Affiliate marketing extensions for Magento are the most wanted add-on for this popular e-commerce platform. You have launched your online store and made a few initial sales, but now you want to expand! How can you do that? By adding an affiliate extension to your Magento eCommerce store!

Affiliate Marketing Extension for Magento - Affiliate Marketing Extension for Magento

When money is tight and you are counting every dollar for your Magento store, it can be scary to justify a big investment in advertising.

That’s why many online merchants are looking for a cheaper, lower-risk way to drive more potential customers to their store: Affiliate Marketing!

With a successful affiliate marketing program, your partners do the advertising for you. Best of all, it’s completely free. You only pay your affiliates (who send customers to your Magento store) when those customers make a purchase.

In this article, you will learn not only what affiliate marketing is, but also how an affiliate program can significantly boost your Magento store and how you can start affiliate marketing right away.

What is an affiliate program?

An affiliate program is a paid online advertising strategy where affiliates promote your products and bring potential buyers to your e-commerce website.
Everyone benefits from this.

You get traffic to your Magento store with almost zero initial investment, and your affiliates get rewarded for every customer who purchases products through their link. 

Who are the affiliates?

Affiliates are advocates of your brand and/or your Magento store.

Affiliate Marketing Extension for Magento - Affiliate Marketing Extension for Magento

They promote your goods to their audience via their social media, website, ads or blog links. In return for their contribution, affiliates receive an apartment commission or a percentage of each sale they make.

Affiliates usually (and ideally) recommend merchandise that fits their niche or desires.

For example, let us say you sell eco-friendly, biodegradable diapers. Your perfect match is an environmentally-conscious “mommy blogger.” You (the diaper seller) and your affiliate (the mommy blogger) are targeting the same audience (environmentally conscious young moms).

You need to promote your affiliate program to attract affiliates who have the same target audience. Your affiliates need to market your products to their target audience and drive potential customers to your Magento store. The more closely your target audience is connected to your affiliate’s target audience, the greater the achievement will be for both of you.

Is affiliate marketing the best approach for you?

Although affiliate services are likely to pay off due to the lack of initial investment, some businesses are better suited to affiliate marketing than others.

Businesses with limited profit margins may be less effective at marketing your affiliate program. Giving commissions may not be worth it if your profit margins are too low to justify further profit loss.

Benefits of an affiliate marketing program

As we have already mentioned, Magento store owners benefit from affiliate marketing because it is a low-risk marketing strategy; you pay your affiliates only when you make a successful sale.

While it’s a great advantage that you do not have to spend a lot of money to get your Magento affiliate program up and running, how else can your Magento store benefit from an affiliate program?

Push sales effectively

Yes. With affiliate marketing software for Magento, you can effectively boost your sales.

Affiliate marketing is perfect because it’s low-risk, but it’s also considered a high reward. Low risk + high reward = double win!

Can Affiliate Marketing Make You Rich?

Affiliate marketing is responsible for up to 16% of eCommerce sales in the US, making it one of the top 4 eCommerce revenue sources.

Affiliate marketing is so successful because it works!

Why is affiliate marketing successful at driving sales?

Nearly 75% of shoppers visit up to 3 non-retail websites before making a purchase decision. Shoppers want to hear feedback from other people, especially the people they trust, until they are sure they will make a purchase. This is where affiliates come in.

More loyalty to your brand

Affiliate add-ons for Magento help with brand awareness and loyalty. Your affiliates usually already have built relationships with their readers/viewers.

When affiliates promote your products to their audience, their audience is much more likely to trust your brand. They trust the affiliate not to deceive them and lead them to a meaningful purchase.

For example, if a pizza manufacturer told you that their new pizza was “the best pizza you have ever tasted,” would you believe it? What if your favorite food blogger told you the same thing? You’d probably click on the blogger’s link and order the pizza. The blogger has established some trust with you and transfers that trust to the pizza brand as well.

The fear of regretting the purchase is one of the main reasons why people do not make a purchase.

No one wants to waste their hard-earned money or thinks that the purchase was a mistake. Affiliate marketing makes it easier to overcome the fear of buying and also helps you make more sales.

Increase your scope

Good affiliate software for Magento would have an army of affiliates promoting the Magento store worldwide.

Read also: White Label Affiliate Marketing Software – Why Is It Important?

Instead of spending a lot of time and money building your online presence with a handful of people, affiliate marketing gives your brand potential access to the entire audience of every partner you work with. Suddenly, your Magento store is open to thousands of customers that your brand could never have reached.

Your partners have invested time and resources into building their markets, and you’ll benefit from their reach.

How to get started with your affiliate program?

For a start: what are your company objectives?

The following is a list of company objectives that a good Magento affiliate program could fairly accomplish:

  • Increase brand recognition and reach;
  • Increase conversions;
  • Increase traffic to your Magento store;

Identifying which of these objectives is most important to your particular company will help you set your Magento affiliate program’s performance criteria.

What is the estimated scale of your affiliate program?

How many affiliates do you want to include in your affiliate program? Keep in mind that managing a larger number of affiliates requires more time and more resources.

Do not have a lot of time to invest in your affiliate program? Then you could try to attract a few great affiliates that are closely related to your niche, rather than having many affiliates that might generate fewer sales per person. The planned size of your affiliate program will also have an impact on the Magento affiliate app you use.

Some apps (especially the free ones) limit the number of affiliate partners you can have. You need to take this into account when deciding which affiliate app is right for your business.

What Options Do you Have (brand advocates/influencers)?

Do you have a list of brand ambassadors or influencers who might be interested in joining your affiliate program? If so, excellent! Let them know specifically about joining your affiliate program.

