Picking an Affiliate Program Management Software for Marketers and Entrepreneurs

More than half of today’s marketers use affiliate marketing to find new leads and customers. The benefits are clear: minimal investment, since you only pay commissions after your business gets a purchase, plus boosted brand trust from your reputable affiliate partners. 

But to fully leverage the power of affiliate marketing, you need the right tech to manage it all. Affiliate program management software helps you track and optimize performance for affiliate campaigns, communicate with your affiliates, and streamline your program for better efficiency. 

So, what key features should you look for in affiliate software solutions? We’ll break them down, along with success stories from brands that use Tapfiliate (our affiliate platform) and how to get started. 

What is Affiliate Program Management Software?

Affiliate software is a SaaS product that helps brands launch, manage, and improve their affiliate marketing programs. Most offer features to track affiliate links, clicks, and transactions stemming from your affiliate campaigns. 

The affiliate software market keeps growing — currently valued at $22 billion, it’s expected to hit a market value of $39 billion in 2031. The rising popularity of affiliate marketing demands better reporting, tracking, and overall organization that software solutions can provide to brands. 

Key Features of Affiliate Marketing Software

Let’s dive deeper into what you can do with affiliate management software. 

Real-time tracking

Most affiliate platforms track clicks (website traffic) and conversions (usually purchases, but also demo downloads or email signups). 

However, the way they track those results might differ. 

You might have a platform that generates affiliate links to share with your partners, which show up on your reports every time a customer clicks those links to complete an action. Or, you might have cookie tracking, which attaches a small file to every potential customer who views your affiliates’ content and further actions. 

And if you want to track specific campaign results or promotions, you might share coupon or discount codes that your software can track as well. 

Real-time reporting

So, where do all those tracked clicks and conversions end up? 

Ideally, an affiliate platform will populate various reporting dashboards to make all that data accessible and actionable. Real-time reporting might feature a general dashboard where you can see your affiliate clicks, conversions, transactions, and commission values updating as they happen. 

Additionally, affiliate reporting should offer more filters and customization. For example, Tapfiliate’s reporting dashboards let you view and compare results based on: 

• Individual affiliate performance
• Historical patterns and dates
• Marketing channels
• Specific affiliate campaigns
• Product-specific performance

You can also assess performance with metrics like: 

• Conversion rate
• Clickthrough rate
• Average order value (AOV)
• Total commissions paid
• Total order value by affiliate

Integrations

Integrations link your affiliate marketing software to other tools in your tech stack. If you’re an e-commerce business, you might use tools like Shopify or WooCommerce — your affiliate platform should be able to integrate with them. 

Similarly, you might use PayPal as a payment processor or Mailchimp for email marketing campaigns. Same story; your affiliate platform should connect. 

The benefits? A lot of time saved. Brands often have a series of actions within their marketing workflow that integrations can help conduct more efficiently. 

However, the best integration of all has to be one with Zapier, as it helps you create custom workflows across multiple software tools that might not necessarily integrate with your affiliate marketing platform but offer a similar effect due to Zapier’s function. 

Pssssst. Tapfiliate integrates with all these software tools and then some. Plus, our custom integrations help you link tools not listed in our 34+ direct integrations with a little help from a developer.  

Partner Recruitment

Any newbies to affiliate marketing in the house? You’ll need to make sure your software has partner recruitment features to get the affiliate ball rolling. This might look like: 

• Affiliate marketplace: Some affiliate platforms (usually affiliate networks) offer a marketplace where brands can browse a list of affiliates to invite to their program. 

• Affiliate advertising: Another recruitment feature is advertising, where a platform helps you create advertisements to recruit affiliates to your program. 

• Multi-level marketing (MLM): MLM helps you incentivize existing affiliates to refer other affiliates to your program. Software that provides this feature will let you offer custom commissions to your affiliates for all the leads their new sub-affiliates bring your brand!

• Customer referral program: The best affiliates are the people who know and love your products, aka your customers. A customer referral program helps you trigger email invitations to your customers once they make one or a set number of purchases. 

Check out Tapfiliate’s automated customer referral program!

Affiliate Commissions

Affiliate commissions dictate how much you pay affiliates for referring or converting a new customer to your brand. The most common commission structures are: 

• Flat-fee commissions: set monetary value awarded to an affiliate for every purchase of customers. I.e., $50 per conversion or purchase. 

• Percentage-based commissions: 

Tapfiliate’s flexible commissions also cover the following structures: 

• Recurring commissions: Commissions paid out every month to coincide with a customer’s monthly subscription plans (ideal for SaaS customers)

• Lifetime commissions: Commissions are paid out every time a customer makes a purchase (not just their first purchase). This helps engage affiliates and grow stronger relationships with your customers. 

• Product-specific commissions: These are commissions tailored to specific products. For example, you might award a higher commission for a limited time to sell excess inventory. 

How to Get Started with Tapfiliate (the Easiest Affiliate Program Management Software)

Whether you’ve never started an affiliate program or need help optimizing an existing one, Tapfiliate’s affiliate tracking software can help you reach your goals. 

Here’s how to get started: 

Sign up for Tapfiliate’s free trial

Visit our free trial page to download our software and try it out. You’ll need to submit some personal details and decide on your affiliate program subdomain. After that, you’ll be prompted to enter your payment details. Keep in mind we won’t charge you until the end of the free trial (14 days). 

