Affiliate marketing managers have their hands full. There's so much to do, be it overseeing campaigns, communicating with potential and current affiliates, or monitoring performances.
From content creation to contract management, we've compiled a list of all the tools that will make the lives of affiliate marketing managers easier – at least during their working day.
We'll kick things off with a general affiliate marketing tools list, before diving into the best affiliate marketing tools we recommend.
TL;DR Types of Affiliate Marketing Tools
When it comes to managing an affiliate program, having the right tools for affiliate marketing can make all the difference.
- Affiliate Program Management Platforms: streamline the process of setting up, tracking, and managing affiliate programs. This type of tool is especially useful for calculating commissions and ensuring timely payouts.
- Link Shortening and Tracking Tools: this tool is essential for creating clean, branded links and tracking click-through rates to evaluate campaign performance.
- Project Management Tools: to help organize promotional campaigns, set deadlines, and collaborate with affiliates efficiently.
- Social Media Management Platforms: makes it easier to schedule, manage, and collaborate on social media campaigns, essential for promoting affiliate content.
- SEO Analysis Tools: to gauge how affiliate content is ranking on search engines and get optimization suggestions to ensure the content gets maximum visibility.
- Email Marketing Platforms: helps you inform affiliates through newsletters, updates, and announcements. This is crucial for keeping the partnership active.
- Documentation Sharing Tools: helps to distribute resources, guides, and tips to affiliates, ensuring they have the information they need.
- Video Recording and Sharing Tools: makes it easier to create and distribute tutorials, making it easier for affiliates to understand processes or product details.
- Landing Page Builders: where you can rapidly set up and modify landing pages for various affiliate campaigns or products, providing a dedicated space for conversions.
- Community Management Platforms: helps you maintain communication with affiliates, address their concerns, and build a collaborative community.
- Contract Management Tools: to keep track of agreements, terms, and conditions with each affiliate. This ensures legal compliance and clarity in partnerships.
- Graphic Design Tools: to help create attractive banners, infographics, and promotional materials.
- Automation Tools: used to eliminate repetitive tasks like email follow-ups, commission payouts, or reporting, ensuring consistency and saving time.
- Webinar Hosting Platforms: to better engage affiliates through informative sessions, training, or updates about products/services.
Best Affiliate Marketing Tools for Your Tech Stack
These tools for affiliate marketing cover a wide range of functions to streamline your affiliate program management.
1. Rewardful
Rewardful is a top-notch SaaS affiliate management software. This easy-to-use platform helps set up and track affiliate programs effortlessly, especially for businesses using Stripe.
Why Affiliate Managers Need It:
It's no surprise that SaaS has unique challenges, but with the right tools there's endless potential. Rewardful simplifies all the processes related to affiliate marketing for SaaS. Its integration with Stripe makes it a breeze to track referrals, calculate commissions, and manage payouts.
Rewardful comes in particularly handy if you're running multiple campaigns or have tiers of commission structures. For instance, if you have a campaign where top-performing affiliates get a higher commission rate, Rewardful can automate and customize your process, ensuring transparency and timely payouts. See our straightforward Rewardful pricing, and get started.
2. Trello or Asana
Trello and Asana are both top-tier project management tools that streamline workflows.
Why Affiliate Managers Need Them:
Launching a campaign with multiple affiliates involves meetings, briefings, calls, blog posts, social media blasts, and newsletters. And still, you’re surely forgetting some things.
How do you ensure everyone's on the same page? Using Trello or Asana, you can assign
tasks, set deadlines, and monitor progress in real-time. You can create boards for specific campaigns and have cards for each affiliate, ensuring that promotional activities are staggered and not overlapping.
3. Canva
Canva is a cloud-based graphic design platform with customizable templates and design tools for anything from social media banners to infographics, presentations, or logo design.
Why Affiliate Managers Need Canva:
Canva is a game-changer for affiliate managers, and one of the few free affiliate marketing tools. We're assuming most of them are already using it or an alternative, but just in case you need your mind blown today, check it out. The tool nails branding consistency with its vast template library, ensuring your content always matches your brand’s vibe. Collaborating on designs has never been easier, allowing real-time tweaks with teams or affiliates.
Plus, it's way more budget-friendly than hiring a designer every time. Whatever the platform – Facebook, Pinterest or email – there's a template ready for you. And if there's a need for quick edits? Done in seconds. Ideal for those time-sensitive promotions.
4. DocuSign
DocuSign is an electronic signature platform that facilitates the signing, sending, and management of contracts and agreements digitally, while ensuring security and legal compliance.
Why Affiliate Managers Need DocuSign:
With just a few clicks, managers can send out agreements, making the onboarding of new affiliates lightning-fast. And if you're thinking global, DocuSign is ideal. It not only supports multiple languages but also complies with international e-signature laws – perfect for those expansive affiliate programs. And it's not just about sending; it's about tracking too. Real-time monitoring means knowing when contracts are opened, signed, or if the affiliate needs a nudge.
DocuSign syncs with various CRM tools and affiliate dashboards. And when it comes to security, DocuSign doesn't cut corners. With robust encryption and top-notch security protocols, every piece of information is kept under lock and key.
5. Dropbox or Google Drive
Dropbox and Google Drive are popular cloud storage platforms facilitating file sharing and working collaboratively.
Why Affiliate Managers Need Them:
Sending large files via email can be challenging, to say the least, and they often lead to errors at some end. If you're needing to share a promotional video or a high-res banner with affiliates and it's a large file, use Dropbox or Google Drive. You can simply share a link, ensuring affiliates always have access to the latest resources without clogging their inbox.
