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Affiliate Marketing is a great way of getting more customers and increasing your sales. It is based on a profit-sharing model where affiliates who bring in sales will get a cut of profits from the sale. This means that merchants only pay affiliates for actual sales that take place.

However, with so many affiliate marketing tools available, it can be difficult for merchants to choose one. While most of these affiliate marketing services offer a common list of features, there are some features that merchants should be looking for in these services.

Here we list out some features that merchants should be looking for when selecting an affiliate marketing service:‌

Table of Contents

• Setup Targets for Affiliates
• Give Coupons to Affiliates
• Setup Multi-Level Affiliate Network
• Give Royalties (Fixed Commissions) to Affiliates

1. Give Royalties (Fixed Commissions) to Affiliates

Affiliates earn commissions when they bring in customers. They do this by marketing the product on different social media platforms such as by creating videos on YouTube, publishing blogs or reviewing products on their websites and promoting products on Facebook or Instagram.

Affiliates who promote products on social media platforms usually have a sizable number of followers or are building one. Therefore many of them can bring in quite a lot of customers. These affiliates or influencers can be given fixed commissions, which are the type of commissions that regardless of who refers to the sale, the set affiliate will always receive a commission on it. ‌

This is great for bringing in and retaining big-name influencers. It is also a great feature to have if you are collaborating with influencers to create a special edition of products. Fixed Commission is similar to royalties, where affiliates will always earn a commission on a product regardless of the affiliate referral use to purchase it.‌

2. Give Coupons to Affiliates

Coupons have become a great way for affiliates to reach out to customers. Many customers when trying out a new product would rather purchase it at a discounted price than pay a full price on it. Here coupons play a big part in bringing in new customers. It is quite common to see influencers promoting products and giving out coupons or discount codes to their followers on social media.

According to Invespcro, in 2019 over 31 billion internet coupons were redeemed worldwide and there were 1.05 billion mobile coupon users globally in 2019.‌

Merchants can assign coupons codes to affiliates, that affiliates can then use in their promotions. Customizing coupons also is a good feature to have, which particularly helps when influencers want to have their customized codes. Merchants should also look for features where registered affiliates are assigned coupons automatically. ‌

3. Setup Targets for Affiliates

After setting up an affiliate program and enrolling in affiliates, it becomes an important task to have affiliates to actively promote your products. This is particularly relevant today in the social media age, where people are enrolled as affiliates in multiple programs.

It has become a competition even for merchants to get space into an affiliate’s promotion. This is quite common for social media influencers that also promote products. ‌

Setting up targets for affiliates is a great feature to have. It helps in improving the performance of affiliates in your program. By setting up targets for affiliates, affiliates will have a financial incentive to deliver more sales and bring in more customers. When affiliates do achieve the targets that have been set for them they receive a bonus. ‌

4. Setup Multi-Level Affiliate Network

While setting up an affiliate marketing program is easy, getting affiliates to join your program can become difficult. Many merchants struggle with getting affiliates on board, this is more common for merchants that sell a niche category of products. Few affiliate marketing services also provide affiliate index, which makes it easier to get affiliates, but that too is a rare feature.‌

A multi-level affiliate network is a useful feature to have when you want to recruit more affiliates. Here affiliates can recruit sub-affiliates into the program, thereby increasing the number of affiliates. A multi-level affiliate network also incentivizes affiliates to recruit sub-affiliates, since they also receive a portion of commission when a sale is made using the sub-affiliate’s referral. By using a multi-level affiliate network, a merchant can essentially delegate affiliates to bring in more affiliates into the program.