Affiliate marketing is one of the most powerful tools in your digital marketing toolkit. A successful affiliate marketing campaign can help you find exceptionally high-quality leads without extraneous advertising costs.

So, look at it like this. In traditional marketing pipelines, like cold calling or social media advertising, you’re paying to put your brand out there.  While you can target specific people based on demographics and interest, more often than not, you’re still paying per view.

Affiliate marketing software works by driving traffic to your website from your affiliates, through content like blog posts and videos, yet you only pay those affiliates when the clickthrough traffic makes a purchase.

This can be incredibly lucrative in a B2B setting. To make the leap into affiliate marketing, you’ll need some help to build and manage your campaigns. That’s where affiliate marketing software comes in.

1. OSI Affiliate Software

OSI Affiliate is an affordable and simple to use affiliate marketing software that is great for beginners to the affiliate marketing game. It allows for easy creation of automated partnerships and referral programs. Their software allows for you to easily manage your campaigns all in one place with email templates, excellent reporting, and even discount code management.

2. Everflow

Everflow is the most popular affiliate marketing software on the market and with good reason. Its features allow you to easily track, analyze, and manage an unlimited amount of marketing campaigns in a second user interface. Their analytics are impressive and make it easy to view trends and identify well and under-performing campaigns. Everflow also features an incredibly powerful anti-fraud toolset which allows you to protect yourself and your affiliate partners from fraudulent clicks and users.

3. Post Affiliate Pro

Like most affiliate marketing software, Post Affiliate Pro offers excellent link and sales tracking. Where it really shines is in its staggeringly large toolkit of extended features. For example, their promotional materials are second to none with extensive features for different types of banners and rotators for affiliate sites. Another impressive feature is their ability to simply rebrand promotional e-books, allowing you to make quick edits that are automatically available to your affiliates.

4. Impact

Impact Partnership Cloud is a streamlined tool for a complex affiliate landscape. Their targeted market goes beyond promotional codes and content affiliations and works to manage business partners, media partners, and social media influencers as well. Their software comes jam-packed with features to keep onboarding and management of affiliates simple. They also provide tracking solutions that are customized to your company’s unique affiliate program.

5. ClickInc

ClickInc is on the simpler end of the affiliate marketing spectrum. Their claim to fame is their easy to understand web interface and their affiliate marketing programs that don’t require any programming or development for setup. ClickInc is a great option for companies that are new to affiliate marketing and may not understand all the technical aspects of setting up a program.

6. TrackingDesk

TrackingDesk boasts a high level of integration with most major ad networks, affiliate networks, and business apps. TrackingDesk can easily collect data, track conversions, and help you optimize your campaign, no matter which network you fall into. Their software also makes it easy to run AB tests and see which campaign setups work the best. Also, with Zapier integration, you can connect TrackingDesk with over 1,000 different apps and services to use your campaign data in whatever way you see fit.

7. TUNE

This software sings a different TUNE than the others. Of course, it includes the industry-standard tools of the trade like link tracking and network performance. Where TUNE is different is its customizability. TUNE gives the option to white label dashboards for your affiliates, offers customer service that can devise custom solutions your business, and features an API that offers more than 650 endpoints for whatever configurations you can dream up.

8. KeywordSpy

KeywordSpy is a simple interface for affiliate marketing. They offer in-depth keyword scans of over a million different options and can easily identify profitable options for affiliate campaigns. Their service works well with most major affiliate networks. KeywordSpy’s interface isn’t as polished as some of the other software, but you can try out their keyword research functions for free without having to sign up for a free trial, so you can give their functionality a whirl rather quickly and see if it’s right for you.

9. Ambassador

Ambassador is a B2B and consumer brand referral engine that is utilized by small businesses and large corporations alike. Their software makes it simple to harness the power of recommendation and word-of-mouth marketing opportunities. Ambassador streamlines the process into easy-to-create, targeted referral campaigns, and offers a sleek interface for management and insights.

10. Linktrack

All of these software options focus on offering a huge list of features. Sometimes, that doesn’t fit your business needs, though. Sometimes, you just need some simple tracking solutions. That’s where Linktrack comes in. Their clean, simple, and inexpensive platform allows users to easily track and manage affiliate links and clicks in their platform. No learning curve here!

There you have it. Ten solid options for taking your affiliate marketing campaigns to the next level. There’s a lot of features out there, so it’s important to take time to plan what you’d like to see in your affiliate marketing software—features, reporting capabilities, and ease of use—before diving in.

Thanks to polling services, the ability to reach out to existing or prospective customers is just a few clicks away, allowing businesses to interact directly with the market. Customer surveys, in particular, can be an information goldmine. Tapping into the minds of those who are willing to pay for the service or product you provide is a sure way to acquire more like-minded customers. 

Customer survey data is an invaluable tool for making business decisions, better understanding customer pain points, and achieving product or service innovation. At TSheets, we thrive on customer surveys and have found a few key ways they improve our business. 

