A growing number of brands are adopting affiliate management solutions to tap consumers as marketers of their products and services. This comes amid the growing influence of public feedback on consumers' purchase decisions.
Through affiliate programs, customers who patronize a company's products or services can be rewarded financially for making recommendations (through their websites or other platforms) that lead to a sale. Meanwhile, merchants or vendors (also called publishers) can track the performance of these partners or affiliates. Based on the latest statistics, sixteen percent of today's e-commerce sales come from affiliate marketing.
Top Affiliate Management Software
Here are 21 of the best affiliate management software solutions that you can consider to grow your business.
1. Upfluence
Best features
UpFluence is affiliate management software that amplifies the ROI of your affiliate programs threefold. The platform acts as a hub for all your brand’s affiliate operations – from identifying potential affiliates to scrutinizing their content’s impact. This user-friendly, robust platform is designed to uplift your sales while minimizing your workload.
Its unique, branded landing page enables affiliates to register for your affiliate program without any hassle, while the platform’s comprehensive influencer profile database assists you in inviting them to your affiliate initiative.
As an affiliate manager, you can confidently track affiliates’ revenue. The software ensures accurate sales attribution through individual affiliate links, monitoring orders, and commission calculation. With the Stream tool, you can oversee your campaign’s overall performance and calculate your affiliate program’s ROI meticulously.
UpFluence simplifies the process of affiliate payment with automatic custom commission calculation, and the ability to process multiple payments at once. Collecting payment documentation and issuing international payments becomes a breeze, promoting a smoother affiliate relationship.
The platform offers you the ability to hire the best affiliates effortlessly, providing affiliate contract templates and influencer outreach email templates, streamlining the hiring process. You can track sales and ROI automatically and gather campaign results in a custom dashboard, helping you make data-driven decisions. It gives you a clear insight into which influencers generate the most clicks with individual tracking links, presenting a clear overview of your total clicks & views, click-through rate, and influencer engagement rate.
Pricing
Upfluence offers its services through a subscription model, providing multiple customizable modules tailored to your needs. Pricing details are available upon request.
Key Features: Influencer Search & Discovery, Relationship Management, Campaign Management, Third Party Analytics, Automated Recruiting, Influencer Lifecycle Management, Team Collaboration Tools, Content Review, Campaign Reporting, Audience Analysis, E-commerce Tools, Product/Gifting Tools, Payment Processing, Social Listening, Affiliate Management, Affiliate Campaigns,
Channels: Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Twitch, Tiktok, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs
2. Levanta
Best Features
Levanta.io is ingeniously designed to streamline the affiliate management process, focusing on fostering profitable collaborations between Amazon sellers and a network of influential creators and affiliates.
At the core of Levanta.io’s offerings is its seamless one-click Amazon integration, allowing you to effortlessly link your Amazon store with the platform. This integration paves the way for advanced performance tracking and reporting, ensuring every aspect of your affiliate partnerships is monitored for optimal efficiency and profitability.
What sets Levanta.io apart is its Creator Marketplace, a dynamic feature that connects you with a diverse pool of content creators and influencers. This marketplace is complemented by daily creator invites, enabling you to strategically expand your affiliate network with precision. Additionally, Levanta.io simplifies the financial aspects of affiliate management through streamlined creator payments and comprehensive 1099 reporting and filing.
The platform’s custom commission structures, including the option for private commissions, provide a flexible approach to incentivizing your affiliates. Moreover, Levanta.io enhances your brand’s visibility with a branded creator sign-up page and featured product listings, ensuring that your products stand out in the crowded Amazon marketplace.
Pricing
Levanta.io offers two main pricing plans:
- Standard Plan: $150/month or $1,440/year, plus 5% of affiliate sales revenue.
- Levanta Gold Plan: $750/month, plus 3.5% of affiliate sales revenue.
- Enterprise: price is available upon request.
