SaaS Affiliate Marketing: Secrets to Scaling Fast and Sustainably

What is the secret sauce to the incredible growth of your SaaS affiliate marketing program?

Many things go into creating a sustainable, yet rapid scaling of your partner network and the revenues associated with it. Today, we’ll share the key tips, tricks, and insights for SaaS businesses that Tapfiliate team covered during the recent podcast episode.

How to Increase Affiliate Program Trust with Branding

One of the best ways to improve affiliate performance and facilitate your growth is by strengthening trust between you and your partners. There are several ways to achieve that through branding.

The power of branding is clear to anyone who works in marketing. It’s just as strong when it comes to affiliate marketing programs.

When you’re working on improving your affiliate sales through establishing partner trust, make use of all the functionality that is available in affiliate platforms you’re working with.

• Add your own logo to reduce confusion among affiliate partners and create a cohesive experience for them. Some affiliate tracking solutions won’t have the White Label option, but if you use Tapfiliate, then it can be done with a couple of clicks.
• Create a custom domain for your affiliate program. You can definitely keep on using the link with the third-party solution name in it, but this will not create a feeling of you fully owning the program and being in control. That’s why it’s better to use a domain with only your company name.
• Customize emails. Make sure the emails about anything affiliate program-related come from you as the sender. Double-check that your name is in both ‘Sender name’ and ‘Sender email.’ Sometimes, SaaS companies overlook one or the other, and the email campaigns they send out (for example, if an affiliate partner resets their password or a mass notification goes out to the affiliate network) appear spammy.

Why are all those things so important?

Together, they raise your brand awareness among affiliates and help you get to the top of their mind. An average affiliate is not very invested in the brand, whether we like to admit it or not. They’re mostly after commission payouts and want to make the best use of their resources and reach to maximize earnings. Most likely, they are registered with more than one affiliate program to achieve that, so they’re not as invested in what your specific SaaS business is doing.

Now, if you want to create an ideal affiliate out of an average one, you’ll need a strong back to lean on. Your partner network needs to know your products and what is special about you, and they must be incentivized to talk about you to potential customers. A lot goes into making that happen, but strong branding is the first step in the right direction.

What is the Best Commission Model to Motivate Affiliates to Bring New Customers and More Revenue?

Affiliate commission is often your most powerful tool in securing scaling and motivating your network to work harder on promoting your services.

There are different types of commissions SaaS brands use for their partner programs, and it’s important to set up commissions to affiliates that actually encourage them to grow with you.

Here are the main commission types you can utilize and how they support scaling your SaaS affiliate marketing program.

Recurring commission

The type that is very common among SaaS affiliate programs, as it ties nicely with revenue model that those companies have. For instance, a client clicks on the affiliate link and proceeds to subscribing to SaaS solution. They pay a monthly fee that, in turn, generates a monthly commission to the partner.

With recurring commissions, the affiliate marketer can set up a cap to limit the number of recurring commissions per client.

This means that your affiliate network will not only have to bring in active users for your SaaS product, but also ensure the supply of new prospects.

Lifetime commission

Lifetime commission is similar to the recurring one, only there is no cap per client. This means that if your partner has brought in a lead who kept on paying for your SaaS service monthly over a 20 year period, the partner will be getting paid for the entirety of that period as well.

While this creates a nice passive income for your affiliates and fosters loyalty to you, this can cause a slow down in the affiliate program expansion.

That’s why if you use lifetime commission, you can think of different options to make it work for you the most. For instance, you can offer it for top editions of your product and service only. You can also unlock lifetime commissions for your most successful and loyal affiliates as a token of appreciation for their work and to keep them engaged for longer.

Fixed commission

This is a one-time commission with a fixed rate that will incentivize your partners to bring in new leads. If your partners only get one-time payment from the lead, they’ll be more actively looking for new ones and talking about you across multiple social media platforms and making many social media posts to ensure their audience doesn’t miss this information.

Percentage-based commission

With percentage-based commissions, you pay your affiliates a percentage of the revenue they generate for your SaaS product.

With this type of commission, you’re more likely to grow not in terms of the number of leads and clients but the average deal size. When affiliates see that their monthly payouts depend on the editions of solutions they promote, they will quickly move to the top tiers, promote your most exclusive products or services, and encourage their audience to get add-ons and any extras you may provide.

Product-specific commission

SKU-based commissions are great when you’re launching a new product, selling the remainder of the stock you had (not as applicable to SaaS, though), or running sales.

This is a commission that is best used in combination with other reward types to maximize the outcome.

The best commission type for scaling SaaS affiliate programs

Overall, if you want to grow more aggressively, it’s best to use a combination of commission types, as each of them contributes to the expansion of the affiliate network and new customer acquisition.