1. Surveys can help you customize your product

For TSheets, GPS tracking in the workplace is a hot potato. What better way to find out what employees think than asking them directly, right? We expected them to raise privacy concerns and even push back altogether on the technology. But to make data-driven decisions means being objective, even when the data doesn’t agree with us. 

But to our surprise, more than half of the employees who have used GPS at work described the experience as positive, with just 4 percent giving the tech a thumbs-down. Respondents also told us how they generally don’t think twice about sharing location data as long as they trust the app or know exactly how the collected information will be used. So what did we walk away with? Transparency and clear messaging are key.

2. Surveys can help you customize your service

Harvard Business School found that 95 percent of new products fail, so it’s suddenly clear how 1 in 5 businesses fail in the first year. The TSheets customer service team is world-class for many reasons. Among those reasons, in December 2018, the service team updated their chat feature because our customers said they’re often multitaskers who do not have the luxury of calling in. But they can always open another browser window while doing everything else. Some can even type faster than they can speak! In addition to a new chat system, customers can now share screenshots with the service team to better illustrate the hurdle they’re trying to overcome.

In 2018 alone, TSheets tackled over 182,000 chats. That’s almost 500 conversations daily. With a typical 12-second response time, we have saved customers more than 36,000 hours in administrative work. The lesson here is simple: When you listen to your customers, things can only get better, always.

3. Surveys can help you understand your customers beyond their businesses

At the end of the day, our customers are more than an account number or a name on the screen. They love us because we genuinely care, especially when they tell us employee retention keeps them up at night, they work at least 50 hours a week, vacation and sick days are a rarity, and family time is a common casualty.

By knowing pain points beyond their businesses, we have the opportunity to tweak our offerings using data that is unique to our customers. From content to address their concerns to tips and tricks to best use our product based on customized needs, we amplify their faith in what we do, as well our credibility as a top business resource. 

An unmatched customer experience

Just a decade ago, many small businesses still had to resort to direct mail or email to survey customers. Today, the same technology previously reserved for the big players is readily available for businesses of all sizes. And just as technology has evolved, so must businesses, to ensure the best customer experience from start to finish.

Customer experience is the culmination of all the points we’ve covered so far, from in-product messaging to product innovation and customer profiling. It is, in essence, how your customers see your business treating them, and it’s crucial to the success of your business. 

It has been found that customers are willing to pay between 13 and 18 percent more for what they perceive to be luxury or indulgent service, based on the customer experience. In fact, customer experience is expected to overtake price and product. So before making your next business decision, be sure to involve your customers and listen to what they have to say. 

Prior to joining the copywriting team at TSheets by QuickBooks, Dottie Chong spent 15 years in marketing communications and content management focused on driving engagement and brand affinity. When no one is watching, she indulges in K-pop, knitting, and karaoke, all at the same time.

Author Bio

Prior to joining the copywriting team at TSheets by QuickBooks, Dottie Chong spent 15 years in marketing communications and content management focused on driving engagement and brand affinity. When no one is watching, she indulges in K-pop, knitting, and karaoke, all at the same time.

It happens to the best of us. You’re going along with daily operations as usual, and then someone makes a mistake, or there’s an unfortunate misunderstanding or miscommunication and all of the sudden you’re plunged into a PR crisis, no lifeboat in sight. 

The longer you’re in business, the more it becomes apparent that no one is impervious to a PR nightmare. While there is certainly a spectrum when it comes to just how bad the crisis is, if it’s your business — and your reputation — on the line, then even a minor misstep can seem like a major catastrophe. The key to getting ahead of it? Don’t panic, and start acting right away to win back the trust of your stakeholders and customers.

There is no one trick for managing a PR crisis. Instead, you need to have a coordinated plan of attack that acknowledges both your own needs and the needs of the people who you are trying to impact with your outreach. Read on for four steps that will help you take control during a PR crisis and steer your company back to calmer waters.

Step #1: Assemble Your Crisis Management Team

Depending on past experiences and the size of your company, you may or may not already have a crisis management team ready to go. If you do, great — get everyone into action. If not, pull aside a few key people who are most engaged with your PR/media relations strategy and set them to work.

A crisis management team is critical for responding to the immediate fallout from the crisis as well as ongoing reputation maintenance. Their first order of business is going to be getting a full understanding of what happened. From there, they should strategize a response plan and then facilitate all actions needed to put it into practice.

Not sure exactly who should be on your crisis management team? To make sure it’s most effective, choose a variety of people who are experts in your business identity and outreach. This includes:

•  Department heads
• Customer service reps
• Media advisors and/or marketing managers

The sooner your crisis management team can get to work, the better. Mobilize your team members as soon as you become aware of a crisis, even if you don’t understand its scope yet.

Step #2: Act – and Fast

Timing is key when it comes to how you respond to a PR crisis. Research shows that the longer a brand waits to act, the more likely they are to lose customers in both the short and long term. 