3. UpPromote
Best features
UpPromote is an all-in-one automatic affiliate/referral marketing software solution aimed specifically at Shopify merchants. To date, more than 115,000 affiliates have been onboarded and over 193 million clicks recorded. These impressive results are thanks to a number of easy-to-use features that make it simple to get started with affiliate marketing and grow your team.
Its tracking system deserves special mention. With the help of real-time data, you can rest assured knowing that the data you collect is up to date and accurate. Then, to help you make sense of this data, you can visualize it in graphs, making it much easier to analyze the performance of your affiliates.
Another feature that stands out is its customization. You can, for example, customize the registration form before you invite affiliates. Other key elements that you can customize include email templates, affiliate links, and all other marketing resources shared with affiliates.
Pricing
In addition to its Free plan, it offers 3 subscription plans:
- Growth: $24.99/month for up to 300 review referral orders per month
- Professional: $74.99/month for up to 600 review referral orders per month
- Enterprise: $166.99/month for unlimited review referral orders per month
4. Refersion
Best features
Refersion is an all-in-one affiliate marketing solution that lets you recruit, manage, and monitor your partners and affiliate marketing programs. It offers solutions for the following:
- Ambassador Marketing
Refersion helps you manage your brand ambassadors by letting you track each ambassador and affiliate. Plus, it helps makes online payments faster and more convenient so you can pay your ambassadors on time. - Influencer Marketing
Easily scale your influencer marketing program and manage it end-to-end. Keep track of each of your campaigns using Refersion’s tracking features, which generate reports so you can see the bigger picture and make informed decisions in scaling your influencer campaigns. - Affiliate Marketing
Build better relationships with your affiliates by giving them a better experience. You can use Refersion to find and recruit the best affiliates by creating a self-registration page that you can add to your website. It also comes with an eCommerce Affiliate Discovery feature that lets you expand your affiliate networks and makes it more convenient for you to find and recruit the best affiliates.
Refersion lets use PayPal, Stripe, and ACH to make timely payments to your brand ambassadors and other partners. Its Refersion Pay feature makes it possible for you to schedule payments or make direct payments and lets you offer multiple payment options. Plus, you can manage tax information using the platform.
The platform also lets you build custom campaigns and makes onboarding your partners easier. It lets you offer several reward or commission structures, including tiered commission structures and bonus rewards (available for enterprise plans).
You get access to a dashboard that lets you easily monitor all your campaigns and partnerships. Aside from this central dashboard, you also get individual dashboards to track each affiliate, ambassador, or influencer. Perhaps best of all, Refersion is compliant with GDPR and CCPA regulations.
It integrates with all major eCommerce platforms and marketing apps, including Amazon, Shopify, Salesforce, and WooCommerce. Aside from giving you access to more than 30 turnkey integrations, you can also select from over 2000 app integrations.
Pricing
- Professional: at $99 per month, you can get up to 50 monthly order conversions. You can get a free 14-day trial to get a feel of how Refersion can work for your business.
- Business: at $249 per month, you can get up to 200 monthly order conversions.
- Enterprise: price is available upon request.
5. Tracknow
Best Features
Tracknow emerges as a premier affiliate management software designed to revolutionize your affiliate marketing efforts with its comprehensive suite of solutions. This platform is meticulously crafted to cater to a wide range of industries, including eCommerce, services, partner affiliate networks, and Forex brokerage, offering tailored solutions to meet your specific needs. Tracknow stands out for its ability to set up industry-specific partner programs quickly, enabling you to extend your marketing reach with precision and efficiency.
Tracknow simplifies the management of complex affiliate networks with an easy-to-use interface that requires no technical knowledge to navigate. Its real-time tracking dashboard offers a comprehensive view of all affiliate activities, ensuring you have the finger on the pulse of your marketing campaigns. The software also offers customization options, allowing you to brand your affiliate portals with your logo and theme colors, along with a free SSL setup for domain security.
The software’s unique features, such as offline coupon tracking and multi-level marketing (MLM) tools, enable you to expand your affiliate networks and incentivize sales through innovative strategies. With unlimited creatives, advanced commission rules, and sophisticated fraud detection capabilities, Tracknow provides a secure and dynamic environment for affiliate management to thrive.
