5 Best Affiliate Management Software Solutions for Smart Marketers

With affiliate marketing, you can grow your business through affiliates who promote your products and services. It is, fundamentally, a strategy to incentivize referrals. At its best, affiliate marketing gives people who love your products or services an opportunity to get rewarded when their recommendation leads to a purchase.

In this guide, we’ll consider the benefits of launching an affiliate marketing program for your business. I will then provide a short review of the best affiliate management software solutions on the market.

What is affiliate management software?

Affiliate marketing software is a tool that helps companies advertise their products through an affiliate in exchange for a commission. It is considered an important component in supporting and optimizing brand affiliate marketing programs and offers a streamlined approach to business operations.

This multifaceted tool not only tracks various sale referral methods, such as coupon codes or affiliate links, but also monitors earnings by affiliate marketer and commission rates and simplifies seamless payment processes.

By using affiliate marketing software, you can launch your program quickly and customize it according to your needs. This software ensures that your affiliate program is professional, efficient, and attractive right from the start.

Why Launch An Affiliate Program?

There are businesses running affiliate marketing programs in most niches. Affiliate marketing is more prevalent in some niches over others. According to a study by Amnavigator, the top niches for affiliate marketing include fashion, sports, health and beauty, and travel:

According to Viglink, 65% of merchants surveyed said that 5%-20% of their total revenue comes from affiliate marketing. That’s on a par with what most businesses earn through direct sales from SEO and PPC.

In other words, affiliate programs offer a proven way to increase your income. It is a strategy that benefits your business and provides affiliates with a great way to make extra money.

What Makes Good Affiliate Management Software

We’ve discussed why affiliate marketing is effective. So, how do you find the best affiliate management software for your affiliate program?

There is a range of factors to consider.

Firstly, great affiliate management software is easy to use. You should be able to manage your affiliates and make payouts easily. Your main dashboard should also provide you with an “at a glance” overview of your affiliates’ performance.

You want to have access to data like gross sales, refund rate, etc. It’s also helpful to access background information about an affiliate. For example, how many sales has the affiliate generated for other businesses? You want access to this data when deciding who to accept to your affiliate program.

Your affiliate management software should also offer multiple commission model options. You want control over how you pay affiliates and when. For example, you might want to offer a recurring 10% commission. Or, you might want only to issue commissions 60 days after a customer makes a purchase.

Finally, it should have fraud protection and robust security features.

Anyone choosing an affiliate management software needs to consider the above points. Some considerations will be specific to your business.

Examples of things to consider that are specific to your business include:

• The size of the platform - does the platform have a large audience of affiliates?
• White Label - can you white label the service, so it looks like an independent platform?
• Third-Party Integrations - does it have integrations with tools affiliate marketers use to maximize revenue? For example, affiliate tracking software.

Before looking for software to run your affiliate marketing program, I recommend you list your needs. You can use this information when shortlisting the best affiliate management software.

Benefits of using affiliate management software

Affiliate management software provides various benefits. It helps businesses manage and grow their affiliate marketing programs effectively. Here are some of the main benefits of using affiliate management software:

• Increased efficiency and improved communication: When owner stores use Affiliate management software, they can track sales and commissions easily. Therefore, your business can reduce manual calculations and save time for other tasks. They can concentrate on marketing and customer service.

• Streamlined affiliate management: Affiliate management software enables businesses to manage their affiliates more efficiently by providing them with the necessary tools. As a result, they can track performance, manage payments, and communicate with affiliates.

• Scalability and automation: Affiliate management software provides businesses with the ability to scale their affiliate programs. The software automates various tasks, including tracking affiliate performance, managing payments, and communicating with affiliates. Through automation, businesses can streamline and simplify various processes related to affiliate management.

• Performance analytics for optimization: Affiliate management software offers businesses detailed analytics on the performance of their affiliate programs. Thanks to analytics, businesses can optimize their programs for maximum performance.

• Strengthened partner relationships: Affiliate management software helps businesses build stronger relationships with their partners by providing them with the necessary tools to manage their affiliates effectively.

• Increased Security: Affiliate management software protects businesses from fraud, ensuring that their affiliate programs are secure and protected against dishonest behavior.

• Cost Savings: Affiliate management software eliminates the need to hire an accountant by providing integrated features to compute commissions and generate sales income reports. This reduces the cost of managing affiliate programs and make sure that businesses remain competitive in the affiliate marketing industry.

