What are basic steps to build affiliate team?

[stacy_1710]

I am interesting with affiliate marketing. However, lost of things I have to do. What are basic steps I need to start first?

[UpPromote-old]

Hi @stacy_1710,

We are UpPromote: Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate marketing is an ideal marketing campaign for all size businesses. Affiliate marketing allows merchants to connect with various affiliates, and then they will use their advertising sources such as social media channels, websites, blogs, etc, to promote your products. The affiliate commission is successfully recorded whenever a customer makes a purchase via the unique link or coupon associated with their recommendation.

Here are basic steps you need to follow when starting:

1. Commission programs: diversity in programs — diversity in sales

To start building your affiliate campaign, you need to have a commission program. Simply put, a commission program is an agreement in which you pay affiliates, or influencers, a commission for any successful sales conversion they bring for you. Depending on your sales strategies and the primary goal of your affiliate marketing, you can construct a suitable commission structure. 

For example, with UpPromote: Affiliate Marketing, the app allows three types of commission: flat rate per order, flat rate per item, and percent of sale. If you’re looking to grow brand awareness and recognition, pay per order or item could be the best methods. If you are a newbie and want to boost sales revenue, the typical pay per sale is always a safer option.

Furthermore, to push your team performance effectively, you can motivate affiliates to hit sales milestones by moving them to higher commission programs. That means the more they sell, the more they earn. The feature named Auto-tier commission will support you to solve this issue. This feature will be applied when you want to reward excellent affiliates and motivate the “middle-tier” to improve their productivity.

2. Multi-level marketing: increase your reputation and income through affiliate’s network

If you are using affiliate marketing for your Shopify business, guessing that you’ve at least heard of Multi-level marketing once. Multi-level marketing (MLM) allows each affiliate to invite and recruit others into your network. Whenever a downline affiliate successfully brings an order, the upline one gets their extra reward. 

In addition, MLM works as a network marketing where each affiliate invites another to be their downline level. For instance, Michelle can invite Victor, Victor can invite David. The more participants get invited, the more your products could be promoted in different advertisement sources. Thus, your reputation will be expanded so far, as well as be approached by customers from different markets. 

3. Convert customers to affiliates: a golden handshake with your customers

In fact, customers are a potential sales channel that helps to promote your brand in a way that traditional marketing cannot. Consumers spend their trust for word-of-mouth more than other advertising forms.

Via affiliate plugins and solutions such as UpPromote: Affiliate Marketing, you can easily generate a post-purchase popup with your own message to invite people to join your win-win affiliate program. As long as any customer successfully places an order from your shop, a popup will be shown up on the Thank you page  to introduce your affiliate program.

4. Measure and track your affiliate campaign

Track and measure affiliate performance are the most important steps to estimate the result of affiliate campaigns and then providing improved solutions. The potential method to evaluate the productivity of your affiliates is to use quantitative metrics. Therefore, measuring and tracking your ambassador campaign is one of the indispensable features that help you have an overview of how your affiliate team is doing, then take proper action for each of them.

5. Chat with your affiliate within the app: communication is the key to success

UpPromote: Affiliate Marketing supports Shopify merchants to communicate with their affiliate team effectively. The in-app chat feature allows them to send direct messages to their affiliates right from the app. By one-clicking, a pop-up window will be shown up with a list of affiliates. You can search for the affiliate name, and then type the message you want to send. 

In fact, this feature is used as a “glue” to connect you and your team. You can give them some advice and feedback about their performance regularly. In this way, your team will be guided with suitable tips and solutions from you. Also, when you know how their productivity is going, you can figure out a way in time to improve their performance.

Here our recommendations for you. Hope you will get success with your business. Good luck!

All the bests,

UpPromote: Affiliate Marketing

Build. Manage. Succeed with Affiliate Marketing

[KimberlyB]

Hi @stacy_1710,

I suggest you try ConvertOut. Our Ambassador Affiliate Marketing app is the way to go for a quick and easy affiliate program setup.  For affiliates and influencers, our app boasts advanced features for ease of use. Our app tracks all ambassador sales, selects tiers, generates code, and many more. The best part is that we have developed this app to be fully automated. We also offer more tips to learn more on how you can make your business grow by using our app. You're always welcome to visit our blog.

With our app, you can also stay in touch with your affiliates. Integrate Omnisend or Klaviyo to send all of your ambassadors custom emails. If you want to give it a try, install it for free here.