I’ve setup and been running numerous eCommerce affiliate programs for quite some time now, especially brands using the Shopify CMS, and I can tell you all these awesome platform options, which I touch on below, are really good for setting a program up in pretty much next to no time.
Just a quick refresher, why do I believe having an affiliate program is so key when it comes to growing an eCommerce brand?
These are the reasons why I recommend this channel to clients of mine and any brands that get in touch with me.
All in all, you can really see the benefits of having a marketing initiative like this can be for your brand.
In case you still need a little more convincing, I created a guide on the top affiliate marketing programs in eCommerce that exist (which include landing page examples of each), where you can see the types of top brands using affiliates to help scale their growth marketing efforts.
Something I like to do when it comes to reviewing any software that requires time to research/play around to see if it’s going to be a good fit or not, I like to have a bit of a ‘filtered checklist’ of attributes I particularly look for when it helps with decision-making.
This I’ve found to be really important to save time as there are so many solutions (for most categories) in the market. So, here are some things in affiliate platforms to look out for in order to achieve all the major tasks of running a great program.
By no means is this a completely exhaustive list, but certainly some of the more important considerations I personally take into account when choosing the right affiliate software for eCommerce brands (and what I recommend to clients to keep in mind).
Now let’s take a look into my deep dive into some of the top affiliate options available for Shopify store owners.
ReferralCandy helps small and medium businesses to scale and succeed by boosting the number of word-of-mouth referrals (on-site and through affiliates/influencers) around the globe.
Average Shopify Rating – 4.8/5 stars based on over 2,000 reviews
With a 30-day free trial period, this tool has 3 paid plans. The premium and plus plans are priced at $47 and $239 per month, respectively. Enterprise is a custom plan.
Social Snowball is an affiliate and referral tool for eCommerce with automated affiliate marketing and a simple interface to make your marketing efforts efficient.
Average Shopify Rating - 4.9/5 stars based on over 140 reviews
Social Snowball offers two paid plans with a 30-day free trial. Snow Day and Blizzard plans come with a price tag of $99 and $499 per month, respectively. There’s also an enterprise tier for any custom needs you require.
UpPromote is a robust affiliate management software with real-time tracking to help you grow your Shopify business.
Average Shopify Rating – 4.9/5 stars based on over 2,400 reviews
Along with a 100% free plan, you can take advantage of the three paid plans. Grow affiliate costs $29.99 per month, professional $89.99 per month, and enterprise $199.99 per month.
GoaffPro is a great affiliate marketing option I’ve used before and have had great experiences with. Certainly one of my top recommendations to consider for Shopify marketers and owners.
Average Shopify Rating – 4.8/5 stars based on over 1600 reviews
In addition to a completely free plan, you can get your hands on the premium plan that costs $24 per month with a 15-day free trial.
Refersion is a pretty popular affiliate solution on the market and is one of the more ‘mature’ options for serious heavy hitters in this space. It has a plethora of really nice capabilities, including the likes of attribution and privacy, even affiliate discovery (which is quite handy for those looking to recruit more influencers/supporters).
Average Shopify Rating – 4.8/5 stars based on over 950 reviews
Refersion offers two paid plans – professional at $99 per month and business at $249 per month. You can also try them out for 14 days for free. Enterprise is a custom plan.
LeadDyno allows you to easily set up affiliate programs, manage them, and track what’s working in your favour to speed up your growth.
Average Shopify Rating – 4.4/5 stars based on over 640 reviews
LeadDyno comes with four different paid plans (plus a good trial period) – starter at $49/month, plus at $129/month, pro at $349/month, and premium at $749/month.
BixGrow is an all-in-one affiliate and referral marketing app to facilitate you in skyrocketing your revenue and incentivising engagement.
Average Shopify Rating - 5/5 stars based on over 440 reviews
In addition to a free plan, you can also avail of the scale and pro plans that come with a price tag of $9.99 and $19.99 per month, respectively.
Buzzbassador is quite impressive in terms of its feature suite and has some great workflows that can help with end-to-end management of running, plus scaling with volume, affiliate and ambassador programs.
Average Shopify Rating – 4.9/5 stars based on over 85 reviews
Buzzbassador features four paid plans with a 14-day free trial. Launch, build, scale, and plus plans cost $39, $79, $229, and $499 per month, respectively.
Tapfiliate is an all-in-one affiliate marketing tool that helps you launch, track, and scale your influencer, affiliate, and referral programs.