If not, you need to promote your affiliate program to your target audience. You can reach your audience through social media, email or your own Magento website. Regular buyers of your Magento store can be great advocates for your brand.

Choosing the right applicants for your affiliate program is crucial to its success.

How are you going to reward your affiliates?

Although most affiliates receive a fixed amount/percentage per sale, exclusive offers or free merchandise can also be used as additional rewards.

Keep in mind that while affiliate marketing can be beneficial to you and your affiliates, you also need to convince potential affiliates to join your affiliate program.

Creating good incentives will make your affiliate program more attractive to potential affiliates (especially if you are in a competitive niche).

Affiliate programs with generous incentives are more likely to attract known affiliates who are able to bring consistent revenue to your business. It also shows that your Magento store is trustworthy and confident in prospective partners.

Remember that you must have a large profit margin to guarantee a generous affiliate incentive.

A step-by-step guide to adding an affiliate program to your Magento store.

Now, we’ll take you through the step-by-step phase of launching your Magento affiliate program.

1. Choose an affiliate software and integrate it with Magento

As you probably know, there are a lot of powerful Magento affiliate apps that can help you improve your Magento sales. Did you know that there are even Magento applications to help you build an affiliate program?

affiliate marketing software for Magento

Making up your mind about which affiliate app to choose for your Magento store can be difficult. As you can guess, we recommend Scaleo affiliate marketing software.

Scaleo – Affiliate Software for Magento

Scaleo is a popular affiliate software for many store owners. It can be quickly set up and incorporated into Magento stores via API and offers an easy-to-use dashboard for affiliate management.

There are many key benefits of Scaleo, which you can check out in the features section. However, among the top benefits are:

  • Instant access to the demo,
  • Flexible pricing structure,
  • Paying only for conversions (not traffic volume or clicks), and
  • Super-extensive dashboards with dozens of data points and statistics.
Affiliate Marketing Extension for Magento - Affiliate Marketing Extension for Magento

Need help integrating Scaleo with your Magento store? Don’t hesitate to contact us and our support team will be happy to assist you.

2. Promoting your affiliate program

Once you’ve set up your Scaleo affiliate app (or any other), it’s time to employ affiliates to join your program.

Unfortunately, affiliates will not be racing out of the blue to join the program. You will need to advertise your affiliate program to your audience across different platforms and channels or reach out to brand supporters and influencers to find affiliates for your program.

Promote your affiliate program to your audience

You may wish to promote your affiliate program through:

  • posts on your social media accounts, 
  • emails to your subscribers, 
  • or a link to the program overview page on your website.

Make sure that the ads demonstrate the benefits of your program to encourage future affiliates to join. 

  • What kind of commission is allocated to affiliates in your program? 
  • What benefits are available to affiliates that join your program? 

People want to know if your affiliate program is worth their time and effort.

Your ads can also provide details about your affiliate program’s reputation or your affiliate website to attract potential affiliates.

Reaching out to specific affiliates.

You can also reach out to others who have the same audience or interest to see if they are interested in joining your affiliate program. This is another productive way to expand the reach of your affiliate program.

For example, let us say you sell trendy dog collars. Then you need to search for trending dog accounts on Instagram where you can showcase your product.

You may not have contact with people (or their furry friends) who do not know your brand and products. In this case, you need to share the specifics and benefits of your affiliate program and the details of your brand to attract these potential partners to your program.

3. Recruiting affiliates

Once affiliates join your affiliate program, they will need resources and promotional material for the program and your brand, as well as rules and restrictions.

  • What are the rules of your affiliate program that affiliates would need to follow when producing promotional content? 
  • What do you recommend your affiliates do to make your program a success? 
  • How do affiliates keep track of their referrals? 
  • What will affiliates be paid when the customer is effectively referred? 
  • What are the brand values you want your affiliates to express in their posts?

You may also want to provide affiliates with pre-approved content to benefit their audiences. This could include graphics, pre-written social posts, or a list of hashtags that you want to include in each message.

Be transparent with your affiliates about your objectives and provide them with the resources they need to succeed in your affiliate program.

4. Manage your affiliate program

Once you get your affiliates on board, you should track their progress to see the effectiveness of your affiliate program. This is where affiliate management comes into play.

Find out which of your affiliates are making the most sales. You should look at the factors that make these affiliates so popular so that you can attract similar affiliates to your program in the future.

In addition to affiliate revenue, you should also consider the following criteria when reviewing the success of your program and its affiliates:

  • Average order size of purchases attributable to affiliate referrals relative to normal sales
  • Payouts for your affiliates
  • Ratio of payment-to-sales
  • Affiliate turnover rate

Conclusion – Let’s get started now!

You have heard about affiliate marketing, about how affiliate marketing can increase sales and traffic to your business, and how to get started setting up an affiliate program in your business. Now it’s time to take advantage of all this experience and get started integrating affiliate software into your Magento store! Integrating affiliate software into Magento is easy if you use referral software like Scaleo.

Magento affiliate marketing is becoming more and more popular, and from time to time a new affiliate marketing app for Magento comes out.

Scaleo is an award-winning, certified Magento partner, and our affiliate marketing software experts are always here to help you along the way!

Affiliate Marketing Extension for Magento - Affiliate Marketing Extension for Magento

Last Updated on January 19, 2024

Author

Elizabeth is a Senior Content Manager at Scaleo. Currently enjoying the life in Prague and sharing professional affiliate marketing tips. She's been in the online marketing business since 2006 and gladly shares all her insights and ideas on this blog.