Not only does Shopify have its own huge affiliate program that rewards affiliates for getting users to sign up for a paid plan, but it also offers a number of apps for Shopify users who want tostart their own affiliate programs.
Considering the majority of Shopify sellers are first-time entrepreneurs, affiliate programs can be a good marketing strategy to explore, as it can help them land more customers without having to hire a big sales team.
As most Shopify merchants already use apps to increase sales, adding another app shouldn’t be such a big leap. To help you explore this marketing route, here are 10 of the top apps to help you streamline your Shopify affiliate marketing program and keep track of your affiliates’ performance.
We’ve also included a couple of tips to ensure that you can put whichever app you choose to good use.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
In short, affiliate marketing uses individuals, like social media influencers or existing customers, to market specific products and brands. In exchange, they receive a commission per sale, lead, or click. However, the reimbursement doesn’t have to be in the form of a commission.
Some affiliates receive discounts or free products in exchange for their promotional work. From email to blogging to social media, there are many methods that affiliates can use to spread the word about products to the right audience.
The Advantages of Using Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing has enjoyed a steady year-over-year increase over the past decade. In fact, according to our own findings, the term “affiliate marketing” reached peak popularity in August 2022. So, what are the driving forces behind its popularity? Here are a few reasons why Shopify merchants might want to turn to affiliate marketing.
1. Scalability
It’s unlikely that the typical Shopify seller can afford to hire multiple sales reps, let alone any. However, by means of affiliate marketing, you can connect with many more potential customers without a big marketing team in place. Also, as affiliates typically get paid per sale, click, or lead, you’ll only have to pay for actual results.
Refersion, one of the leading affiliate marketing apps, exemplifies this scalability. With a network of over 500,000 affiliates and the ability to list your program for free on the Refersion Marketplace, merchants can quickly expand their affiliate network and reach a wider audience without significant upfront costs.
The platform's customizable sign-up pages and automated management features streamline the process, allowing for efficient scaling.
Speaking about the app, Ana Montilla, Social Media and Influencer Marketing Manager at Verb, said:
2. Presence on multiple social media channels
With the help of affiliate marketing, you can take advantage of your affiliates’ influence on multiple platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blogs, and online review sites. This is great for creating more brand awareness.
Social Snowball is designed to maximize presence across various social media channels. When a customer makes a purchase, an affiliate account is automatically created, and the customer receives promotional materials directly on the thank-you page. This seamless process ensures that affiliates can quickly share their unique discount codes and links across their social media networks, boosting your brand's visibility effortlessly.
3. Simplicity
Thanks to the apps available, managing the program and evaluating its effectiveness are easy. These apps were designed to integrate with Shopify stores which means that you’ll receive real-time updates. Plus, most of these apps will automate routine tasks like generating discount codes and paying commissions.
Trackdesk exemplifies simplicity with its performance and marketing activity monitoring, efficient affiliate management, and real-time reporting. The app's customizable dashboards and automated commission payouts make it an excellent choice for merchants looking to streamline their affiliate programs.
Best Shopify Affiliate Marketing Apps
There are more than 4,200 apps in Shopify’s app store. From store design to customer support, there’s an app to help you with virtually any task related to running your store. As we know that it’s humanly impossible to go over thousands of apps while you’re trying to run an online store, we’ve identified 9 of the top apps that you can use to launch and manage your Shopify affiliate marketing program. This is by no means an extensive list, but it’s a good place to start.
