How to Boost Your Shopify Sales with Affiliate Software

Shopify is the most popular e-commerce platform in the US, and it is used by almost 30% of online stores. If you’re an e-commerce brand, you’ve likely considered adding an affiliate program to your marketing strategy. 

Not sure how to find partners, track leads, or optimize performance? 

It sounds like you need affiliate software with features that cater to e-commerce businesses. We’ll walk you through the latest e-commerce trends in the affiliate world, software features to look for, and how to integrate the right software with your online store. 

Why Affiliate Marketing is Essential for Shopify Stores

We know it’s competitive out there in the e-commerce world — your audience has thousands of competitors to purchase from before yours. That’s why some industries, like the cruise and travel niches, for example, see cart abandonment rates of 98%. 

Pair that with expenses like shipping and maintenance fees, manufacturing, and web hosting, and you might not have a big enough budget for other marketing tactics like pay-per-click (PPC) ads or for the upkeep required for organic tactics like SEO. 

Think of Shopify as a window to thousands in your target audience. But how do you get them to gaze your way? Affiliate marketing does exactly that. 

Affiliate marketing is a marketing tactic where brands pay affiliates (partners) a commission to bring them new leads or sales. Since you only pay your partners after getting a sale, affiliate marketing is much lighter on your budget than tactics where you pay before even being assured of a sale. Plus, it’s a sure way to drive more traffic to your Shopify store. 

Another reason you need affiliate marketing is to build trust with your audience. Sure, your Shopify store could give new audiences access to your offerings. 

But for them to actually buy from you, they need to trust you — and they won’t if they’ve never heard of you. Imagine that a new audience sees their favorite social media influencers rocking your product on their feed. Your brand can leverage a relationship where trust is already there at a much lower cost. 

Key Features to Look for in Affiliate Software for Shopify Stores

Ready to streamline your affiliate marketing program with the right tech? The market has tons of options, but we recommend, first and foremost, software that integrates with your e-commerce platform (in this case, Shopify). 

Here’s a more fulsome list of key features for your ideal affiliate software below: 

• Integration with Shopify: Imagine having to cross-reference affiliate leads or make separate purchases with your Shopify store. That sounds pretty tedious, right? The most efficient affiliate marketing tools for a Shopify store are directly integrated with Shopify. This makes it easy to link data from both software and streamline your program. If you don’t see a direct integration on a platform’s list, look for custom integrations that a developer can help you create and link to your Shopify store. 

PS: Tapfiliate has an average 4.5-star rating on the Shopify app store:

• Branded assets: E-commerce retailers love using on-app shopping features on social media platforms like Instagram to boost sales. But do you have an influencer affiliate promoting your product? You want that post to be just as easily recognizable and accessible as your social media store ad. That’s why we recommend choosing software that lets you create and share branded social media assets. 
• Flexible commissions: Some of your affiliates will perform better than others. Certain affiliates might have a larger following, better engagement stats, or simply more effective promotional strategies that bring your brand more sales. And for that, you must reward them accordingly.  Flexible commissions help you customize commissions based on performance. For example, you might use Tapfiliate’s flexible commissions to toggle an automated performance increase in commission for affiliates who bring 10+ new customers to your brand each month. 
• Customizable reports: Affiliate software should track all types of leads, conversions, and affiliate sources in different marketing environments. The right filters should give you insight into the most successful marketing channels and product sales performance and historical data to learn about sales during different promotions. 

Top Affiliate Software for Shopify Stores

Here are a few common affiliate marketing platforms for online businesses on Shopify: 

Tapfiliate

Tapfiliate – Are you looking for an affiliate marketing program with proven success launching and growing e-commerce affiliate programs? Tapfiliate is a great option, with affordable yet malleable subscriptions that meet your e-commerce business at the launch, growth, and scaling stages. We offer flexible commissions to engage diverse affiliate marketers, in-platform communication, branded assets, white-labeling for branding consistency, and even product-specific commissions to meet your specific inventory needs and sales goals. Plus, we have quick no-code integration with Shopify. Subscriptions range from $89 to $149, or custom pricing for more custom features and inclusions. PS — no matter your tier, you’ll always be able to have unlimited affiliates in your program.

Referral Candy

Referral Candy also specializes in e-commerce affiliate programs. They offer diverse email and social media templates for easy asset creation, multiple automation features to expand your program, and robust analytics to assess performance against industry standards. 

However, their pricing options aren’t as predictable. While base subscription fees start at $47 for the most basic plan, the company takes an additional percentage-based commission on all affiliate revenue. 

If you continue to find new affiliate opportunities, the cost may be worth it, but with this arrangement, it does feel like you’re paying for the service multiple times.