Integration with major eCommerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento, alongside payment processing giants like PayPal, ensures seamless operation within existing business ecosystems. Tracknow’s API further enhances its adaptability, allowing for custom integrations and data management.
Pricing
Tracknow offers three eCommerce and Affiliate Network plans:
- Small Business: $71/month for unlimited sales and affiliates with 5 domains
- Enterprise: $224/month for unlimited sales and affiliates with 20 domains
- Network: $314/month for unlimited sales, affiliate network features and with 1000 domains
6. Trackdesk
Best Features
Meet Trackdesk, an innovative and user-centric affiliate management solution tailored to accommodate eCommerce, SaaS, brands, and advertising networks. Trackdesk streamlines the management of your affiliate, referral, and partner programs, empowering your business with valuable insights, flexibility, and scalable growth through a single unified platform. You can manage an unlimited number of affiliates and track up to 10 million monthly tracking requests.
The software is user-centric and easy to navigate, even for those new to affiliate management. It allows for personalized offers and payments based on location, catering to the diverse needs of your affiliates. Trackdesk also offers customizable commission groups, which help keep various affiliate tiers well-organized.
Easy integration with popular tech stacks ensures a smooth onboarding process, and the platform provides onboarding support to guide you in setting up your affiliate program.
Pricing
Trackdesk provides 5 packages:
- Free
- Starter: $159/month
- Business: $249/month
- Enterprise: $416/month
- Network: $416/month
You can save an additional 20% on annual subscription.
7. Kartra
Best features
This platform is virtually a one-stop-shop for marketers as it offers campaign development, webpage building, email marketing, affiliate management, and more. Kartra’s affiliate management component allows you to customize a sign-up questionnaire for screening affiliates, set commission rates and payment options, as well as design affiliate portals and landing pages. You can also enjoy real-time tracking of each affiliate’s performance.
Kartra pays a 40% commission to affiliates through PayPal or Stripe when their referrals upgrade or renew their contract with the platform. Meanwhile, the commission is worth 10% on indirect referrals such as joint ventures. A JV affiliate has a network of affiliates joining Kartra under your name.
Pricing
- Free Trial
- Starter at $99/month for up to 2,500 leads
- Growth at $189/month for up to 12,500 leads
- Professional for $429/month for up to 25,000 leads
8. PartnerStack
Best features
This tool is designed for the use of software as a service (SaaS) companies. Partnerstack connects you with affiliates specializing in SaaS product promotion. More than 800,000 affiliates are waiting to learn about your brand in the PartnerStack Marketplace.
It lets you customize referral links featuring your brand name or social media handle, which affiliates can use on their website or other online channels. Partnerstack also allows affiliates to create their links and track their effectiveness.
PartnerStack helps you automate onboarding for affiliates and give them access to marketing tools and referral documents to raise their chances of sales success. While you and your affiliates can independently learn about the software at their own pace, a Partnerstack onboarding consultant and customer success manager are on standby to guide you through setup and training.
Meanwhile, the system sends you a billing statement to remind you about payouts to send to your affiliates, who can withdraw their commissions using PayPal or Stripe.
Pricing
Partnerstack’s payment plans are customized for each customer. Merchants need to get in touch with a Partnerstack representative to get their specific rates.
9. Rewardful
Best features
As a certified Stripe partner, this SSL-encrypted software only creates affiliate programs using the said online payment processing platform.
Its Affiliate Finder helps you find potential affiliates from the web instead of a marketplace database. It has its own emailing solution as well as integrations with services like Drip, MailerLite, ConvertKit, and more. Moreover, you can customize your affiliate dashboard to feature your company’s logo and colors.
You can choose from its several commission models, such as fixed-amount or percentage-based commissions, one-time or recurring commissions, and so on. Both you and your affiliate get an e-mail notification when the latter earns a commission. You can also program it to handle refunds.
