Great question. It's a two-prong answer. What does a great affiliate program look like for the affiliate? What does a great program look like for you, the store?

Firstly, consider just who you're looking to affiliate with and don't forget your customers. I've worked with smaller brands who've made huge impact on the audience reach and sales growth by incentivising their existing customers to share their brand with friends or, more importantly, through their own social spaces. So, ask yourself, how can we build an affiliate program that caters for micro-influencers, strategic partners and our best advocates?

Now you need to get the offering right. Affiliates know what's happening with CPAs in every industry. They KNOW their value to you. The bigger their audience, the greater the leverage they may hold when discussing commissions. Don't even consider launching with 5% or 10% commissions unless your average baskets are greater than £250. Even then, you can't hide from the difference between the commission you're offering and teh typical CPA your business currently operates from. Be generous. This is a fixed CPA model based on either a flat fee or a percentage of sale. If your gross margins are sat at greater than 50% don't try to palm your affiliates off with a meagre commission in hope that they're do the selling for you.

This is about partnership. It's a two way thing. You're see some affiliates sprouting out of nowhere and bringing great business your way. Reach out to them. Acknowledge their work and deliver them a dedicated landing page that they can use to promote you. This is such a simple yet HUGELY effective way of nurturing real profitable long-term partnerships.

Communications are paramount to the success of your affiliate programme. Make sure to choose an affiliate marketing platform that integrates with your email platform. The integration between Social Snowball x Klaviyo is a great example. You can push affiliate data into Klaviyo allowing you to segment by affiliate tier or volume of sale. Highlight the work of your best partners to motivate your affiliates to up their game. Why not run a monthly YouTube interview with your best affiliates? Share the inside track of just how much affiliates could be earning and inspire the next level of affiliates to invest their time in promoting your products.

I could go on... there are dozens of ways to succeed with affiliate marketing in ecommerce. It takes structure. It takes strategy. It takes work. It's immensely rewarding when you get it right.

Like so many questions relating to ecommerce tech... the answer is "it depends".

For most ecommerce stores just starting out in affiliate marketing it doesn't make sense to invest heavily until you've created a viable business case for affiliate marketing. Fortunately this means that you don't have to invest heavily in your affiliate marketing software. Most platforms offer an entry level (eg. less than 1,000 affiliates or £x revenue generated through affiliate marketing) product that has all the bells and whistles of the 'enterprise' version. This means that the tech you choose when starting out will be there for you as you progress with your affiliate strategy going forward.

You need to make sure that the platform is, first and foremost, designed to reduce the time you're spending on administration. That means organising affiliate payouts (which is always a good thing!), setting up tracking links and generally answering questions from your affiliates. It's also key to make sure that you have easy access to sending promotional emails and updates to your affiliates. Even more so if you're running a tiered affiliate programme where you have different offers for different segments of affiliates. Integration with your ESP, such as Klaviyo, is crucial to making this happen. Don't rely on the 'mass email' capabilities of the tool itself. You want to tailor your messaging and heavily personalise each communication ensuring you're providing affiliates with updates on their earnings, offers and links.

The best affiliate marketing app is likely to be the app that takes your affiliate marketing to the next level... and continues with you for the journey (nothing more problematic than having to switch providers at a later date for any tech). You'll see dozens of affiliate marketing apps at a wide variety of price points within the Shopify App Store. Starting out? Either GoAffPro or Social Snowball are my recommendations. They have all the features you need and the ability to grow your affiliate marketing significantly. If you need advice on which affiliate marketing app is best for you, just get in touch, I'm happy to help out.