UpPromote is on a mission to help spread brands’ stories and their products with the help of brand ambassadors. They offer a wide range of tools that merchants, specifically Shopify merchants, can use to manage and grow their affiliate team. Intuitiveness is at the core of what they do. As part of their mission is to save merchants valuable time, they make creating comprehensive instructions and guidelines a top priority. Not only is the actual software easy to understand and use, but UpPromote also makes it easy to get started. Shopify merchants can list their offer on the UpPromote marketplace and quickly onboard newly recruited affiliates. Levanta is a strong option for Shopify merchants that want to do more than run a basic affiliate program tied only to their storefront. With Levanta, merchants can recruit creators, manage affiliate relationships, and track performance from a single dashboard. While many affiliate apps focus only on basic referral tracking, Levanta is designed to help eCommerce brands build more structured creator and affiliate programs that drive product sales. Levanta simplifies the process of discovering and activating affiliates. Brands can use its built-in creator marketplace to identify relevant partners based on category, audience profile, and promotional channels. Once approved, affiliates can be invited into the program, receive product samples, and begin promoting products through affiliate links and content collaborations. Trackdesk stands out among Shopify Affiliate Marketing Apps as a versatile solution. With a wide user base across diverse industries, Trackdesk has become a go-to choice for businesses seeking to enhance their affiliate marketing endeavors. One distinctive feature is its seamless integration with the Trackdesk Marketplace. This integration offers a unique advantage by providing free listing opportunities for your affiliate program, essentially giving you more exposure to accelerate the growth of your affiliate network. Additionally, Trackdesk offers a post-purchase widget to engage existing customers and invite them to join your program. Refersion has a network of more than 500,000 affiliates that has helped close to 20,000 merchants power their affiliate marketing campaigns. One of the advantages that Refersion offers is that your affiliate program will get listed for free on the Refersion Marketplace which can help you to recruit new affiliates so that you can grow your affiliate network quickly. Alternatively, you can concentrate on your own existing customers by using its post-purchase widget to invite them to join your program. ReferralCandy has helped more than 30,000 online stores in a wide range of industries with their referral programs. The beauty of the app is that it basically runs on autopilot. Whether you prefer cash rewards, custom gifts, or store discounts, the app makes it easy to customize reward options. In addition to Shopify and Shopify Plus, it also integrates with other main eCommerce platforms like BigCommerce, Magento and WooCommerce. It also easily integrates with marketing platforms like Mailchimp and Klaviyo. If you want to boost the revenue of your eCommerce store (or SaaS business), LeadDyno is another app that you can check out. In fact, in 2020 alone, more than $200 million in affiliate sales were generated with the help of its software. Thanks to its one-click setup, it’s one of the best apps if you use Shopify. It also offers a setup wizard, if you get stuck. If you want to turn existing customers into affiliates (which is the best approach), you can use it to invite your customers to your program automatically. Once signed up, you can also use the app to send them automatic follow-up emails with new product offerings and other important updates. The Social Snowball app was specifically designed for Shopify stores. One of the most attractive features of Social Snowball is that all your customers can potentially become affiliates automatically. When a new customer buys an item from your Shopify store, an affiliate account is automatically created for them. Then, right via the thank you page, they’ll receive the custom discount code and materials to promote it. It also offers an on-site pop-up for browsing visitors which will redirect them to the affiliate sign-up form. Affiliatly is one of the most cost-effective apps on the market. Not only does it offer a super generous free 90-day trial (something which we rarely see), but its cheapest plan starts at only $16 per month and you don’t have to pay any percentage of the revenue that you make via its app. What’s more, it offers 6 different pricing plans in total. So, you’re bound to find a plan that suits your budget. From dentists to online stores, OSI Affiliate is trusted by 16,000 businesses across the world. Along with ReferralCandy, it’s also one of the most reviewed referral software solutions on Capterra. What’s more, the lowest score that it has received on Capterra is 4 out of 5 (which, in our books, is not low at all). One of the most attractive features of OSI Affiliate is that it offers social media sharing. It’s fully integrated with LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter which means that it’s simple for your affiliates to share their link across various social networks. Tapfiliate offers you a couple of ways to recruit new affiliates. You can add them via an invite URL, a single sign-on (only available to enterprise clients), the API, or manually. As it also integrates with Mailchimp, you can also create email drip campaigns to help keep your recruits in the loop. 1. UpPromote
2. Levanta
3. Trackdesk
4. Refersion
5. ReferralCandy
6. LeadDyno
7. Social Snowball
8. Affiliatly
9. OSI Affiliate
10. Tapfiliate
Tips for Launching an Affiliate Program
While Shopify affiliate marketing apps can basically put your program on autopilot, there are still some basic things that you need to do if you want to use the tech and your program to the best advantage. Here are a few tips to help you as you grow your affiliate program for your online store.
Set Goals
No two affiliate programs are the same or have to be the same, for that matter. What would you like your affiliate program to achieve? Who would be your ideal affiliates? Do you want to stick to using only previous customers or are you open to the idea of using an affiliate network?
It’s also key that you first work out what you can afford to offer as a reward. There’s no rule forcing you to pay a commission. You can also offer freebies or coupons. For example, UpPromote allows for multiple payment methods, including store credit, providing flexibility in how you reward your affiliates.