Meanwhile, affiliates can get support from its A/B Testing feature, which helps them find out the best lead-generating links.
Pricing
Rewardful has a free 14-day trial period. You can later upgrade into any of its four packages:
- Starter ($49 per month with no transaction fee, for brands earning up to $7,500 in revenues)
- Growth ($99 per month with no transaction fee, for brands earning up to $15,000 in revenues)
- Enterprise ($299 per month with no transaction fee, for brands earning over $15,000 in revenues)
10. FirstPromoter
Best features
Designed for SaaS businesses, FirstPromoter offers you various ways to engage with your affiliates from multi-tiered campaigns to an attractive interface.
The platform allows you to set up bonuses for high-performing affiliates, organize private campaigns to invite selected affiliates, or roll out team commissions. You can also set automated emails to be sent after your affiliates register and reach important events, such as after their referrals sign up, when they get a commission, and more.
FirstPromoter’s tracking tool can report your program’s performance across 17 data points. This tracker and the fraud detection feature work together to verify and approve commissions automatically. The software adjusts your affiliates’ commissions after product cancellations and refunds.
This platform also allows you to customize the background, buttons, font, and colors of your affiliate dashboards to align with your branding. It also generates SEO-friendly referral links.
FirstPromoter supports 190 currencies and is compatible with Stripe, PayPal, Recurly, Braintree, and Chargebee.
Pricing
This solution’s three pricing plans all have a 14-day free trial period:
- Starter: $49/month for up to $5,000 in affiliate revenue
- Business: $99/month for up to $15,000 in revenue
- Enterprise: $149/month for up to over $15,000 in revenue
11. Tune
Best features
Available on desktop and mobile, Tune (formerly known as HasOffers) offers real-time tracking and reporting of your affiliate and conversion data. You can set your payout terms and the conditions for approving or rejecting commissions. Tune users need to have a valid credit card during sign-up. Merchants can send commissions later via wire transfer or ACH payment.
Endowed with US-EU Privacy Shield certification, Tune can be set up to send you alerts in case unauthorized sources attempt to enter your system.
You’ll find members of the Tune team sending alerts about feature improvements or new features on the lower right side of the interface. You can also read about product updates by clicking on the bell icon on the upper right part of the page. Its professional service team is also ready to help via email, phone, or chat, depending on your subscription.
Pricing
You can enjoy Tune for free on a 30-day trial period. From there, you can choose from four paid plans to continue using its services: (Custom packages are also available)
- Bootstrap: $599/month
- Scale: $1,500/month
- Contract: custom
12. Voluum
Best features
If you’re looking for software that can track the performance of your organic and paid ad campaigns across your social platforms, Voluum is the software for you. It has pre-made templates for various ad formats including display banners, email ads, native ads, social ads, video ads, and pop-ups. Then it allows you to automatically run A/B tests so you can find out which combination of elements help you meet your conversion goals.
You can use it to get the most detailed insights as the platform can analyze 30 data points per visit. You can discover where your ads appear, the number of impressions, which of them result in the most (and least) conversions, and how much traffic your landing pages get, among others.
Do you have existing ads from another tracking solution? No problem, its migration feature lets you move campaign data from applications like AdsBridge, Binom, Thrive, and BeMob.
You can also track and assess your campaigns remotely through its mobile app. Its anti-fraud kit—which is available for Grow and Custom Plan holders—can spot bot and other invalid traffic in real-time to prevent them from tarnishing your ad’s reputation.
Pricing
- Profit: $149/month; allows up to 3 custom domains and 6 months of data retention
- Scale: $349/month; allows up to 5 custom domains and 12 months of data retention
- Start – up: $539/month; 12 months of data retention
- Agency: $799/month; 18 months of data retention
- Enterprise: $1.599/month; 24 months of data retention
- Corporate: $3999/month; 24 months of data retention
- Executive: $7999/month; 24 months of data retention
13. Clickmagick
Best features
Clickmagick is another ad performance tracking tool, which helps you channel your efforts and resources effectively by showing you where you’re getting the most profitable traffic. You can add sub-IDs to every link so you can trace the IP address of every click that leads to your website from an external source. Moreover, its cross-device tracking feature can track the behavior of visitors on various devices—something that can help optimize your product copies and landing pages.
