What to Look for in Affiliate Software

As an online business owner, you stand to benefit a lot from affiliate software if you run an affiliate marketing program. Of course, different tools offer various types of functionality which benefit ecommerce and SaaS businesses differently, depending on their unique needs. Check out some of the key features and benefits to look for when shopping for an affiliate software tool.

Affiliate Software Features and Benefits

The best affiliate software will have at least some of the following features and benefits. The key thing is to assess how important each of them is to you and your business.

For example, software should typically:

• Be cost-effective with few resources needed to communicate what you do and offer.
• Remove ambiguity from online marketing transactions (e.g. spam email and invalid domains).
• Improve collaboration points between you and your affiliate partners, such as with promotional materials uploadable to and accessible within the tool.
• Maintain a solid customer base and benchmark or standard, allowing users to leave reviews and feedback that you can take immediate action on without needing to deploy surveys.

Tracking gives all partners and stakeholders the tools needed to create and assign affiliate links, track them back post-sale, and seamlessly generate partner-earned commissions. When this happens, you’ll keep your affiliate partners’ trust so they continue to proactively promote your business and offers.

The ability to set different commission types for affiliate partners is great for being flexible and offering billing method options like revenue threshold, type of purchase, number of clicks, or amount of sales based on recurring, lifetime or performance commission.

A user-friendly Interface will help your partners and other stakeholders experience a smooth, intuitive and easy-to-navigate tool without headache. Many tools let you customize the interface, like with the ability to navigate different affiliate programs without logging in and out or to quickly send mass payments.

The best affiliate software will provide sound security and privacy and prevent fraud. Software that uses its own servers instead of those from third parties is best since it means you’re getting a more stable system with secure data.

Integrations are important when it comes to affiliate software since it’s always more efficient and familiar to stick with the software and tools you already use and love. Look for the specific programs you use, such as shopping cart solutions, payment gateways, ecommerce platforms, and software for customer support, CRM, or email marketing.

Some of the best options should come with easy setup, integration and customization to your business and should be simple to use on a day-to-day basis. Extra software, tools, or plug-ins shouldn’t be needed, and the tool should ideally function as a web app through browsers.