Affiliate Marketing Software: Features, Benefits, Operations Explained

Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to attract customers, generate sales, and build relationships with industry influencers. It opens great opportunities for both businesses and affiliates looking for more and better ways to generate revenue.

However, to get the most out of your affiliate marketing tactics, you need dedicated affiliate marketing software that automates much of your operations and prepares regular reports. It tracks performance metrics, commissions, and payments. It also ensures a top-notch online presence for your business. Let us dive deeper into the world of affiliate marketing software to highlight its specifications and benefits.

What is Affiliate Marketing Software?

Affiliate marketing software is a tool that allows businesses to increase their revenue through affiliate partnerships. From finding suitable affiliate partners to managing and tracking their performance and commissions, affiliate marketing software helps you develop a successful affiliate marketing program.

The affiliate program typically involves partnerships with affiliates who promote the company’s services or products in exchange for a fixed amount of commission. Affiliate marketing software facilitates businesses in managing and tracking all the activities of an affiliate program:

• Affiliate onboarding.
• Link tracking.
• Customized tracking codes.
• Customer IP detection.
• Commission payments.
• Targeting the right audience.
• Counting the number of clicks, impressions, sales, and views.

How Does an Affiliate Program Work?

An affiliate program starts with a company onboarding several affiliate partners to promote its products or services. In exchange, the company gives them a fixed portion of commission on each sale they make.

Collaboration in an affiliate program goes two ways:

• The company finds these affiliate partners through several social media platforms.
• Affiliate partners search for good products and contact the company to help it promote them.

Hence, the process allows an affiliate to earn from the products or services of someone else. Basically, an affiliate management program divides the responsibilities of product marketing among several partners. It relieves the company from indulging in marketing efforts. Rather, the company saves time to work on other aspects of its products or services.

Types of Affiliate Marketing Software Influencing Marketing Efforts

Affiliate management is not a simple process. It involves tracking metrics, launching affiliate campaigns, and managing affiliate networks. Based on the user requirements, there are several types of affiliate marketing software. Let us dive into the specifications of each to see how one can get maximum benefit from them.

A. Affiliate Tracking Software

Affiliate tracking software is a tool to track referrals or recommendations made by affiliates to buy the products or services of a company.

Key Features:

It manages and tracks several areas of an affiliate program:

• Generating tracking codes.
• Tracking time and location.
• Tracking sources such as URLs or keywords.
• Tracking the effectiveness of affiliates.
• Fraud detection.

Benefits:

• Automated process of affiliate management.
• Relieved workload.
• Help devise a successful affiliate program.

B. Affiliate Campaigns Management Software

Businesses launch thousands of affiliate campaigns to attract more customers and drive sales. An affiliate campaigns management software helps in devising better campaigns keeping in view statistics from data tracking and reports.

Key Features:

• Creates an affiliate link or URL.
• Tracks all the activities associated with this affiliate link such as clicks, views, and purchases.
• Identifies which links are driving more conversions.

Benefits:

• Business owners get real-time statistics and reports to optimize their affiliate campaigns.
• Drive more sales by converting one-time buyers into loyal customers.

C. Affiliate Network Software

Several affiliate partners from different areas of a country or the globe collaborate to promote the products or services of a company. The affiliate network software helps in managing such a big and diverse network of partners.

Key Features:

• Helps you find the best affiliate partners.
• Manages all partners in one place.
• Provides access to all partners to enjoy time-saving and automated tools.
• Tracks and keeps a record of all the operations.

Benefits:

• Saves loads of time by automating the affiliate management process.
• Improves the efficiency of own affiliate network.

What to Look for in An Affiliate Marketing Software Platform?

The platform you pick to facilitate your business must address all of its needs. If it fails to do so, your spending will go wasted. Let us help you set defined criteria for grabbing the best affiliate marketing software that can give you maximum benefits.

1. Your Business Needs and Goals

The affiliate software you want must be able to tackle all of your business needs and goals. To ensure this, you can create a checklist and mark it for individual preferences. For instance, its

• Report generating capability
• Ease of usage
• Integration with system and application
• Seamless affiliate management and tracking

2. Budget and Pricing Models

To get the best affiliate marketing software that does not exceed your budget limit, compare different options available in the market. Select the one that lies in your budget and offers the best possible features.

3. Integration with Existing Systems

Make sure the affiliate marketing software you select can integrate well with your existing system. To do so, check out its collaborations with other platforms like:

• E-commerce stores.
• Shopping cart solutions.
• Customer support software.
• Customer relationship software.
• Email marketing solutions.

If it does not integrate with your desired platform, you will have to install extensions and applications. It would be like building a castle from scratch.

4. Reporting and Analytics

Your affiliate tracking software must be very brilliant in generating reports and analytics. These metrics are key to developing a successful affiliate management program. The tool must efficiently automate your affiliate relationships with partners thus reducing your marketing efforts. It involves;

• Tracking affiliate partners’ performance
• Counting impressions, clicks, and views
• Calculating commissions
• Making payments and payouts

Regular reports of this data help business owners improve and revise their affiliate marketing strategy.

5. Support and Training

Your affiliate marketing software should not come without human support. There must be a dedicated team of professionals available to help users resolve their queries. Some tools come with complicated interfaces and must be equipped with dedicated user support and training.