Average Shopify Rating – 4.4/5 stars based on over 2 reviews
Tapfiliate has two paid plans (which you can test first with a free trial) plus a custom plan (enterprise). The essential plan costs $89/month and pro costs $149/month.
ShoutOut is a robust affiliate, multi-level marketing, and influencer app that drives traffic to your store and boosts sales.
Average Shopify Rating – 4.8/5 stars based on over 90 reviews
Along with a 100% free plan, you have access to either of the three paid plans with a 7-day free trial.
There’s an essentials plan, kicking off from $39/month, growth with $59/month, and pro with $79/month.
Automizely Referral & Affiliate I’ve quite liked using it in the past, and it has a really nice UX, as well as UI. The good thing is that you can also have a referral marketing tool and affiliate manager ‘all-in-one’.
Average Shopify Rating – 4.9/5 stars based on over 1500 reviews
This app is completely free to use, and you can even leverage a custom plan, namely enterprise.
I’ve used many of these affiliate tools for growing brands and stores on the Shopify platform, and I can say all of them are pretty good (otherwise, I wouldn’t have included them on this list in the first place). If I did have to narrow it down to three to focus on if you’re fairly new to this world (regardless of your growth level in terms of MRR), they would have to be Tapfiliate, Social Snowball, and Automizely. Each of them are really good when it comes to UX and easily setting up an affiliate program (literally should take you minutes with each), a great integration with the Shopify CMS, and also really good tracking/analytics, particularly as you scale.
For me, the best recommendations I can give for Shopify affiliate tools for beginners would be Referral Candy and Social Snowball. Both of these solutions have been around for a long-time and are used by some of the biggest household brands you and I know, and make it really simple, regardless of your skill level, to set up. Additionally, they’re cost-effective as well, especially when you do have a large network of affiliates/ambassadors that you’re dealing with.
I’ve run a few eCommerce affiliate programs myself, and there are a few components to executing this strategy for scaling, particularly if you’re fairly new-ish as a channel. I’ll explain some of the key factors/areas you need to consider/look out for when it comes to eCommerce affiliate marketing (and developing successful programs). First, you need to decide on the offer/commission in terms of how you incentivise those who are going to promote your brand to their respective audience. Working out the commission based on a cheaper CAC than what you either normally pay now or are willing to pay is the goal. A classic standard commission example is providing a 20% coupon code for audiences whilst the affiliate also receives 20% off the purchase. Of course, you can play around with various offers to see which works more effectively both on the affiliate side and the customer side. Second, you need to define who would be a good fit for the affiliate program you’re going to run. It’s important to ensure you set a good guideline of criteria so you don’t get randoms signing up - remember, these people are representing your brand, so you want to ensure they aren’t spammers and are going to reflect your brand well. Third, you need a dedicated platform/tool (such as the apps I’ve spoken about in this guide) to manage the key areas of communication, tracking/analytics, as well as payouts. Trust me, from my experience, having done this over the years, the last thing you want to do is a manual process. You need to ensure each of these three areas is covered in a tool in order to help you scale this channel. Fourth, consider having different tiers of programs/incentives for different types of influencers/ambassadors based on factors such as audience size, content output, and, ultimately, sales performance. My suggestion is to incentivise those who are high-performing so they can continue to promote across their audiences. Last and not least, make sure to have a really good affiliate landing page. If you really want to have the best influencers/ambassadors sign up for your program and start promoting your amazing brand, then you need to treat it like any other converting page you have on your website. That includes having key USPs, how incentives work, beautiful imagery/video, and more. If you take into account each of these factors, you’ll certainly increase your chances of having a thriving affiliate program that can really generate a good amount of sales for your store.
So from the affiliate apps I’ve outlined in this guide, the ones with really good integrations that can make your operations and workflow a breeze when it comes to this marketing initiative include Tapfiliate (including the likes of Stripe, as well as Zapier, which we know can unlock even more workflow capabilities), LeadDyno, GoAffPro, Buzzbasador, and Social Snowball. Each of them make it super easy to integrate from a UX point of view with these other popular Shopify platforms.
Most of these options are pretty cost-effective when you really start to ramp things up and make it an effective sales channel (quite a profitable channel too, so you should start to see ROI fairly soon when you really start to get some traction). However, if you’re starting out and still on the smaller side when it comes to MRR/total revenue, then affordable options are Bixgrow, Shoutout, Referral Candy, and Buzzbassador. You’ll be able to see their exact pricing in the above when I share the details about each of the apps, as well as on the Shopify app store.
