential for revenue, and the effectiveness of tools like Google’s Demand Gen. Implementing best practices and keeping up with the latest technologies can assist affiliates in optimising their campaigns, constructing conversions, and maximising their revenue potential in 2025 and beyond.
This is the ideal moment for affiliates who want to be successful in this field to use the powerful tools provided by platforms like Google, optimise their landing pages, and embrace the potential of video-driven campaigns.
Key Questions Asked in the Webinar
Q. What’s the basic structure for launching new campaigns?
Answer- Shrey Kapoor suggests that one should launch several campaigns for several products. Demand Gen allows you to upload all creatives to one campaign, and the system will optimise and test them automatically. If a creative does better, it gets promoted to a higher rank. With Demand Gen, most of the optimisation is done by the system.
Q. When you refer to company information, does it mean the company of the product?
Answer- No, Shrey explained that it’s not the company that produces the product but the owner of the domain and the paying account in the Google Ads account. The affiliate marketing campaign needs to be set as the affiliate as the paying account and the owner of the landing page.
Q. Do you recommend testing products with a $ 100-per-day budget for 2-3 weeks?
Answer- Shrey recommended that testing a product with a $100 per day budget is best to get sufficient data. For products with lower volumes of conversion, testing 2-3 products can provide better learning.
Q. Can we test Demand Gen for health products? Any restrictions?
Answer- Gunjeeta Jaju reaffirmed that any product’s vertical policy does not change. You must be careful to comply with the guidelines while running health-related campaigns. Health insurance addressed to the United States must hold a G2 certificate, though search campaigns could be used when moderately restricted health products are available, although differences might apply.