A rapid PR strategy in the face of a PR fiasco is necessary for maintaining a positive brand reputation, both in the immediate aftermath of the situation and for the long haul. While you certainly need to put some thought into what your response is going to be, don’t let indecision hold you back. Come up with a plan right away, and then put it into action — there is no time to waste.

Step #3: Get Everyone on the Same Page

Your crisis management team is on the front lines of the clean-up efforts, but your entire company needs to be privy to what’s going on and why. Send out a company-wide email outlining your strategy and filling your employees in on what their own role in crisis management is, including where they should direct any questions or comments that they receive about the situation.

Presenting a united front is crucial, as is having a cohesive strategy enacted from both the top and bottom of the ladder. Not every employee will have a direct role to play, but you’re all still in this together.

Step #4: Be Transparent and Keep the Lines of Communication Open

This is no time to mince words or wiggle around the facts. Be as transparent as you can in your communications with stakeholders and customers, and provide regular updates on how you’re handling the situation so that people on all ends can see just how seriously you are taking it. Nobody likes to be lied to, and nobody likes to feel like they aren’t being heard. The more you can engage with the people whose trust you are working to win back, the more headway you’ll make toward switching perceptions back to your favor.

Not all companies survive a PR crisis. To make sure you’re one of the lucky ones, follow the advice above and never assume that you can just sweep a PR problem under the rug and hope that it goes away. Your brand is only as strong as your reputation, and you need to protect it with as much strength as you protect your bottom line. Go in with a plan, and you should eventually come out on top. 

Successfully onboarding your team and offering the right support when you integrate a new tool or process is just as important as selecting the right tool or process in the first place. The resources that you put in place for your employees aren’t always intuitive, which means that user adoption needs to be a proactive undertaking designed to get everyone on the same page at the same time. This is as true for small and medium sized businesses as it is for large ones. 

To roll out a new tool or process you need to both prepare in advance for company-wide implementation and take the appropriate steps as needed once the new system is in place. And whether it’s a new piece of software or a new procedure for interacting with existing software, the more successful your adoption efforts the more successful the change will be. To facilitate as smooth a process as possible, adhere to the following dos and don’ts regarding best practices for rolling out a new tool or process among your team.

Preparing for the Roll Out

Do communicate any upcoming changes with everyone — not just management. Every single employee who is going to be impacted by the change or changes to the system needs to be apprised of what’s going on. While managers may be the ones who are responsible for optimizing user adoption among those who directly report to them, communicate with all end users about what new tool or process you are going to be implementing and why.

Don’t just try to wing it. Effective onboarding isn’t something that happens on its own. Before implementation, devise a planning and training schedule that can serve as a guide for all users. That way, everyone will know what’s expected of them and when, and there will also be assurance across the network that proper onboarding will be provided.

Do listen to concerns. Business professionals are notoriously wary about change, and it’s possible that you’ll face a bit of dissent. Don’t abandon your plans, but do use any questions or concerns as an opportunity to highlight the need for the solution you’re proposing and to get everyone up to date about why the new tool or process is going to be beneficial.

Don’t forget to accommodate for lost productivity during onboarding. The necessary tasks involved in onboarding will require that you pull your employees away from their other day-to-day to do lists — at least for a little bit. Be sure to plan for this while you prepare for the roll out, both in terms of budget and in terms of how you’re going to make up for any losses in productivity. To mitigate issues in this area, you may want to consider onboarding your team department by department instead of training everyone at once.

Setting Employees Up for Success

Do stress urgency. Remember the resistance to change we mentioned? It can persist long after implementation if you don’t make a point of instilling the urgency and importance of the transition. Make sure that each and every end user is clear about why the change is so crucial, and that they know there is no other option but to learn their way around the new system — even if it’s difficult or confusing at first.

Don’t just set it and forget it. Have a person or persons responsible for monitoring the onboarding process and the weeks and months that follow with the new tool or process in place. This way, you won’t have to worry about whether there are any issues going on, and if problems do occur you’ll know about them right away. It’s a good idea to have at least one point person as well who your employees know they can go to with any questions.

Do provide training documents that employees can refer to. Just like learning any new skill, it often takes employees a bit of time to fully understand new tools and processes. As such, it is immensely helpful if, in addition to on-site training, you provide each employee with documents that clearly overview the steps they need to take to transition to the new solution and to use it effectively.

Don’t neglect future training needs. It’s not only current employees who will need to learn how the tool or process functions. Create a plan for onboarding new employees too so that anyone who comes in will have all of the information that they need to adhere to the system.  

This shouldn’t be too difficult, as it will likely just require some light tweaking of the onboarding documents you create for existing team members.

Whether the plan is to do things a little differently or a lot differently, the onboarding process doesn’t have to be stressful for either decision makers or end users. With a plan in place, you can greatly reduce the challenges that you’ll face and help ensure an efficient roll out.