How to launch the best affiliate marketing program, do you need the best affiliates, or the best affiliate program marketing software to be successful?
In the era when technology is increasingly driving the market, most marketing leaders understand that analyzing, purchasing, and implementing the correct marketing technologies and then designing strategies around them is one of their most critical tasks. This is especially true when it comes to scaling using affiliate marketing software.
To avoid getting started with the wrong affiliate software, here are the must-haves when it comes to finding the best fit for your business, but first, let’s find out if it’s the right choice for you.
Is an affiliate program suitable for your business?
Affiliate marketing can work for you, whether you sell physical goods or a digital subscription service. Affiliate programs, on the other hand, are a little more specific.
In order for an affiliate program to work, your company must meet a lot of rules.
What should you keep in mind when picking software for your affiliate program?
An affiliate program will be a good idea if you want people to spread the word about your business through their own networks and bring traffic to your website.
However, you must be willing to pay affiliates a cash commission (or shop credit) for each sale they deliver to your door.
Affiliate programs, which pay a commission on every sale, are ideal if your company has a strong client retention rate.
You’ll be able to provide greater commission payouts and encourage higher-quality affiliates to join your program because you won’t have to spend as much money on customer acquisition expenditures.
Remember, that affiliate programs are highly effective for eCommerce and online subscription businesses, especially those with larger profit margins (as opposed to physical goods).
How to launch the best affiliate marketing program?
While the premise appears simple, beginning and operating a successful affiliate program can be difficult.
After all, you’ll need to discover and educate your ideal affiliates, settle on the right commission rate, and devise a strategy for tracking their progress. You’ll also need to ensure that they follow your program’s regulations.
Examine your competitors’ affiliate programs.
You’ve certainly conducted a general study to discover your business’s strengths and shortcomings compared to those of your competitors. It is time to study your competitors’ affiliate programs as well.
Even before you develop your own, a specific examination of the available affiliate programs can let you know where you stand and allow you to position your program competitively. After all, you’re also competing for affiliates.
Choose the best affiliate commission
Use the results of your competition study to help you structure your own affiliate program. Your commission structure, or how to pay affiliates, will be one of your most important strategic decisions.
Even if you’ve followed different commission rules in rival programs, you should only compensate affiliates if a sale is completed through their affiliate link. (Pay no attention to impressions or clicks!)
First, select whether you’ll pay a flat fee for each sale or a portion of each sale affiliates make. You’ll also have to decide whether to pay in cash or with shop credit.
A percentage commission paid in cash is typically the most appealing to affiliates.
Next, decide on the exact commission you’ll offer affiliates. While you want it to be competitive compared to other affiliate programs, remember that one-upping your competition isn’t always the ideal plan.
You must also consider your company’s needs. Consider your customer acquisition costs, retention rate, and average client lifetime value.
Begin by looking for affiliates.
Now that you’ve created your own program structure, the next step is to find affiliates. At this point, you must decide whether to use an existing affiliate network or to create your own select affiliate network.
Whatever method you use to find affiliates, you’ll need an affiliate tracking approach that allows you to enroll affiliates, set up affiliate links, and track an affiliate’s progress. Affiliate program software or a current affiliate network solution will be used for this. You’ll learn more about both of these below.
➤ Where to find affiliates for your affiliate program? Full guide.
Affiliate marketing software: what to look for in a vendor?
When navigating the landscape of affiliate marketing software suppliers, it’s critical to understand what to look for. To avoid the risks of starting with the wrong affiliate program marketing software, here are the six “must-haves” when it comes to finding the best fit for your needs:
1 Customized registration
The ability to own, brand, and modify the recruitment and registration experience for the affiliates you want and need while being faithful to your brand. Control who has access, when they get it, and to what parts of your program. This is generally called white label software.
This feature is critical for providing your affiliates with the assets, insights, and data they require to enhance interaction. This will help eliminate repetitive requests and streamline operations. The more material your affiliates will have – the better.
3 Enterprise security and fraud detection
In today’s internet environment, you can never be too vigilant. The platform in which you invest should be able to provide comprehensive control over terms and conditions while identifying any suspicious behavior and even banning affiliates. For international brands that need to be GDPR-compliant, your provider should know all about the rules and regulations that apply to your business.
As much as we’d like to believe that all affiliates are honest, some marketers try to defraud the brands they work with by sending spam traffic or placing bogus purchases that qualify for commission. Check to see if your affiliate software can detect fraud and help you if this happens.