5 Best Affiliate Management Software Solutions

Here are the top 5 of the best affiliate management software solutions that you can consider to streamline and automate tasks and expand your business.

UpPromote

Pros:

• Support all-in-one automatic affiliate marketing software solutions.

• Select to receive store credit as a payout option.

• Track automatically referrals and affiliate performance.

• Auto-generate coupons and affiliate referral links.

• Provide decent support materials on YouTube and their KnowledgeBase.

• Visualize data through graphs for easy performance analysis.

• Customize email templates, affiliate links, and marketing resources for affiliates.

• Simplify the process of affiliate onboarding and management.

• Protect against fraud.

• Provide decent support materials on YouTube and their KnowledgeBase.

• 24/7 support in multiple languages.

Cons:

Approve/deny referral orders in a limited quantity per month in the free plan.

Pricing:

Free Trial: 14 Days.

Pricing ranges: from FREE to $199.99/month.

Refersion

Pros:

• Provide all-in-one affiliate marketing software solutions.

• Track brand ambassadors, ensuring timely online payments for a smoother process.

• Offer insightful reports for informed decision-making.

• Support timely payments through PayPal, Stripe, and ACH.

• Integrate with major e-commerce platforms.

• Access a central dashboard to monitor all campaigns and partnerships.

• Handle data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA for attribution data.

• Have a well-organized, user-friendly interface.

• Offer a nice selection of commission structures and offers.

Cons:

Can’t track cross-device.

Pricing:

Free Trial: 14 Days.

Pricing ranges: from $89/month.

Tapfilliate

Pros:

• Have a highly intuitive and customizable interface.

• Provide a white-label solution.

• Customize the dashboard to access exactly what you need.

• Integrate third-party services comprehensively.

• Apply automation to improve efficiency.

• Include customer support.

• Provide a free trial that includes all the features.

• Work well for both e-commerce and SaaS.

Cons:

Limit the number of languages that are supported.

Don’t offer a free version.

Pricing:

Free Trial: 14 Days.

Pricing ranges: from $69/month to $499/month.

Rewardful

Pros:

• Support all-in-one automatic affiliate marketing software solutions.

• Customize domains and landing pages

• Allow users to search for affiliates from all over the web.

• Provide emailing solutions and integrations with services like Drip, MailerLite, ConvertKit, etc.

• Choose from various commission models: fixed-amount, percentage-based, one-time, recurring, etc.

• Get email notifications for both the user and affiliate upon commission earnings.

• Refund handling capability.

• Invite all affiliates at once using the bulk invite feature.

• Include A/B testing feature for affiliates to optimize lead-generating links.

• Integrate with Stripe and Paddle

Cons:

• Mainly designed for smaller businesses and individuals.

• Limite Affiliate Finder access, even in the most expensive enterprise plan.

Pricing:

Free Trial: 14 Days.

Pricing ranges: from $29/month to enterprise $299/month.

Post Affiliate Pro

Pros:

• Considered a top-notch affiliate tracking system.

• Provide excellent customer service

• Manage large numbers of affiliates easily.

• Offer a flexible user interface.

• Customize options.

• Provide detailed reports providing clear insights from data-heavy analytics.

Cons:

A bit more expensive

Pricing:

Free Trial: 14 Days.

Pricing ranges: from $97/month to $477/month

Wrapping Up

Contrary to what naysayers might have you believe, affiliate marketing is a hugely popular and successful b2b marketing strategy that can benefit merchants and affiliates alike. In 2021 and beyond, it will continue to generate impressive revenue for businesses. Now is the time to launch your affiliate program, and the first thing you need is a great affiliate management software solution. I’ve outlined five of the best here to help you. Choose the one that works for you, and then start recruiting some great affiliates. If you launch your affiliate program correctly, you’re sure to see your profit margin increase.

Author Bio:Laurent Malka is the Co-Founder of Anytrack, a startup developing conversion tracking and optimization software for publishers and affiliate marketers. He was born and raised in Switzerland and now lives and works in Israel. He is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in marketing and business development. Laurent has been a panelist and speaker at numerous digital marketing events, including SEMrush and IG Affiliates. He prides himself on his ability to connect the dots across disciplines, industries, and technologies to solve unique challenges.