Critical features of an affiliate software

If affiliate marketing is an important part of your marketing strategy, you should consider bringing your affiliate program in-house. Doing so gives you more control of your affiliate database and tracking, and there are increased efficiencies because you are not outsourcing a major part of your marketing strategy.

Of course, if you are going to bring an affiliate program in-house, you had better make sure that the software you choose to power it is everything you and your affiliates will need it to be. Otherwise, your base of affiliates, who are already using your network-based program, will be unlikely to switch over from promoting the network-based program to your in-house one. You are going to have to sell them on the new idea and the new program, so be sure you are able to explain the important advantages.

When evaluating a potential affiliate marketing platform (as well as any third party network program), there are four sets of features to consider:

1. Commission Management Tools
2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools
3. Tracking Reports
4. Marketing Tools

These sets of tools are essential to the success of an affiliate program. They are vital for optimizing your program performance and campaigns, while supporting your affiliates. In addition, these tools will also make your program more appealing to your affiliates.

COMMISSION MANAGEMENT TOOLS

When you research an affiliate program platform, the program should provide for the effective management of commission structures. You not only want a program that will keep track of commissions, but one that will be flexible enough to allow for tracking customized commissions. There may be times when you want to use various commission incentives to motivate your affiliates and maintain their loyalty and you will want a program that has the flexibility to handle this.

There are three essential features the program should provide in order to effectively manage custom commission structures:

Support for different advertising payment models: Pay affiliates by clicks or by sales or a combination of payment models. Your software should support CPM, CPC, tiered CPA, and hybrid commission tracking. You can then decide which model suits your business best.

By tracking the results of a given model used with a specific affiliate, you can find out those affiliates that are bringing in the best results. (It is always wiser to work with a wide base of affiliates as it gives you more control over your business and insulates you from sudden changes in the market.)

Commission Groups: Your software should make it possible to pre-approve affiliates for different commission structures by assigning them to your affiliate groups who are working on the same campaign.

For example, you might want to give a larger commission to those affiliates that are performing very well for you. Another example of the benefits of commission groups is that you can set up performance criteria. You can have a higher percentage commission for those affiliates who have brought in "x" amount of high sales, and a lower commission for those that are not performing as well.

In addition, with this feature, the affiliate groups only see the commissions that they are getting.

Automated Commission Management: You want software that will automatically manage affiliate commissions when they need to be changed.

For example, when a customized commission structure is set up for a special promotion, the special commission should automatically expire when the promotion is over. The software should also automatically notify the relevant affiliates of the end of the promotion; and a new replacement commission should automatically be applied to all affiliates who were a part of that promotion.

AFFILIATE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM) TOOLS

Messaging: It is very important to stay in touch with your affiliates to maximize their work for you. Also, communication between you and your affiliates can only make both parties feel more secure about your business relationship. CRM messaging tools should be available for precisely these reasons. How much better it is to use an affiliate program with its own CRM built-in software: there are no problems with handshakes, database setup, and you don't have to pay the cost of a third CRM provider.

Internal Message Bank: Another useful communication tool that should be a readily available is an inbox. The icon for it should be placed on the affiliate's dashboard so he can see it immediately when he logs in.

E-mail List Generation: This tool makes it possible to segment affiliates according to their performance status (inactive, super-affiliate, etc.). It should also generate a targeted list of those affiliates so that you can reach out to that targeted demographic with specialized communications as needed.

Email Alerts: Notifies affiliates via e-mail whenever transactions occur, internal messages are received, or a new promotion is available. This tool is essential for keeping the affiliate engaged and active.

AFFILIATE TRACKING REPORTS

There are four areas of affiliate reporting that are necessary to optimize an affiliate program: traffic, earnings, ad (creatives) performance, and period comparisons. These reports provide invaluable metrics on the ROI of the program and other marketing efforts, and should be available in a variety of formats.

Traffic Report: Helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses in your marketing strategy by providing insight into the full marketing cycle. Based on the landing pages and your ads that appear on them, this report should show the number of clicks to your site from the affiliate and the resultant conversion rates.

Earning Report: Provides intelligence on your top earning affiliates and on which promotions and commission structures deliver the greatest return. From this, you can determine how individual and groups of affiliates are performing and you can see what is working for them and what can be done to maximize their performance.

Marketing Creative Reports: Offer insight into which ads (creatives) deliver the best return and can be used to maximize the program performance. It's also very useful to test creatives in a few affiliate areas before deploying them across other acquisition channels (such as CPM networks).

Period Comparison: Helps you identify what caused a change in program performance by providing an overview of changes in your affiliate program performance over time. This report is particularly useful for conducting quarterly or seasonal analysis of program performance.

Exporting Reports: Your reports should be adaptable to your pre-existing business needs. Your affiliate software should make all reports available for export in Excel, CSV, and TXT formats, as well as through an API so that they can be integrated directly into other CRM platforms that you might be using.

AFFILIATE MARKETING TOOLS

Your affiliate software should also support the needs of affiliates. Essentially, it should help you help them focus more on doing what they do best: driving sales. Have your software feature a variety of tools to help affiliates save time on administrative and technical tasks, and allow them to focus on generating referrals.

Geo-Targeting: This tool extracts users' IP addresses to allow affiliates to target users with offers and banners that are relevant to their location and language. Your software determines the users' locations and then shows the affiliate a banner that is pertinent to them. Then all the affiliate has to do is drop banner code on their landing page.

Affiliate Custom Tracking: This helps affiliates segment and track different campaigns by letting them add additional variables to their affiliate tracking URL. This tool is particularly useful for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) affiliates as it lets them determine how well each keyword and/or campaign converts to a referral.

Banner Rotator: Your software should also support JavaScript that automatically rotates banners. This way affiliates can always show their visitors fresh content.

Banner Groups: Your affiliates should be able to create banner groups for rotation on different campaigns. This same functionality also allows program managers to create banner groups for different segments of affiliates.

Banner Uploader: Program managers should be able to upload new banners directly through the admin interface, and then assign them to specific groups or campaigns.

Third Party Banner Support: Your software should also support banner codes and JavaScript from third party platforms so that both affiliates and program managers can consolidate all their tracking and conversion reports under a single interface.

Deep Linking Tool: This allows your affiliates to choose the landing URL/pages of their affiliate marketing links. It supports them in their own marketing methods and helps them provide calls-to-action that they know will resonate and convert with their own user-base.

Widget Support: This tool lets you offer affiliates widgets that show their visitors fresh, dynamic advertising with which they can interact. It should increase both user engagement and conversions.

BRINGING IT IN-HOUSE

Creating an in-house affiliate program offers you efficiencies and profitability you may not otherwise enjoy. To accomplish this, you need to ensure that the technology powering the in-house program features the right commission, tracking, CRM, and marketing tools.

However, great technology alone will not make the in-house program succeed. You have to have a plan to lure your affiliates to make them want to change from program networks. Affiliates usually are content with their networks because they allow them to manage multiple programs through one account and interface.

You must provide information and incentives for them to make the switch. By explaining the features of the program, and how much time, money and effort it can save you and them, you can then offer the affiliates better commissions than they are currently receiving.

The personal factor will always be important in any business enterprise. You are going to need a strong relationship with your base of affiliates to get their attention so you can make your pitch about the changeover. Focus on getting to know your affiliate-base and building strong relationships with them. Make them feel that the relationship is mutually beneficial and is a partnership.

If you follow all of these tips and suggestions, you should feel comfortable knowing what affiliate software features you want. Take time researching which software suits your business because once you find it, it will work wonders for you and your enterprise.