Affiliate Campaign Management with Woocommerce
Tools / Solutions Overview
Ever since the advent of affiliate marketing campaigns in 1994, e-commerce businesses have benefited from the power of recommendations that drive new traffic to their sites. Through various types of affiliate campaigns, e-commerce businesses generate a significant income. Industry giants like Amazon have exploited this excellent resource to increase their sales. In fact, according to one report, 40% of Amazon’s revenue in 2015 was generated through affiliate marketing, accounting for $10B of its over $100B worth of sales. Today, 81% of all the world’s brands use affiliate marketing to edge ahead of their competition.
The rapidly digitizing world and the growth of the internet to all corners of the world means that e-commerce is the future, and the end is for those who are prepared for it. Emerging world markets like Bangladesh, Nigeria, Singapore, etc., are all experiencing an increase in the popularity of affiliate marketing. It seems that the only way for businesses to prepare for the future and ensure that they take full advantage of affiliate marketing is through affiliate campaign management.
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is partnering up with independent individuals called “affiliates” to increase traffic on their websites and sales of their products. This happens when the affiliate promotes the product and services to their audience via links for compensation between the business and the affiliate, thus driving traffic to the affiliated companies. It is an excellent way to make money as an alternative to Google AdSense.
Even though affiliate marketing is widely used and recommended for businesses, it can often be hard to get started, let alone manage the marketing campaigns. If you own or run a WooCommerce store and want to expand your horizons, this article would serve as the right guide for all your basic WooCommerce Affiliate Campaign Management needs.
Having the right tools to run a fruitful affiliate campaign management is of utmost importance. When we say tools, we mean affiliate plugins that allow you to organize and manage your affiliates all in one place. This management includes signing your affiliates up, onboarding, organizing the payouts, and managing the ways your affiliates get paid. You cannot run a smooth campaign program without having the right organizational tools in hand. Therefore, you should be prepared to undertake some degree of trial and error before you settle on the correct affiliate plugin for your WooCommerce.
Before we move on to list some of the most widely used WooCommerce affiliate plugins, let’s review some basic guidelines for choosing them first. As a general rule of thumb, your plugins should meet the following criteria:
Be user-friendly
To maximize the benefits that an affiliate plugin has to offer, you need to be comfortable with using it. If the plugin you choose is not easy to use, or you struggle to understand how to make it work, you should start thinking about switching to another, a lot more user-friendly plugin. One of the first things you should look for in ease and accessibility is how interactive and accessible the dashboard is because that is where all of your organization and management will take place.
Offer excellent management of affiliate links
Another thing to look out for in your affiliate plugin is the management of affiliate links. Since all of the traffic to your website will be driven through affiliate links, you should have a good grasp of all of them. To achieve this purpose, you need an affiliate plugin that offers excellent management of the links, including but not limited to organizing and saving them. For this to happen, of course, a plugin has to generate links for your affiliates.
Let you organize payments
One of the primary things that affiliate plugins are used for is the management of payments. Since affiliates promote products for a commission, managing their payout is important for the system to run smoothly. You can do that through the plugin by integrating payment options like PayPal or others. A plugin that doesn’t allow you to do this is not one worth having.
Having described the three basic things you should be looking out for when picking and choosing your affiliate plugin, it’s time to review a list of the most widely used affiliate plugins available.
AffiliateWP
When it comes to affiliate plugins for WooCommerce, AffiliateWP has been topping charts in terms of performance and viability. It meets all of the essential criteria we laid out for you, such as allowing you to integrate commissions you offer to your affiliates, generate referral links, and have an easy-to-use interface. It also comes with a 30 day trial period during which you can get a full refund, making trial and error all the more easy and less risky.
Affiliate Royale
Affiliate Royale is another affiliate plugin that is widely used by many WooCommerce stores. It is easy to integrate with your business and easy to manage too. In fact, its ease of usage and accessibility is its selling point.
iDevDirect
iDevDirect offers WooCommerce affiliate plugin which is an extremely easy way of integration into your store for immediate kick starting of your affiliate program. It has a highly compartmentalized dashboard which makes organization and management a breeze. Along with this, iDevDirect is know for offering advanced tracking and analytics engine with a totally self-explanatory user interface.
Affiliates Pro
Affiliates Pro is another excellent example of an affiliate plugin that can be used to drive more traffic to your WooCommerce store. The unique thing about it is that it offers a review system which allows to analyze the performance fo your affiliate partners, making sure you are executing your campaign in the best way possible. Affiliates Pro also supports mass payments and exports with unlimited affiliate partners too boot.
Ultimate Affiliate Pro
This WooCommerce plugin has also been performing really well amongst e-commerce business owners. The reason is the dynamic package of features it has to offer which can be used to maximize the traffic being generated to your store through efficient campaign management. It offers a multiple levels of partnership, creating a string of affiliates by allowing each to run their own personalized marketing campaigns. This strategy is both efficient and interesting when it comes to dreaming and doing big.
At the end of the day, as an e-commerce business owner, affiliate marketing is something you have to consider for your own survival. With the right tools (plugins) in hand, you can make this survival your way to thrive. All you need is a plugin which helps you organize.