Tip 1: What’s also important is not just the types of reward systems you roll out, but the commission rates you set up. If you really want your conversion rates to go up and your software solutions to grow more popular, you need to share the revenues that your partners bring in generously. Watch out for your margin levels, but consider offering an above-average commission to attract and stimulate new and existing affiliates to be more active.

You can read more about an amazing case where a dental care company onboarded a partner who ended up generating 80% of the company’s total revenue in the podcast episode’s summary where we talked to the creator of Shopifreaks. There, the company opted for above market-average commission to affiliates and it worked perfectly.

Tip 2: Introduce extra commissions on top of standard ones for partners. Change the percentage or the fixed amount. For example, your commission percentage can be higher for premium subscriptions or other exclusive services that your software company offers.

Commission vs Conversions: What’s the Difference?

Sometimes, we hear from our clients that they don’t fully understand the difference between a conversion and a commission.

Commission is the financial reward the affiliate partner gets for the conversion they facilitated.

Conversion is the action that your end-user made thanks to the efforts of the affiliate partner. For SaaS products, the conversion would typically be a monthly payment but it can also be a one-off subscription sale or a trial signup.

Tip: In the Tapfiliate affiliate marketing solution, you can approve and disapprove conversions so partners won’t get commissions for them. This can be used to correct accidental mistakes or prevent payouts for fraudulent activities. You can also delete conversions, but it’s not recommended as you can use this data to analyze partner behavior and work on improving your future affiliate strategies.

How to Track Influencer Performance

Not every affiliate partner is an influencer, but every influencer can be your affiliate partner.

You can use coupons track your influencers’ performance to align it with your SaaS growth plans. Although affiliate links are widely popular among influencers, coupons work very well too.

If we’re talking about social media posts, not every user will be interested in clicking a link, but they might see a coupon on the screen and remember or screenshot it for later. It’s also easy for users to copy and paste coupons from blog posts straight into your website.

Giving your partners more options to monetize their online presence with links and coupons is a win-win. You get to track every affiliate-related conversion more accurately, and your partners won’t miss out on commission payouts they deserve.

Promotional Materials as Your Secret Weapon for Scaling SaaS Affiliate Marketing Program

Onboarding affiliates is somewhat similar to onboarding a new team member.

You want to offer them as much support as you can as they’re making their first steps with the company. You give them a wide range of options to learn about your SaaS business, and, in return, they perform well and help your company flourish.

When working with partners, sending them a unique referral link is not enough. They will need all your knowledge and promotional content they can get to become successful.

As you work with your network, make sure you share promotional resources (cheat sheets, how-tos for your solution, FAQs, responses to common objections, email templates, etc).

Also, create and share marketing materials that only affiliate partners have access to. Those can be banners, b-rolls, and other things that can be used in content marketing.

Your goal, as their dedicated affiliate manager, is to provide as many valuable insights and instruments to them as possible. The most successful referrals and affiliates are the ones who get support from the brand they’re working with. Equipping them with all the right guides, materials, and tips and tricks is a great and effective way to show that support.

Where to Promote Your Affiliate Program

Before we sign off, let’s go over some tips on where to promote your affiliate program. Before you scale it, you need to nurture it, and you require active partners to do that.

1. Your website. Make a separate page for your affiliate program where all main rules and benefits would be described. Make it SEO-friendly, so aspiring affiliates can find you, and provide value on this page so people don’t click off. Include keywords, create an intuitive structure to the page, lead with how your partner program will help them, and not you.
2. Checkout Thank You page. People who’ve just made a purchase on your website are the most enthusiastic target audience for a partner program. Mention it on your Thank You page and add a link to sign up. They already know your brand and trust you with their money, so why not try to recruit them for your affiliate program? You never know who shops your products and services. Anyone can be your new ideal affiliate.
3. Email campaigns. Just like you can advertise your program to existing customers on the Thank You page, you can also promote it in your emails. Now, whether or not to include it in every single email you send out is for you to decide. However, you can add information about your affiliate program to at least a few of them. This will expand your pool of potential partners, plus it will be a reminder to those who thought about joining but didn’t come through with it for some reason.
4. Social media platforms. Social media is a perfect place to advertise your affiliate program. Everyone is using it, and you can reach lots of potential partners at a very low cost compared to paid advertisements or other marketing channels.
5. Paid ads. We know, we know. We’ve just said that paid ads are expensive, but they can work well sometimes. If you have room in your budget, allocate some of it to advertisements on Google and see if that generates new partners for you. If it proves ineffective, drop it. But if it creates good results – keep on using it and scaling your affiliate marketing.

Try multiple promotion channels, and don’t be afraid to mix and match them. Every SaaS company is different, and you can’t be certain what works best until you try. Good luck!