Get the Word Out
The success of your affiliate program for your Shopify store hinges on getting the right type of affiliates. If you don’t officially announce your affiliate program, how will potential affiliates join?
A good place to start is social media. You can, for example, create an Instagram post to introduce your program and motivate your followers to apply. Make sure that you list the perks of joining so that more followers will be interested in joining.
Email works even better. If you have a subscriber list, send an email to your subscribers in which you introduce your program and encourage them to join or forward it to others in their network.
Refersion can help here, as it offers a customizable sign-up page and the ability to invite customers to join your program via a post-purchase widget, making it easy to onboard new affiliates quickly.
Communicate Regularly
After you’ve spread the word about your affiliate program and got enough recruits, you can shift your attention to communicating with your affiliates on a regular basis. You want to ensure that they know your brand, the program’s rules, and that they have enough content that they can share. For this, email is typically the best avenue to explore as many of the apps can automate certain emails.
For example, LeadDyno provides automated follow-up emails with new product offerings and other important updates, helping to keep your affiliates engaged and informed without requiring constant manual effort.
Track the Performance of Your Affiliates and Program
To evaluate the effectiveness of your affiliate program, start by determining which affiliates perform the best. Then, identify what makes them so successful and try to replicate that recipe.
Not only do you want to zoom in on your top-performing affiliates, but you also need to gain insight into the overall effectiveness of your program. For this, you’ll want to use metrics like total affiliate sales, number of new affiliates, and how many affiliates left your program.
Most of these apps offer an intuitive dashboard and some form of analytics which make it easier to evaluate the results.
For instance, Trackdesk provides real-time reporting and performance monitoring, allowing you to track key metrics and make data-driven decisions to optimize your affiliate program.
Wrapping Things Up
While it might be a mouthful, Shopify affiliate marketing is actually very straightforward. As the eCommerce platform already has a long list of affiliate marketing apps that you can use, launching your own program is even simpler.
Before you plunge right in, do the groundwork and research the apps available. Most of the apps offer some type of free trial that will help you to test it out before making any financial commitments.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does affiliate marketing work?
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy in which a seller rewards individuals, like existing customers or influencers, with a commission for each customer referred or product sold by means of the individual's marketing activities. They can also be rewarded in exchange for leads or clicks. The commission also doesn’t have to be monetary. Some affiliates receive discounts or free products in exchange for their promotional work.
Do influencers make good affiliates?
Yes! Influencers have an impressive reach in their industries and they generally have the reputation to go with that. When influencers post something related to their niche, people sit up and take notice. What’s more, many affiliates first have to build up a new audience, but influencers already have their audience. Some of them already have their own YouTube channels and blogs. So, they basically just need to create the content.
Who can become an affiliate merchant?
Many affiliate merchants are big companies searching for extra ways to sell their products, like Amazon that uses its Amazon Associates program to sell products using affiliates as salespeople. Though, you don’t have to be a big company like Amazon to become an affiliate merchant. You simply need to be an individual or a business with a product to sell. As a matter of fact, quite a number of small businesses and even solopreneurs create products that they sell online using affiliate marketers.
How can you attract more affiliates?
To help you attract more affiliates for your program, make a point of capturing as many of your online store visitors’ email addresses as possible. People who are willing to share their email addresses are far more likely to take notice of your marketing than everybody else. You can then, for example, create newsletters or other targeted promotions that you email to your list. You can also consider adding a pop-up campaign to grab your potential affiliates’ attention.
How do you create effective content for affiliate marketing programs?
High-value, helpful content that will sway your target audience into buying the product is the most effective. So, you’ll need to write content that will match relevant keywords in your niche. Big websites most likely already hold the top Google rankings for more general terms. You should, therefore, rather focus more on long-tail keyword terms, in other words, longer, more specific terms. You can, for example, use a tool like Ahrefs to find suitable keywords to focus on for your content.
Which software is best for affiliate marketing?
Some of the standout software options for affiliate marketing include:
- Refersion
- UpPromote
- Trackdesk
- ReferralCandy
- LeadDyno
- Social Snowball
- Affiliatly
- OSI Affiliate
- Tapfiliate
What is the best affiliate program for Shopify?
There are a few excellent affiliate programs for Shopify. The best ones include Affiliatly, Refersion, UpPromote, and Social Snowball.
