Why Build an Affiliate Marketing Program?

If you run a paid community and are looking to scale and drive more subscribers, you’ll want to consider affiliate marketing.

You’re likely already using a number of channels and tactics — content marketing, SEO, social media, paid search — but capturing the power of referrals and word of mouth is a very powerful way to take your growth strategy to the next level.

Affiliate marketing is an integral part of growing a paid community, helping you drive more subscribers and greater revenue by harnessing your community members and their networks.

There is a ton of data that shows why affiliate marketing should be part of your growth strategy:

• 40% of US merchants say affiliate programs are their top customer acquisition channel (Backlinko)
• Affiliate marketing is responsible for over 16% of global e-commerce sales (Uniquodo)
• 54% of brand marketers rank affiliate marketing within their top 3 customer acquisition channels (Kinsta)

Affiliate marketing also carries a number of other benefits that other channels don’t offer:

• Revenue-sharing — Shared revenue incentivizes your affiliates to perform better and drive as many sales as they can
• Performance-based — You only pay affiliates as sales are generated, making it (generally) more cost-effective and less risky than other channels
• ROI — Since the cost of affiliate marketing is based on a percentage of sales driven by your affiliates, calculating ROI is simple and predictable

If you’re looking to start and scale your affiliate marketing program, you’ve come to the right place. While this post has specifics for LaunchPass users (or those thinking about starting a trial), we also go over some general advice for those looking to promote and track their affiliate marketing programs.

For LaunchPass Users: LaunchPass + Rewardful

Our Rewardful integration makes it super easy for you to start and ramp up your growth by using referral channels to your advantage. Here’s how to get your affiliate marketing program up and running in minutes by leveraging the LaunchPass Rewardful integration:

1. Sign up for your Rewardful account here
2. Copy your Rewardful API Key from the company settings page in your Rewardful dashboard
3. Go back to “Settings” in your LaunchPass account and paste the key

4. Start sharing your link!

Need more help? For more information on setting up Rewardful with LaunchPass, read this guide.

How To Promote Your Affiliate Program

Now that you’ve set up your affiliate program, the next step is to start working on promoting it. Here are some tips to get it off the ground, from the super-simple to the more involved.

Leverage your community and network

The best way to get the ball rolling on your affiliate marketing program is to leverage your existing community and network. For LaunchPass group owners, sharing your affiliate program link or making an announcement within your Discord or Slack community is a good place to start. Your subscribers already love the value you provide to them — why not incentivize them to act as brand ambassadors?

Promote your program on social media

Social media is an important tool for any community to drive growth, engagement, and subscriber acquisition. It’s also a great way to promote your affiliate program since you can leverage the followers and audience you’ve already worked hard to build up.

If you’re active across social media, incorporate the promotion of your affiliate program into your content calendar. Create short clips or stories highlighting the benefits of your affiliate program. Using AI-powered video editing tools with features like AI avatar or background noise remover, you can produce effective and high-converting social media content.

Use your email list

Your email list is (or should be) a database of people who have opted in and want to hear from you. Your affiliate program is the kind of information that people who are engaged with your brand will want to hear about — especially since it gives them the opportunity to make money.

If you clearly outline the benefits of the program to your audience and make sure you’re smart about using segmentation so messaging is relevant to recipients, you’ll get some great results.

Include it on your website

This seems obvious, but you might be surprised how many businesses do a poor job of promoting announcements — like the launch of an affiliate marketing program, for example — on their websites. Whether it’s a small banner or pop-up message, a section on a single page, or a totally independent page, make sure your website visitors are able to find and sign up for your affiliate program easily.

Leverage affiliate networks and tools

This approach is higher effort and likely better suited to those who have a more mature affiliate marketing program (or have experience building them in the past), but there are many solutions available, like ShareASale or CJ Affiliate, that are designed to help you scale affiliate marketing through their established networks.

Tracking Your Affiliate Performance

With the LaunchPass Rewardful integration, tracking your affiliate program performance is super easy. Rewardful has a built-in dashboard that allows you to measure, track, and monitor key performance metrics.

Here are just a few examples of what you can track in your dashboard:

• Sales Generated
• Commission Paid
• Top affiliate partners

Monitoring your affiliate marketing program performance will help you capture key insights that will allow you to grow, optimize, and elevate your program so you can continually improve your results.

Summary

If you’re looking for a way to boost your sales and grow your business, affiliate marketing is a great way to go. Leveraging the power of referrals and word-of-mouth can help you accelerate growth in ways other tactics and channels can’t.

For existing LaunchPass users, you can start your affiliate marketing program today via our Rewardful integration.

Not a LaunchPass user but interested in starting or scaling a paid community? Sign up for free today, or book a call with our Growth & Success team to learn if LaunchPass is right for you.