4 Automatic payments
The ability to offer real-time or planned automated commission and payment allocations to your affiliates is a feature your partners will appreciate—no more manual checks, CSV files, or logging into multiple reports or systems.
5 General automation
The best affiliate program marketing software should offer automation in all aspects, period. Several platforms employ automation to issue affiliate invitations, onboard new influencers, and payout commissions without the need for human participation. In other words, your affiliate marketing program operates on autopilot.
➤ Read more about marketing automation
6 Flexible Commission Structure and Tiered Rewards
Do you want to pay out differently based on sales volume, income thresholds, or individual purchases? That shouldn’t be an issue if your affiliate tracking software allows you to create alternative reward models based on affiliate type, sales made, or special promotions.
Coupon codes, cash bonuses, percentage commissions—there are numerous ways to compensate affiliates for directing customers your way. Choose affiliate marketing software that allows you to offer a variety of commission plans, including tier commissions.
7 Multiple Campaigns
To grow, you’ll need to be able to set up different programs, commissions, or revenue sharing for each affiliate campaign or segment while still making sure that the lead, sale, and commission are still tracked.
8 Compatibility with online stores
Whatever tool you use, make sure it interfaces with your eCommerce platform (much better if there’s a Shopify app for it). There are plenty of e-commerce stores, the most popular are:
- Shopify
- Magento Commerce
- BigCommerce
- WooCommerce
- Salesforce
- Squarespace
- Wix
9 A breakdown of affiliates.
Any effective affiliate marketing program clearly understands who its top affiliates are. Choose an affiliate management solution that displays valuable metrics for each affiliate you work with, such as how many sales and clicks they’ve created and the conversion rate of their traffic. (Compare this to the usual affiliate marketing conversion rate of 0.5 to 1%.)
10 Cookie configuration options.
What is the time span between an affiliate’s audience seeing your site and making a purchase? High-ticket items typically have a longer purchasing process, but low-cost, trending products can be converted into a single session. Choose affiliate tracking software that lets you change the cookie window attribution based on how long it takes you to make a sale.
11 Payment options
Look for affiliate marketing software that syncs with your business bank account or PayPal to simplify and expedite the process. Ideally, you should be able to pay your affiliates with just a few clicks. There should be no spreadsheets or manual payments.
12 CRM is built-in.
Sending seasonal promos, marketing messaging, and new product launch information assists affiliates in creating their own campaigns. Choose a product that includes email marketing and direct messaging, and you’ll be able to remove one piece of software from your toolbox.
Looking for the best affiliate program marketing software for your business?
If, after reading all of the above, you only got further confused, not knowing where to start looking for the best affiliate program marketing software for your business – We have a great offer for you – give Scaleo a free try.
Scaleo is an affiliate marketing program software that tracks sales data from multiple sources, including referrals and affiliates. Scaleo’s greatest features are designed for established or scaling eCommerce stores and affiliate networks, including:
- Reporting on click-to-conversion. With this feature, you can prevent affiliate fraud and link abuse. When something appears to be questionable, you will receive an alert and see a red dot near that conversion in your dashboard.
- Customize your commission options. Pay out big commissions to your top affiliates, or give varied payments for different goods.
- Pay affiliates. Using Scaleo’s PayPal integration, you may send bulk payouts to affiliates at the end of the month. Alternatively, if you like to give gift cards as an incentive for clients to promote their friends, send qualifying affiliates unique codes through email.
- Support for multiple languages. Are you looking to broaden your audience and reach out to overseas customers? Make use of affiliates who have audiences in those areas.
- White-label dashboard. Connect your affiliate dashboard to your online store and include your brand name, logo, and custom colors.
- Real-time monitoring. With real-time reporting, you can instantly identify which affiliates are driving sales. There will be no more waiting to see if the folks they referred end up purchasing.
Conclusion
Today, we brought the top affiliate marketing software to your attention. When it comes to launching an affiliate program for your business, there are numerous choices to consider. There may not be such a thing as the best affiliate program marketing software because everyone has different needs and what suits one business may not suit another. Check the checklist at the start of this post to see if your next tool provides everything you need to operate a successful referral program. The brands that recognize the importance of employing the best practices when it comes to building affiliate marketing software to automate and scale their processes receive the best results. To grow your business, you need to build authentic relationships with people from your affiliate program who are in line with your business goals, but in order to make the process of tracking and paying out commissions – perfectly smooth – you need the best affiliate program software for your business. I hope this post managed to answer some of the questions you may have had.
Last Updated on August 25, 2023