Top 5 Software For A Successful Affiliate Marketing Program

1. Allbound

Allbound is an affiliate partnership management tool that automates and analyzes every step in your relationship lifecycle.

Features:

• User-friendly interface.
• Excellent customer support service.
• Integration with Tang, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Sugar CRM, ZOHO, NetSuite, and Microsoft Dynamics.
• Certifications for participating in an affiliate program.

Pricing:

• Custom pricing as per customer’s needs.

Customer Reviews:

Customers find this affiliate management software intuitive to use. They use it as a learning track and knowledge base for their team. The tool helps them organize all partner referral assets in one place.

2. Partnerize:

Partnerize is an affiliate tracking software that automates your partnerships and turns them into huge profits.

Features:

• No set-up fee is required.
• Brand and anti-fraud protection.
• Tracks, manages and measures affiliates’ performance.
• Quick integrations with multiple platforms.
• Influencer technology and platforms.

Pricing:

• Custom pricing as per customers’ needs.

Customer Reviews:

Customers find this affiliate program manager very helpful as it hosts several merchants to connect with. It creates data reports with a striking interface that is easy to understand and manage.

3. Affise:

Affise is an affiliate management program to maximize the growth of digital agencies and affiliate networks. It offers three comprehensive programs in one dashboard to automate your marketing efforts.

Features:

• Affise performance marketing affiliate program.
• Affise mobile attribution affiliate program.
• Affise reach program to automate and scale affiliate partnerships.

Pricing:

The platform offers three pricing plans:

1. $500 Entry-level plan.
2. $800 Scale plan.
3. $1500 Custom plan.

Customer Reviews:

Affise is the best choice for people who manage their own affiliate programs. It helps them resolve problems related to campaign tracking and affiliate management.

4. Relavate:

Relavate is an easy-to-use affiliate tracking software that empowers your resell, referral, and affiliate networks to drive more sales.

Features:

• Free trial without requiring a credit card.
• Easy integration with Zapier, HubSpot, Asana, Salesforce, Xero, Slack, Quickbooks, and Pipedirve.
• Allows admins to set their own reward program structure.
• Automatically calculates rewards and commissions for partners.

Pricing:

14-day free trial.

Three paid plans:

1. Standard: $29/month for basic partner programs.
2. Pro: $49/month for scaling and maturing partners.
3. Advanced: $59/month for a full-fledged partner program.

Customer Reviews:

An intuitive and comprehensive affiliate marketing platform that enables Resell, Referral, Affiliate, and Implementation partners to enhance your customer base, revenue streams, and market presence effortlessly.

 5. Impact:

Impact is an affiliate partnership management tool that provides high value by understanding each step of the customer journey.

Features:

• Own a marketplace to help you find the right affiliate partners.
• Effective Learning Management Solution (LMS).
• Detailed performance metrics and reports.

Pricing:

Custom pricing as per customer needs.

Customer Reviews:

Customers love this affiliate program due to its friendly interface and nearly zero downtime which makes it much more reliable. However, a few of its terms are confusing for some users.

Common Challenges in Affiliate Marketing Software

Though the affiliate marketing software has resolved significant problems for business owners, some challenges are yet to be fixed. Unethical practices and fraud of new forms always persist and hamper the success of an affiliate marketing program.

1. Fraud Prevention

Imagine the conversions your affiliate partner brings in are not 100% authentic. For instance, you get 1000 unique web visitors a month. Out of which only 900 are unique, and the rest are fake. Affiliates may click the link several times to get more commission.

A good affiliate software must have strong fraud detection capabilities to avoid the chances of such fraud. It should launch an affiliate program with strict rules and tracking to minimize the chances of fraudulent activities.

2. Affiliate Compliance

Affiliate compliance is an important parameter to ensure the success of an affiliate program. Where good partners help you promote your brand, scammers can cause you a big loss. Here, affiliate marketing software plays a role in finding the best affiliate partners to rely on. It gives them certifications to enhance credibility between both partners and also tracks all the activities.

However, emerging scamming tactics are very difficult to identify and stop. These may include online brand and trademark abuse. To prevent this, affiliate software must have advanced affiliate management features to detect unethical operations and limit them.

3.Payment Processing

Managing affiliate commissions and rewards is tedious. Despite having fixed rules and regulations, you end up paying commissions for sales that do not last. The customer returns the product and gets his money back. However, the company has to pay half the commission to the affiliate.

It may seem tiny for one order. But for a high volume of orders and tons of affiliates, it becomes quite challenging. Here an affiliate management program backed by strong software can help.

It will decline all the commission offers on refunded products.

Future Trends in Affiliate Marketing Software

Cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have revolutionized the methods of affiliate marketing. They help business owners better understand consumer behavior and devise personalized marketing content and campaigns. AI-powered tools analyze market trends to optimize affiliate program pricing strategies such as incentives and discounts to attract more customers.

• AI and Machine Learning Integration.
• Mobile Optimization.
• Cross-Channel Integration.
• Enhanced Security Features.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing software is an excellent tool to automate the entire process of an affiliate marketing program. It manages diverse partnerships with affiliates through a single affiliate marketing platform. Businesses can not only drive more sales but also overcome burgeoning challenges faced by an affiliate program. These tools come in handy with easy integrations into your systems and track all the data saving human efforts. If you are looking for one such user-friendly and affordable affiliate management software, Relavate is the best choice.