The platform’s Rotator tool will help you distribute traffic as it brings your visitors to multiple URLs after clicking affiliate links. Meanwhile, its geotargeting and mobile optimization lets you send visitors to specific pages based on their location and what device they use.
You can integrate Clickmagick with Google and Facebook, allowing you to use either of the platform’s analytics tools to track your visitors’ activity.
Moreover, it has an anti-fraud Clickshield that protects your affiliate program against bot traffic.
Pricing
The platform has a 14-day trial period on all plans:
- Starter: $79/month; allows up to one additional users to your ClickMagic account and six months of data retention
- Standard: $169/month; allows up to three additional users to your account and one year of data retention
- Pro: $299/month; unlimited team members and two years of data retention
14. WeCanTrack
Best features
You can track all your business traffic and conversions from different sources—Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Microsoft Ads, TikTok for Business (Ads), and Data Studio to name a few—in WeCanTrack dashboard using the platform’s Webhooks or API. With the capability to show data related to your clicks, leads, and conversions, you can retarget the right audience.
It integrates with major affiliate networks such as Amazon Associates, Admitad, Commission Junction, eBay, and ShareASale.
Pricing
WeCanTrack has a free version and three paid plans:
- Small – $65/month for up to 25,000 clicks and 500 transactions
- Medium – $142/month for up to 125,000 clicks and 5,000 transactions
- Advanced – $307/month for up to 750,000 clicks and 50,000 transactions
15. Peerclick
Best features
Peerclick specializes in high-speed tracking, with a capacity to process over 1 billion clicks daily per account. Vendors can track over 40 data parameters, including their income, expenses, and conversions in real-time. Meanwhile, the affiliate panel displays statistical data on offers, the traffic they were able to generate, and payouts.
With its advanced targeting and AI-powered tools, you can determine your target audience’s favorite platforms, devices, and operating systems so you can distribute the best offers to the right platforms.
Besides countering bots and other fraudulent activity, the platform has landing page protection, which protects your website from spyware parsing programs by checking the IP address of the user that ended up on your landing page after clicking a referral link.
You can also set up notifications for positive or negative trends such as if your conversions or your ROI plunges within three hours or when you hit your campaign targets.
Pricing
- Starter: $79/month for up to one million events and three months of data retention
- Basic+: $159/month for up to three million events and three months of data retention
- Advanced: $319/month for up to 10 million events and 12 months of data retention
- Exclusive: $679/month for up to 30 million events and 18 months of data retention
16. eLitius
Best features
eLitius is a popular open-source affiliate system that you can integrate with Magento and other shopping cart solutions. It has an admin interface that lets you control the offers and content you provide to your affiliates. It can add and manage an unlimited number of affiliates, monitor each affiliate’s sales, as well as manage their commissions. Meanwhile, its user interface allows your affiliates to pull up the ads they need to promote your brand and record resulting sales to their account.
Reporting tools for tracking metrics are available besides customizable templates for the user interface.
Pricing
You can download eLitius for free. It requires 10MB of storage space and PHP4.3.0 or higher. However, you’ll need to pay $100/day for any custom changes to the application.
17. PayKickstart
Best features
This platform became popular among new online entrepreneurs during its 2016 launch for its shopping cart solution. From physical and digital products, PayKickstart now caters to course creators, consultants, and agencies who need an app that can manage automated billing for their subscriptions, client retention, and commission tracking.
The software has a feature that allows you to run a real-time contest among your affiliates, boosting your sales at the launch of a new service or product and motivating your network. Meanwhile, its user-friendly affiliate profile lets your partners easily manage their payout information and secure tax documents.
Also optimized for mobile, the affiliate management program generates analytics and has email, webinar, and payments method integrations.