Set up commissions

Decide on the types of customer actions you’d like to track, and toggle commission structures and values for your affiliates. 

Here, you might also automate performance-based increases to engage your top-performing affiliates. 

Recruit more affiliates

Our automated customer referral program helps you recruit new and long-time customers to your affiliate program. Set up an email template and customize it to your customer name and details. 

Then, you can trigger those email invitations to go out every time your customers reach a set number of purchases or complete a desired action. 

Integrate with your tech stack

Check out our list of direct, plug-and-play integrations that you can set up in minutes. These include CRM software like Salesforce, email tools like Mailchimp, e-commerce platforms like Shopify, and course software like Teachable. 

We offer 30+ direct integrations, as well as custom integrations you can set up with the help of a developer and our rich developer knowledge base. 

Keep the revenue flowing with performance insights

5. Keep the revenue flowing with performance insights

Keep tabs on your program with insights from our affiliate dashboard and custom reporting visualizations. Look at your highest- and lowest-performing affiliates, campaigns, or channels to further inform and optimize your program. 

The right insights will help you focus more time and investment on quality affiliates and tactics. But don’t take our word for it — keep reading for success stories of supercharged revenue from our clients below. 

Case Studies and Success Stories

We can tell you all about affiliate management software and why you should use it — but maybe it’s time to show you instead. 

Here are some success stories — boosted revenue, sales, and order values — from Tapfiliate’s clients. 

Hyperzod: Commerce software saw a 300% boost in affiliate growth

Hyperzod is a SaaS product that helps you create and customize delivery applications and solutions. Think of it as the key to creating your brand’s unique take on Uber or Amazon. The brand had its own affiliate program before coming to Tapfiliate but faced challenges like: 

• Issues retaining affiliates: Couldn’t crack more than 2-5 active, quality affiliates at one time. 
• Time-consuming: The previous affiliate software Hyperzod used didn’t offer any automation features to save time in their employees’ workflows
• Tracking inaccuracies: Hyperzod wanted to track a variety of affiliate activities and their old affiliate tracking software fell short. 

Once they partnered with Tapfiliate, Hyperzod’s affiliate program did a complete 180. They boosted affiliate growth by 300%, now boasting 15-20 quality affiliates. Plus, they were able to optimize their campaigns more effectively with Tapfiliate’s diverse tracking, which covered website visits, conversions, and everything in between in the affiliate journey.  

Type01: Design and font licensing provider sees 10X affiliate revenue

Type01 is a team of designers and art curators that offer design services and custom font licencing to their clients. They had an affiliate program and tried to grow their network using social media advertising. 

However, their products were quite affordable at around $20 or so a piece, meaning the changing algorithms and high costs of those platforms ate too much time and budget dollars. 

After subscribing to Tapfiliate, Type01 was able to grow their affiliate base with minimal investment and scale their program. 

Furthermore, Tapfiliate’s flexible commissions, specifically recurring commissions, helped them attract and retain high-quality affiliates. They also leveraged diverse commission structures and increases, along with campaign and promotional settings, to optimize their program. 

The results? A serious boost in brand awareness and staggering 10X increase in monthly affiliate revenue!

EmailList Verify: Verification tool saw an additional $5,000 monthly in affiliate revenue

EmailList Verify is an automation tool that helps brands verify and clean up their email lists. Completely new to the affiliate game, they struggled to brainstorm how to track referrals in-house while maintaining compliance with privacy regulations. Once they implemented Tapfiliate’s tracking software, they were able to: 

• Boost SEO: Tapfiliate’s partner recruitment features grew their affiliate program and thus built backlinks with all the new quality affiliates promoting their brand. 

• Track performance securely: Tapfiliate’s first-party cookies brought peace of mind and security to the brand. 

Skyrocket affiliate sales: EmailList Verify now sees an average $4,000 to $5,000 in monthly affiliate sales thanks to the efficiencies of Tapfiliate’s software.

Grow Your Affiliate Revenue Today with Tapfiliate!

Bottom line? A solid affiliate marketing software solution is a must for sustainable affiliate growth and revenue. The management and analysis features you’ll access with affiliate software will keep your affiliates engaged and your revenue flowing. 

Ready to transform your affiliate program into a money-making machine? Try Tapfiliate’s free 14-day trial!

FAQs 

What is affiliate program management software?

Affiliate software is a subscription-based SaaS product that helps brands launch, manage, and improve revenue from their affiliate marketing programs. 

How much does affiliate software cost?

Pricing plans vary greatly in cost, depending on the software, specialized industries, features, and tracking capacities. Most affiliate management platforms offer tiered subscriptions ranging anywhere from $80 to thousands of dollars. A general medium for a standard plan would be between $200 to $500 per month. 

Tapfiliate offers affordable and scalable subscriptions ranging from $74 to $124 monthly on an annual plan and custom plans. All tiers included unlimited affiliates and affiliate marketing programs. 

What are the key features of affiliate software?

Most affiliate solutions offer tracking, reporting, attribution, integrations, and partner recruitment features.

How can I sign up for affiliate software?

You can try out Tapfiliate’s free 14-day trial before picking one of our flexible subscription tiers.