If you’re reading this article, you’ve probably decided to leverage affiliate marketing for your Shopify store’s growth.
In an age where marketing is increasingly driven by technology, many Shopify business owners understand that analyzing, buying, and deploying the proper marketing tools, is one of the most essential things.
Before choosing the affiliate solution, it’s essential to ensure that you have this affiliate program launch checklist. By running through these steps, you can better define your affiliate program, everything from network selection, working with affiliates, and how to make it boom with the help of affiliate tools.
So, how could you pick the right one?
There are a bunch of Shopify applications for managing affiliate marketing operations. You might be wondering what factors to think about while making your decision.
This guide will help you to decide how to choose the best affiliate tool for your Shopify store.
Let’s dive in!
What’s an affiliate tool?
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy motivating individuals (your affiliates) to promote your products/ service for commission exchange by providing referral links that lead to your Shopify store.
Thanks to affiliate apps, Shopify merchants can do affiliate marketing easier than ever before.
Merchants use the affiliate solution to keep track of individual affiliate sales statistics and commissions, also monitor the affiliate programs and partners.
Why does your Shopify store need one?
With an emphasis on simplicity and automation, Shopify offers a treasure of affiliate app collections helping you handle affiliate marketing tasks with ease. With little effort, you can track your progress, adjust commission rates, and expand your relationship network thanks to Shopify affiliate apps.
There are a variety of Shopify apps assisting you in mastering any affiliate program you want to build and execute on your online store. They’re simple to use to make your e-store ready for affiliate programs of all shapes and sizes. Furthermore, no prior experience of coding is necessary to get started with a new tool.
Things to consider before choosing a Shopify affiliate solution
Clarify if affiliate marketing is your primary sales approach
This aspect may influence whether you require an affiliate management tool or not.
Assume you’ve decided that affiliate marketing will be the cornerstone of your marketing strategy, affiliate marketing operations must be properly monitored and measured to deliver you the required results, therefore an affiliate tool is a requirement for your Shopify store.
As a result, you’ll need a perfect solution that can track tasks across your initial plan and a large number of affiliates.
Identify your business needs – your expectations in a solution
Secondly, you need to clarify your business needs, fear or challenges, and the motivations behind when choosing a Shopify affiliate tool.
Consider what problems you want to solve before selecting a solution that best suits your needs and which features you want it to adapt, such as create which program types, manage and track affiliates, pay affiliates, find affiliates, etc.
For example, you’re owning a Shopify anime-themed merchandise store, if you want to increase brand awareness in the anime community, the affiliate solution you use should have a Marketplace so that you can reach more niche potential affiliates and help you track and manage affiliates effectively.
If the solution you choose meets your primary objectives, you can start considering other aspects, such as ease of use or design.
Consider your company’s stage of growth (for selecting the right plan)
See how many employees you have, and will you be the only one who has access to the affiliate tool or the others will also use it.
These are crucial things for picking the Shopify app with staff accounts for accessing merchants’ affiliate panels to manage like the UpPromote app permits your team members to handle your affiliate programs with limited or full access.
Moreover, almost all Shopify affiliate apps have different prices ranging adapting to each business type’s needs. Seeing your business’s stage of growth helps you decide which plan will be the most suitable.
What to look for in an affiliate solution?
With many affiliate solutions out there in Shopify app store, it’s vital to keep some key elements in mind, the outstanding features that the potential app has. This will guarantee that you choose the best fit for your future.
Social proof
Before buying anything online, the typical buyer reads 10 reviews or sources, therefore do the same when picking a Shopify affiliate app.
This is a big investment for your business so be careful.
Firstly, check if the app has a good rank and reviews on the Shopify app store. The higher the app ranks on Shopify, the more it’s satisfied and trusted by customers.
You can check out some customer reviews or go to other app review sites such as Capterra, G2, TrustRadius are among the most trusted software review sites. You can learn fascinating facts about the app before making a purchase.
Price
Money has a huge role here. You don’t want to overpay for features that may be had at a cheaper cost or less effective.
Many providers offer a variety of plans with varying features, allowing you to select the most cost-effective option. After clarifying your business type above, you probably know which plan suits you best.
UpPromote, ideally, is best for all-size businesses with exclusive features and good price ranges, starting from $0/mo, and three other plans with unlimited access to powerful features.
Ease of use
It’s pointless to choose an app that’s difficult to use. You should also make sure it’s straightforward to set up in the first place, because the sooner you get the affiliate program up and running, the sooner you can start selling.
This entails selecting an affiliate marketing solution with powerful functionality and step-by-step instructions.
Features
If you want to make your affiliate marketing activities more productive and quantifiable, you’ll need a solution that lets you:
Create multiple programs so you are able to create unlimited affiliate programs with different commission offers.
Generate and distribute affiliate links and coupon codes since these are which you can keep track of your referral orders and pay rewards. Moreover, coupon codes are more preferred by customers since they could get a percentage quantity off.
Track and manage your affiliates is the most required function when it comes to choosing any affiliate apps. Tracking is useful for finding the most excellent affiliates and managing their performance more efficiently.
Payout options: An affiliate marketing solution should provide an easy means to integrate a merchant site to payment getaways, such as PayPal, the easiest payment processor.
Creative gadgets, your affiliates need access to a variety of creatives to successfully market a product or service. Thus, an affiliate marketing solution should offer creative gadgets for you to share banner ads, logos, etc, with your affiliates.
A Marketplace is where you can find potential affiliate partners helping speed up the affiliate recruiting process. Many solutions provide this network with a list of trustworthy media partners.
UpPromote Marketplace is where to help you make things possible. It’s completely free.
By listing your program on this Marketplace to have affiliates approached you, you have another option of proactively finding them. In this way, you’ll be provided access to a list of affiliate profiles from which you can select the ideal affiliates to invite directly to join your affiliate program.
Manage multiple stores is a feature that many large businesses will need. When you manage a large number of Shopify stores, you need to be able to rapidly access each one, sync new affiliates across businesses, and analyze affiliate success across all of them. So seek an app that has this capability.
Support team and onboarding process
It’s vital when you’re looking for an affiliate solution and pay for it. So ensure to look for one that provides prompt and devoted support, and is always available when difficulties arise or simply you want assistance.
Moreover, thorough onboarding and training are also important, choosing the app that provides any supporting materials you need to use the app, so you can get the most out of it for your business’s growth.
Wrapping up
With all that in mind, you may have the answer to pick the appropriate Shopify app. Can you get one now? Fortunately, yes! You can get started right away by downloading the UpPromote app for your Shopify business.
Add UpPromote to your Shopify store, and begin a great journey. The platform will walk you through an onboarding process getting your business ready for Shopify’s brand new affiliate program within a minute.
Make the most of affiliate marketing starting at 0$/month with UpPromote now!