Pricing
PayKickstart has three plans but its affiliate program is only accessible to Growth ($159/month) and Scale (available upon request) plan holders.
18. ThriveCart
Best features
Mainly a shopping cart solution geared toward digital product (online courses, software, and audio books) providers, ThriveCart has a built-in affiliate program, which lets you customize incentive options for your affiliates. You can set your offers and use the Rules tab to create criteria for accepting affiliates. The vendor dashboard also allows you to choose your incentive structure (commission-based or fixed payment), the amount to pay specific affiliates (which can depend on the number of sales they bring in), and your payout dates. The Overview tab shows you at a glance your number of active affiliates, the number of sales made, as well as the commissions earned and paid within a chosen period.
Affiliates get unique tracking IDs and can promote your products on multiple platforms.
This software is compatible with PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, Google Pay, or Apple Pay.
Pricing
ThriveCart is available through a one-time payment of $495 with lifetime access.
19. SamCart
Best features
SamCart is another shopping cart software with an affiliate center where vendors can create sign-up forms and configure affiliate details. The dashboard has everything you need to generate your affiliate registration page and set up approvals, affiliate links, commission rates, cookie expiration, as well as payout periods.
It works like ThriveCart in many ways but it doesn’t assign affiliates their unique tracking IDs after signing up. The platform is compatible with WordPress membership plug-ins such as Digital Access Pass, Member Mouse, MemberPress, and WishList Member. It also works with online course-selling programs Kajabi and Thinkific, as well as the Post Affiliate Pro tracking software.
You can pay commissions via check, PayPal, or Venmo.
Pricing
SamCart offers monthly and annual subscriptions, with the affiliate management feature available only for Scale Plan holders. The Scale Plan is priced at $319 per month or $239 per month when opting for an annual subscription.
20. Scaleo
Best features
Scaleo has one of the most comprehensive business intelligence features among affiliate solutions due to its wide array of data tracking customization options. They include tracking for clicks, impressions, promo codes, redirects, and mobile app and web use, among others. The software’s report functionality lets you break down or view your data in more than 30 ways.
The company can even help you migrate from your current affiliate tracking software for free. Like other affiliate solutions, Scaleo lets you customize your dashboard, including setting up alerts that your affiliates can use to improve their performance.
Is your business going global? You can program your offers in different currencies. Meanwhile, Scaleo’s Anti-Fraud Logic TM blocks fraudulent affiliates from your system so you can scale safely.
Pricing
The platform has three payment options:
- Professional: $400/month for 30,000 conversions
- Enterprise: $600/month for 40,000 conversions
- Custom: $960/month for more than 80,000 conversions
You get access to all core features regardless of your package. However, only the Enterprise and Custom plans include Scaleo’s lead management add-on. This feature collects lead information from your landing page, which is passed on to your database of leads. Your affiliates can refer to this for future offers and remarketing.
21. impact.com
Best features
Whether you work with affiliates or influencers, impact.com’s platform can take care of the whole life cycle. It offers a number of features and tools that deserve to be praised, but it’s its ease of use and reporting that are two standout features.
All the features work well together, making the overall user experience seamless and allowing the platform to function as a cohesive product. Also, its user interface is similar to how most marketplaces operate, making it easy to find affiliates and set up campaigns.
As for reporting, they follow a modern approach to tracking. From leads to app installations to subscription upgrades, it lets you track virtually anything. Then, to ensure that you pay only for legitimate events, with impact.com in your tech stack you can monitor for basic as well as sophisticated fraudulent activity.
Pricing
The platform doesn’t share any information about plans and pricing on its website. You can, though, request a demo with their sales team.
Key Features: Influencer Content Amplification, Search/Discovery, Automated Recruiting, Influencer Relationship Management, Influencer Marketplace, Team Collaboration Tools, Content Review, Content Library, Campaign Management, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, E-commerce Tools, Product/Gifting Tools, Forms and Compliance, Payment Processing,
Benefits of Affiliate Management Software
To find affiliates, owners of e-commerce stores and service providers with an online presence use affiliate management software. Affiliates are individuals or companies that can promote their products or services. The platform can also help them structure commissions and pay affiliates accordingly when referrals buy a product or pay for a service.
