Affiliate Metrics Mindset: Why Keep EPL in Mind  and What It’s All About

Having a metrics mindset is critical for affiliate marketers. To do things right, the initial assessment of your creos should be based on CTR, pre-land and landing pages on CR (%), and the adequacy of traffic prices on CPM.

There are many metrics to consider, but there’s one that many marketers somehow fail to understand, utilize — and then accurately calculate their budget and breakeven point. This metric is EPL (earn per lead).

What is EPL and how to calculate this metric?

EPL shows how much money an affiliate makes from a single lead. EPL for an affiliate marketer is equal to CPL (cost per lead) for a broker or affiliate network. For you, those are earnings. For your partners, spendings.   

That’s why the payment model based on lead rates is called CPL (Cost Per Lead).

But affiliates must remember that for them, it’s actually EPL (Earn Per Lead) that shows the profit, while CPL represents the amount they spent to acquire that lead.

To calculate your EPL, you need to divide your total earnings by the number of leads. In a lead-based payment model, this amount is typically provided directly by the broker or affiliate network.

When working with CPA, the math becomes slightly more complex. In retrospect, when the traffic has already been generated, you can still divide the earnings by the number of leads to calculate your EPL. 

But, if you need to estimate your EPL beforehand, you will also need to consider the conversion rate (reg2dep, %) to get a rough idea.

In that case, EPL = CPA * CR (reg2dep, %) / 100%.

For example, with a CPA rate of $1,000 and a registration-to-deposit conversion rate of 10%, the EPL would be as follows: EPL = 1000 * 10/100 = $100.

EPL is an antagonistic metric to CPL. Calculating one without the other is meaningless. The difference between EPL and CPL reveals the profitability and overall effectiveness of your campaign.

CPL is usually indicated directly in the advertising account as ‘cost per lead’. For more accurate calculations, add all additional expenses (accounts, proxies, landing pages, creos, etc.) divided by the number of acquired leads.

For example, if the EPL is $100 and each lead costs $50, and the total for promotions and other costs amount to $1,000, with 100 leads acquired, the resulting CPL would be as follows: CPL = 50 + 1000/100 = $60.

The difference between EPL and CPL is $40, which represents the net profit per lead. From there, you can calculate the ROI: ROI = (EPL – CPL) * 100% / CPL = 40 * 100% / 60 = 66.67%.

Why EPL matters?

Since the conversion rate is never stable, when working on a CPA basis, you can only get an approximate EPL. If you want accurate numbers, you should consider the cost and revenue per each deposit.

But in the cryptocurrency industry, the lead processing cycle up to them making a deposit sometimes takes months.

Meanwhile, new leads are coming in every day. The average CR (reg2dep, %) can be obtained from the affiliate network or broker, taking into account the specific funnel used and the call center that follows up with the leads.

This way, even before launching the traffic, an affiliate understands how much they are willing to invest in traffic and expenses for lead acquisition. The main goal is to keep EPL higher than CPL.

Even if no deposits are made, you can still figure out whether you’re running a profitable campaign. If the potential EPL is higher than CPL, keep the campaign running and continue driving traffic, knowing that it will eventually convert into deposits. Maybe, a bit later than usual. 

If you do not take EPL into account, the whole process will become an endless cycle of turning campaigns on and off after receiving a few deposits. What’s the point? 

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Calculating and comparing EPL and CPL is very important, especially in the crypto industry where each deposit can bring in real profits and impact the actual ROI. But waiting for deposits sometimes takes weeks or even months.

Without considering EPL and CPL, you cannot see the full picture: how effective are your lead generation efforts? 

And if you don’t see that, there’s no way to can make informed decisions about pausing or scaling your advertising campaigns.