Standard affiliate marketing software solutions provide a comprehensive platform to set up and manage affiliate networks and are generally used by affiliate marketing managers.
On the other hand, affiliate tracking software is mainly focused on the monitoring of conversions. These solutions can be used by both affiliate managers as well as affiliates such as publishers or bloggers. Conversions can be tracked through methods such as browser cookie tracking or IP address tracking.
Affiliate tracking solutions generally feature a reporting dashboard that provides users with real-time customer metrics including the number of clicks generated, geolocations, traffic entry and exit paths, transaction values and fees, as well as an outstanding payment balance. These solutions can also offer analytics and reporting to help users evaluate their campaign performance to better target their most profitable types of visitor. Advanced solutions can also provide affiliates with tools to easily create their own custom branded landing pages or forms, as well as integrations with payment processors.
PostAffiliatePro is a powerful, fully fledged affiliate tracking software with features that meet the demands of both affiliate managers and their affiliates alike. The solution is easily scalable meaning it can grow alongside an affiliate program without any issues.
Affiliate tracking software is used as a means to evaluate marketing campaigns, administer payment and recruit affiliates. The aforementioned processes are meant to focus entirely on promoting your business and maintain momentum with marketers and advertisers. Having social reach across the web is key to gaining loyal customers and willing affiliates. For these reasons alone, many companies and enterprises are turning to affiliate tracking platforms.
With multiple affiliates capable of driving traffic for you—such as product reviews and radio advertisements—tracking and managing these processes can be difficult. The software solution, in turn, implements payment solutions in accordance with the affiliate’s commission. Other than tracking and payment, these solutions also provide statistics and analytics. This increases a user's ability to make better decisions about which products need to be boosted and what marketing strategy is most effective.
PostAffiliatePro, a powerful affiliate software solution, offers intuitive, effective and quick processes to manage marketing campaigns and track affiliates. As one of the best affiliate programs in the current market, it automates an entire system, including commission payouts and smart rewards. It has a 14-day free trial with its Essential plan costing $69 as a monthly fee. Some of its unique features include white-label affiliate links, custom affiliate tracking codes, direct links tracking, forced matrix, fraud protection, multiple currencies, private campaigns, ad channels tracking and tracking methods.
With this being said, here is a list of the five essential features most affiliate software solutions should have in their systems:
As the name states, tracking platforms offer sign-up forms for people who wish to become affiliates with your business. Several methods to strike a deal with a promising affiliate range from emails to paid advertisements. In order to close the deal, the sign-up forms collect information, create accounts, assign commission plans and generate emails for the affiliates to start immediately.
Affiliates need a centralized location to view their progress. As such, these software solutions often feature a management center, where affiliates are able to view their updated and recent activity. This includes payment history, sales and clicks they’ve generated. Furthermore, it allows them to view their commission plan and the amount due to them, which is automatically calculated by the system and lessens miscalculations.
For companies selling a multitude of products, affiliates are expected to earn different rates of commission from each other. By being able to customize your commission structures, you allow for flexibility regarding your payment plans. Since affiliates sell and promote products differently, their rates should differ accordingly.
With personalized and relevant landing pages come increased conversion rates. Having the right landing page for your targeted audience improves your chances of converting visitors into customers or affiliates. Most custom pages are optimized according to a specific keyword and boost a visitor’s interest in your product.
Your affiliates should be given the ability to integrate promotional tools into the system. This means being able to customize the tool according to their name, affiliate links, landing page and more. What this does is it provides more options and methods for them to boost your product and gain extra income in return.
When it comes to marketing and promotion, building good relationships with your allies is an effective method of improving your business. Compared to customer relationship management, which seeks to boost customer loyalty to the business, affiliate tracking software tracks the growth of conversions. Referrals, recommendations and endorsements from marketers are what promotes your business. With their help, you are able to reach several people all at once through a multitude of channels, that you otherwise may not have been able to easily engage. As such, it’s important to compensate your marketers as well.
Furthermore, affiliate software not only tracks the networks you’ve built over time but also helps to compensate the marketers involved with promoting your goods and services. They receive a commission for every successful sale they’ve processed. Commissions aren’t the only thing they can receive—coupons, discounts and gift cards are some prime examples.
Overall, affiliate tracking software offers a variety of benefits, including product promotion, in-depth reporting, accounting management, increased website traffic and full payment details. As such, these solutions serve as a performance evaluation for certain networks used by the company which lets you see if a marketing campaign is working effectively or not. Additionally, they also allow you to see which parts of the network receive the most attention.
At the end of the day, manually tracking your affiliates can be a chore. It is easy to lose track of them, especially if your business is growing at an extent to which you can’t keep up. Affiliate tracking software lessens your load while ensuring each affiliate is happy with the business deal. It helps you make well-informed decisions based on performance evaluations and data statistics. As a result, you should expect to see a growth in traffic and revenue through implementing an effective affiliate tracking solution.