Lead Dyno

Lead Dyno is an affiliate software company specializing in SaaS brands, fashion, and wellness niches, including e-commerce. It stands out for its lead nurturing and analytics, which allow you to follow your audience’s journey closely from the first awareness stage to the e-commerce purchase. 

The platform also offers a unique “What’s Selling” tool that shows you performance specs for individual affiliates, including order values, product data, and overall sales. Subscriptions cover multiple tiers, though the higher ones with useful features like customizable reporting and unlimited historical data can be expensive, as much as $750 per month. 

Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Affiliate Software on Shopify

Before you start click and commission tracking, you’ll need to integrate your Shopify site with your affiliate software. 

Here are five simple steps to follow: 

Step 1: Choose Your Affiliate Software

In the section above, we mentioned a few contenders for affiliate software. Once you find one that meets your needs, make sure you try the free trial that most offer. Then, you’ll have a solid idea about how to use its features to track affiliate sales and generate performance reports. 

Try out a few different software trials until you land on one that you like. After you decide on a subscription tier that works for you, check out the integrations page. 

Step 2: Install and Integrate with Shopify

Ideally, the affiliate software you choose will directly integrate with Shopify. For example, Tapfiliate offers a plug-and-play integration that you can enable with just a few clicks. 

Go to the Shopify App Store and install the Tapfiliate affiliate software: 

Step 3: Set Up Your Affiliate Program

What constitutes a conversion or sale? Is it a purchase on your e-commerce site? Or do clicks count as valuable actions as well? Decide what kind of customer actions you’d like to track on the software. Here are a few other aspects of your program you can set up: 

• Commissions: Decide between a flat-fee or percentage-based affiliate commission rate, and award a value to each of your affiliates. You might also include lifetime commissions to reward repeat customers from one affiliate or recurring commissions if you offer subscriptions. 
• Product-specific commissions: Need to offload excess inventory? Don’t forget to use SKU-specific commissions (aka product commissions) to incentivize sales on specific products. 
• Auto-approved affiliates: Pick affiliate criteria to automatically approve or reject new partners to your program. 

Speaking of new affiliates?

Step 4: Recruit and Onboard Affiliates

Do you already have existing affiliates in your program? Onboard them onto your affiliate software and give them access to their own affiliate portal. You can share announcements, updates, affiliate campaigns, and (if you use Tapfiliate’s in-platform messenger) individual messages there. 

No affiliates yet? No problem. Some affiliate software includes a recruitment feature. Tapfiliate is an automated customer referral program where you can trigger an email sent out to customers after they make a purchase. Your email invites that customer to refer new customers to you for a commission incentive. 

Step 5: Monitor and Optimize Performance

E-commerce transactions rolling in? Great — but it’s also your job to know where they’re coming from. Hello, real-time reporting. This affiliate software feature helps you visualize clicks, affiliate conversions, individual performance, compared performance across affiliates, and the most successful products, channels, and time periods. 

For example, Tapfiliate’s filtrable affiliate dashboards show you all the above metrics: 

3 Tips for Shopify Store Affiliate Programs

As an experienced affiliate software provider in the e-commerce space, we’ve learned many lessons to share with you:

• Use discount and coupon codes: Did you know that 79% of shoppers in the United States used digital coupons in 2023? E-commerce’s competitiveness demands countless differentiators from similar companies, and coupons are a great way to differentiate. Give your audience a 10% or 20% discount through your affiliates, and watch the traffic pile onto your store!
• Don’t skimp on quality photo assets: E-commerce sales are booming, but people are still skeptical to buy things they’ve never seen before. That’s why professional photography and stellar social media assets are vital for affiliate program success. While your affiliates might be skilled in graphics, we always recommend providing your own so that you engage your affiliates and make their lives easier. In turn, this will encourage them to keep promoting you. 
• Leverage other integrations: Do you use MailChimp for email marketing campaigns? Make sure you harness that integration (as well as the one for Shopify) to make your multi-channel marketing efforts more cohesive. By the way, Tapfiliate integrates with Mailchimp and any other tool you need thanks to our custom integrations. 

Case Studies and Testimonials: Shopify E-commerce Stores

Without a few success stories, we wouldn’t be one of the world’s most trusted affiliate software for e-commerce brands. 

Here are a few examples of e-commerce brands that have skyrocketed their Shopify store revenue after using our software: 

Get Started with Your Shopify Store’s Affiliate Program!

Shopify stores have seen a combined sales activity of over $400 billion. Do you want a bigger piece of the pie? You’ll need a solid affiliate program (and software) to attract more audiences to your store. 

Ready to boost your Shopify revenue and get more eyes on your online store? 

Chrissy Kapralos

Chrissy Kapralos runs a Toronto-based writing agency called No Worries Writing Co. She’s passionate about helping businesses communicate and share their stories. When she isn’t writing about the latest tech and marketing content, you’ll find her traveling, cooking, or watching horror movies.