6. Buffer or Hootsuite
Buffer and Hootsuite are holistic social media management tools that allow you to plan and schedule social content in advance.
Why Affiliate Managers Need Them:
Managing multiple social media posts can get chaotic. Tools like Buffer and Hootsuite enable you to schedule these posts ahead of time, ensuring quality and consistency. Plus, their analytics can offer insights on which platforms yield the best engagement, guiding future campaigns.
7. SEMrush or Ahrefs
With tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs you get access to in-depth SEO data.
These tools offer deep insights to improve your content and visibility online.
Why Affiliate Managers Need Them:
So you’ve posted a blog post on the web, but nobody reads it? Then it might as well not be there. When content isn't driving the expected traffic, there's always a reason. Is it the reliability and quality of content, or hasn’t it been indexed to appear in Google search results?
With SEMrush or Ahrefs, you can gauge how content ranks and find areas for improvement.
8. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a comprehensive email marketing platform to send out bulk emails.
Why Affiliate Managers Need Mailchimp:
Consistent communication keeps affiliates in the loop. For example, if there's a new product launch, a well-timed newsletter will give affiliates the necessary knowledge to promote it effectively. Mailchimp can segment your affiliate list, ensuring personalized and relevant communication, thereby increasing engagement rates. An extra plus: tools like Mailchimp come with tons of templates to help you send emails that look good and function on any device.
9. Notion
Notion is a straightforward, and easy-to-use modular workspace catering to diverse needs.
Why Affiliate Managers Need It:
Sharing promotional guidelines can be streamlined with Notion. You can create a shared workspace dedicated to "Affiliate Resources" and make a centralized hub for guidelines, FAQs, and best practices. This will ensure clarity and uniformity in promotional efforts.
10. Loom
Loom is a video messaging tool that makes explainer videos and tutorials more personal. You can easily create videos of yourself talking over a shared screen.
Why Affiliate Managers Need Loom:
Sometimes, text doesn't cut it for tutorials. With a Loom video, you can provide step-by-step guidance, making feedback more constructive and understandable. A video explaining the nuances of a product, walking through the content planning, or answering some questions – it can all be done asynchronously, and you get to keep track of who's seen what.
11. Instapage
Instapage helps you with crafting conversion-focused landing pages.
Why Affiliate Managers Need It:
For the most part, a campaign's success hinges on the landing page. If you're promoting a limited-time offer, an Instapage landing page with clear CTAs, engaging visuals, and persuasive copy can significantly boost conversions. It also comes with A/B testing features to help pinpoint which version of a landing page resonates more with the audience, allowing you to optimize results.
12. Slack
Slack is a well-known messaging platform that fosters team collaboration and can help build a community.
Why Affiliate Managers Need Slack:
Immediate feedback is crucial in fast-paced campaigns. From affiliates spotting errors in promotional material, to quickly briefing affiliates or even just for fun community management – Slack is a great way to stay connected. You can create dedicated channels for different campaigns and can also foster brainstorming and idea exchange.
13. Respona
Respona is a comprehensive email outreach and recruitment tool designed to streamline your link building, digital PR, and affiliate partner recruitment efforts.
Why Affiliate Managers Need Respona:
Finding and connecting with potential affiliates can be time-consuming. Respona automates email discovery, personalizes outreach campaigns, and integrates SEO data to identify high-value prospects. It's particularly useful for scaling your affiliate recruitment efforts while maintaining a personalized approach.
For practical outreach strategies using tools like Respona, check out our Ask an Affiliate Manager guide on proven outreach strategies.
Start by Getting the Essentials Right … Your Tools!
Your affiliate marketing toolbox is where the magic happens, not in spreadsheets. With Rewardful, you get a platform that does not only help you manage your affiliate program – it helps you grow it. Check out Rewardful and get your program up and running today!
FAQs - The Best Affiliate Marketing Tools for Affiliate Managers
1. What Affiliate Marketing Tool Has a High Return?
As an all-in-one affiliate marketing tool, Rewardful has one of the highest returns on investment (ROI). Here’s why:
- Affordable pricing and clear plans: you can start running an affiliate program for just $49 monthly with a 0% transaction fee.
- 15-minute installation time: thanks to the easy onboarding and one-click integration process, your affiliate program will get up and running in just 15 minutes.
- Proven case studies: many of Rewardful’s users have multiplied their revenue through affiliate programs, earning up to $700k in referral sales and 22% in MRR growth.
Discover other reasons why 2,600+ SaaS businesses choose Rewardful as their number-one affiliate management software here.
2. What Are the Must-Have Tools for Running Successful Affiliate Programs?
Besides using affiliate management software, using the following tool can help boost the growth of your affiliate program:
- Canva (design): to support your affiliates with eye-catching visuals of your products and affiliate programs
- DocuSign: to expedite the affiliate recruiting process while ensuring a legally binding agreement
- Buffer: to streamline the management of your social media affiliate campaigns
- Mailchimp: to keep your affiliates in the loop for any updates and assist you in recruiting new affiliates
Learn more about affiliate marketing tools and strategies in our Affiliate Marketing course for SaaS.
3. What Social Media Platforms Are Best for Promoting Affiliate Programs?
Consider promoting your affiliate program on these social media platforms:
- LinkedIn: best for SaaS and B2B companies
- YouTube: for demoing your products and the benefits of joining your affiliate program
- Instagram: best for B2C companies, particularly beauty, health, fashion, and food industries
- TikTok: best for B2C companies with Gen Z as the main target group