Many sectors—topped by fashion, sports and outdoor goods, beauty, and health—are already taking advantage of affiliate marketing to drive customer acquisition. Your business can also benefit from an affiliate management system in the following ways:
1. It's cost-effective.
One of the top reasons behind the rise of affiliate management programs is the low start-up cost involved in running them. Instead of buying ad space or having an advertising team, affiliates do the work of marketing your brand on their platforms. Also, you only pay them when they bring in sales, which lowers the risk of financial loss.
You also don't have to hire an accountant as the software has built-in features to calculate commissions based on your setting per offer and report your sales earnings.
3. It keeps you updated on important metrics.
Affiliate management software can show you data in real-time, from links to purchases. Some tools allow you to discover which demographics are attracted to your business the most. This information will help you customize your offers to suit them.
4. It can detect fraud.
A good affiliate solution has fraud-detection tools that can notify you of suspicious activity on your affiliate's website. For instance, scrupulous affiliates may resort to using bots to raise their click counts. With an anti-fraud detection feature, your software can identify any repeated sign-ups or orders from the same IP location and let you block them.
5. It makes paying affiliates easier.
Affiliate management programs automatically calculate commissions and let you pay affiliates through integrations with popular payment systems. Once you've set the different types of commissions and assigned an affiliate or group of affiliates under a certain commission category, your software can accurately determine the payout each affiliate should receive.
6. It's scalable.
Affiliate software can scale with you as you take in more partners under your wing. With its vast database and automated features, the platform can store, generate, and track new data that comes as you deal with transactions coming from new affiliates—a cumbersome if not impossible task were it done manually on Excel sheets.
Features to Look for in an Affiliate Solution
When picking the best platform to manage your affiliate program, you need to consider your business needs and what your affiliates are looking for. The right affiliate management solution should:
1. Meet your business goals
Do you need a system that will give you plenty of offer ideas? Or are you looking for software that can strengthen your relations with individual affiliates or affiliate groups? You can improve your software search by identifying what aspect of your affiliate program you'd like the software to help you with the most.
Besides our recommended software, you may also visit software review sites and go to the official websites of the platforms to learn about their specialization.
2. Come from a reputable provider
Subscribing to a respected platform will help you build trust among your would-be affiliates. Get user feedback about the use and payment modes of the platform you’re eyeing. Avail of their free trial period to test its features.
Also, try to find out the leading affiliate solutions used in your industry. If one or two of the successful companies you're aspiring to become use a certain platform, it might be worth investing in that same tool.
3. Offer extensive tracking and reporting
When scouting for an affiliate solution, check if it can generate the kind of affiliate metrics you'd like to view quickly, such as impressions, conversions, and so on. You should also be able to have easy access to other data such as gross sales, refund rates, and others.
4. Be able to handle several affiliate campaigns
If you run several businesses simultaneously, with each one having an affiliate program, it would be best to look for a platform where you can run different campaigns with unique commissions from one platform.
5. Have a user-friendly and customizable interface
Select the software that affiliates can easily set up on their own, without requiring the installation of a separate tool before being able to run it.
It should also have an easy-to-navigate dashboard whose features allow your affiliates to easily reach you, track their performance and payouts, and pull up promotional assets. Also, pick a tool with a white-label—or customizable—dashboard where you can upload your logo and other elements related to your brand.
6. Prevent fraud
A platform's security features should be able to track sources of traffic and the number of clicks so that any suspicious activities and unacceptable behavior can be flagged and blocked, when necessary.
7. Feature mobile accessibility
When an affiliate solution has its own app or mobile-ready version, it allows you to check on your affiliates and the status of your business anytime, anywhere. This also means affiliates will be able to enjoy remote access.
