Why Have a SaaS Affiliate Program?

Why Have a SaaS Affiliate Program?

I want to show you how setting up an affiliate program for your business can generate a serious income stream away from the standard sales effort and allows you to grow your sales team, without spending money on more sales people.

What is an affiliate program?

You no doubt have some kind of referral scheme where you agree to pay x% for a lead sent across that then converts to business. You may pay out on a couple of these every year but they tend to be few and far between.

An affiliate program or an affiliate platform formalises the referral process; it lets your affiliates (or referrers) see where you are in the sales cycle with the opportunities they have sent you. They have a dashboard to see how much commission they will receive from you and it makes it really easy for them to send you opportunities for you to work on.

Because of this, they will send you opportunities more often, you’ll have more affiliates and done properly with links setup through the right channels, an affiliate program can provide a decent chunk of your demand generation.

The great thing about an affiliate program is you have an external unsalaried set of individuals motivated to sell for you, in some cases they’ll build content and marketing campaigns based around your business, bringing you new customers that you may not have gained otherwise and you only pay them once you get paid!!!!

It is the most beautiful marketing strategy out there!

Things to consider…

How much will you pay for the referral once it goes live and for how long? Lifetime of customer? 1st year only? Flat fee? 10% ?… …the average is 25% but some pay 30% for the lifetime of the customer. Remember, you want to have your affiliates choose you over your competitors and you want them to refer more and more business to you.

Once the affiliate registers an opportunity, how long will it be “their” lead? How will you track this?

You should have marketing and collateral specific for your affiliates, make it clear how much they will make, have a landing page on your website dedicated to affiliates. Treat them like a sales team, have training and content available for them. What do affiliates need to be successful? Identify what successful affiliates do to share with the others. Run partner webinars and keep it going…..

Do I need software?

In order to manage your affiliate program, you’ll need an affiliate platform. There are many out there but you’re best choosing one that is focussed on SaaS businesses. Some have marketplaces where your business can be listed so people looking to promote businesses such as yours, can find you and become an affiliate of yours. Once you have a platform, affiliates can register with you and they’ll get a unique URL to promote you and for leads to come through to. You’ll have a dashboard to manage your affiliates and your affiliates will have a dashboard to see their activity and forecast income.

Reditus is fantastic and FREE (at the base level) to setup. They only start charging once you pay out over $1000 of affiliate payments and they can offer custom setups/guidance. Get in touch with Reditus here

PartnerStack is on the more expensive side but it is a serious bit of kit used by the likes of Sage, Xero and Quickbooks to setup a highly automated solution, it links to your CRM, makes payments to affiliates and has an extensive marketplace. Get in touch with them here

See all the affiliate platforms on Recruitment Supplier here.

*I am of course an affiliate of both these businesses!

So you have an affiliate platform now….how do you get some demand generation going?

Once you have the software, individuals can register with you and create a URL unique to them. They can broadcast that URL on their emails, texts, site, channel, blog, page, recruitment supplier directory ;-) etc...and direct traffic directly to your offer. Any traction is assigned to that affiliate and they can see the sales process via their portal to your affiliate platform.

There are plenty of people out there who will promote your business given the right tools and financial rewards. The place to find affiliates includes but isn’t limited to.

1. Current clients - Keep current clients incentivised to remain with you

2. YouTube influencers - Expert recruiter channels, software specialists/reviewers.

3. Marketplaces - Such as on PartnerStack and Reditus - Affiliates looking for businesses to promote will find you here

4. Industry publications - Such as UK Recruiter, Global Recruiter, Talint Partners etc..

5. Advertising - Press / software publications / directories / review aggregators

6. Recruitment blogs/channels - Industry champions / evangelists

7. Socials - The obvious ones but don’t forget TikTok and Instagram, there are industry channels where you might not expect them.

8. Non sales colleagues - Inspire them to make content video/blog content, refer friends

9. Ex colleagues - If you’re still on speaking terms of course

10. Recruitment Supplier - and others like me such as rectools.io. Click "50% off Offer" on Xero's page on my website for an example of what a lead will see when running through the process.

11. Industry bodies - APSCo, REC, TEAM etc..

12. SaaS partners - Give them an income stream to refer to you.

13. Industry consultants - Tim Jacob’s Squadrato and David Kubyk’s 3iC spring to mind but there are many of course.

14. Events - Sign up affiliates at your stand at the Rec Expo, SIA etc..

*With an affiliate platform you can tailor the offers that each of the above can provide.

I hope this incentivises you to at least look into setting up a program. If you have any questions or could use guidance on which platform to chose, how to find affiliates or how to setup a full program, by all means do send me a message via my website - www.recruitmentsupplier.co.uk.

Thanks for reading

James Buckwell