8. Offer multiple commission options
Find a tool that will give you the flexibility to reward your affiliates in different ways—with one-time, recurring, lifetime, or performance-based commissions. You can also choose to pay commissions after affiliates reach a certain number of sales, clicks, or a specific revenue threshold.
9. Have convenient payment methods
The platform should allow you to schedule the release of one-time or recurring payouts besides offering automated payment.
Best Practices
Here are some steps you can take to nurture good and honest relationships with your affiliates:
1. Prepare your resource center assets before launching your program.
This includes defining your success metrics and communicating this with your affiliates. You should also have pre-written copy, images, reviews, and data ready for your affiliates to use or upload in their blog articles or emails.
2. Make it easy for people to apply but conduct due diligence.
Create easy-to-use signup forms with email verification. Tell affiliates how soon they can hear from you if you review applications before accepting them.
Affiliates who have worked with other brands before may want to sign up with you to get inside information about the size of your customer base and how your conversion rate stands. Validate the ownership of their websites and personally contact affiliates if possible to determine where they'll promote your brand and how they engage customers.
3. Sign a contract.
To ensure there's no miscommunication between you and your affiliate, create a contract that spells out your expectations (including a privacy policy), commission structure, and the duration of your relationship (with an option to renew).
4. Keep your commissions interesting.
You can launch limited-time offers with higher commission rates. Or you can tell your top-referring affiliates that they can earn a certain percentage more if they can produce X number of sales every month.
5. Send best practice guides and success stories.
Inspire your affiliates from time to time by sending emails containing testimonials from top performers and your own tips in acquiring paying customers. Instructions on how to start earning under your affiliate program should also be part of your onboarding.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is affiliate management software, and how does it benefit businesses?
Affiliate management software is a tool that helps businesses manage their affiliate marketing programs efficiently. It allows companies to track affiliate performance, manage commissions, and streamline payments. The benefits include cost-effectiveness, real-time data tracking, fraud detection, and the ability to scale operations as the affiliate network grows.
How do I choose between using affiliate management software and joining an affiliate network?
Choosing between affiliate management software and an affiliate network depends on your business needs. Software provides more control over your program, customization options, and keeps your affiliate data secure. In contrast, affiliate networks may offer quicker access to affiliates but often charge transaction fees and impose restrictions on your marketing strategies.
How does affiliate fraud occur?
Besides click fraud, some examples of affiliate fraud include:
- Placing a variety of cookies on a visitor's browser (cookie stuffing) to raise the chance of earning a commission when the customer decides to make a purchase in the end.
- Creating fake IP addresses (IP spoofing) and secretly clicking links on their site to artificially generate traffic from their site to the merchant's portal.
- Using VPNs or proxies to make it appear that a sale was secured in a different country when they've actually made the purchase themselves.
- Entering the numbers of lost or stolen credit cards to make a transaction on the vendor’s website.
What's the difference between running your affiliate program using management software and an affiliate network?
Using an online tool to manage your affiliate program is beneficial in the following ways:
- More control and customization
Using affiliate management software gives you more control over your monthly or annual payment plan, the acceptance process for interested affiliates, how affiliates can promote your brand, and the value of the commissions they can earn from marketing your offers.When you join an affiliate network, it imposes limits on you. They can restrict the niche you can operate in, the type of offers you can make, and your commission levels. - More value for money
In an affiliate network, you'll have to pay a transaction fee every time you pay the agreed commission to your affiliate. This payment is separate from your joining fee and monthly subscription charge. When you subscribe to an affiliate platform, you'll have to pay for the monthly or annual subscription but there's no transaction fee that goes with commission payouts. - More secure data
When you subscribe to an affiliate platform, you get to see and keep the profiles of your affiliates and customers to yourself. Joining an affiliate network may help you find partners faster but those running it can also view your affiliates' account details. Thus, the network may be able to contact your affiliates and their leads directly without your knowledge. - Better brand awareness and recall
Affiliate software lets you create a promotional link carrying your own domain name. On the other hand, affiliate networks have their own URLs attached to such links.
