Whether partner potential analysis, tracking checks, fraud detection or affiliate acquisition: the field of responsibility of a partner program manager is huge and can hardly be handled efficiently without tools. So it's time we gave you an insight into our top 20 tools in affiliate marketing. Sorted by subject areas, such as B. the publisher search, publisher rating, tracking, communication and other things, you will find different tools that make our everyday life easier.
Core function: search engine
Price: free
Type: online tool
Okay, every affiliate manager probably knows Google as a search engine and every affiliate manager has surely used it to search for potential partners. With a few tricks you can find affiliates even faster who are suitable for your own partner program. This includes the right search queries on the one hand and useful search operators on the other.
With regard to search queries, affiliates often move in the transactional area. In other words, whenever users have a specific interest in a product and need further information that could lead to a purchase, affiliates are there. Such search queries are for example:
"Product / provider test"
"Product / provider comparison"
"Product / provider / product category experience"
"Buy product / product category"
"Product / product category cheap"
etc.
The search operators for Google also offer a lot of potential for refining the affiliate research:
"Related" - with the help of this operator pages similar to a page are displayed. So if you have a good affiliate page, "related" can display websites similar to this page, eg "related: www.projecter.de"
“Inurl” - with the help of this operator, pages are found that use a certain term in the URL. For example, you can search for specific blogs such as “inurl: blog Affiliate Marketing”.
"Allinanchor" - with the help of this operator, pages are displayed which are linked with particular terms particularly frequently. "Allinanchor: affiliate marketing" shows websites that are linked to other sites with the anchor text "Affiliate Marketing".
"Allintitle" - with the help of this operator, pages are displayed which contain certain terms in the title. For example, pages with the terms "Affiliate Marketing" via search query "allintitle: Affiliate Marketing"
By adjusting the GET parameters in the Google search, even finer restrictions can be made. We reported about it in another post .
Core function: search engine for source codes
Price: free basic version, pro version with costs
Type: online tool
In order to acquire the right partners for your own affiliate program, there are of course other options besides Google. The search engine www.nerdydata.com provides support in the search for pages that are already monetized via affiliate marketing . Here you can search for source code components in websites. For example, all TradeDoubler tracking links on affiliate websites contain the code "http://clkde.tradedoubler.com/click?p=". So you can limit the research to affiliate sites. However, the search can only be further refined in the Pro version.
Who does not know this: An application flutters into the partner program, the page could even fit thematically well, but somehow you are not really convinced. Then the following tools will surely give you a helping hand!
Core function: quick overview of the HTML Robots Meta Tags
Price: free
Type: Browser plugin for Firefox and Chrome
When you visit a page, the plugin shows whether it is approved for indexing in search engines (NoIndex / Index) and whether its status is Follow / NoFollow. If a thematically well-fitting page is on NoIndex, the alarm bells can easily start to ring: Why should the partner not want their page to end up on Google? Is the project just not finished or does the partner use this page as an alibi to hide fraud ?
Core function: extensive data on all SEO-relevant aspects of a website
Price: chargeable, partly freeware versions
Type: online tools
Many publishers still rely primarily on Google as their traffic provider. SEO tools like Sistrix or Xovi help to assess whether a page can generate organic traffic. The visibility indices of the tools can be used for this, for example. If these are high, high organic traffic from search engines can also be assumed. Although these tools usually cost money, they are also worth it, especially when used in conjunction with your own SEO strategy. The potential traffic via pages linking to the partner can also be estimated in this way: Many links from strong pages are an indication that the partner receives a lot of referrer traffic and also provides real, linkable content. SEOkicks can be used as a free alternative, for example,
Core function: Overview of SEO information of a website including the WHOIS lookup tool
Price: free
Type: Browser plugin for Firefox , Chrome , Opera , Safari
The SEO Quake tool, which is available as a browser plug-in for various browsers such as Firefox or Chrome, is also suitable for getting an overview of a large amount of SEO-relevant information. SEO Quake makes information about the number of pages indexed on Google, the Alexa Traffic Rank, the number of Facebook Likes of a URL, etc. quickly visible. In addition to the SEO-relevant information, a whois query can be made directly. If you have found interesting pages, it may be necessary to find out information about the domain and the domain owner. With a click on "whois" the user gets directly to an overview page and can look at the information and make sure who the owner is. In this way, any black sheep can also be identified.
Core function: information on domain owners
Price: free
Type: online tool
Let's stay with the WHOIS lookup. In addition to SEO-Quake, z. B can be gone directly via http://cqcounter.com/whois/ . The advantage here is that in addition to the DENIC extract, you can also get information about the server location.
Core function: Overview of tracking scripts on a website
Price: free
Type: Browser plugin for Firefox and Chrome
Which tracking pixels and scripts are loaded on a website? The answer to this question can be interesting in many ways. For example, you can see which traffic service providers, conversion tracking or containers are integrated on a website. This allows, among other things, to derive which other traffic sources an affiliate site uses.
Core function: contact and conversation management system
Price: with costs
Type: online tool
Managing a large number of affiliate contacts can be very laborious. What did I write to whom and when? Had I contacted this person or this domain before? Of course, small tools are also required to maintain an overview. Sure, Outlook can help here, but is rather unsuitable for larger partner programs or working in a team. This is why we use highrise . This CRM tool makes it possible to find, maintain and manage contacts and to understand communication processes. However, Highrise is chargeable and we will no longer be further developed in the near future. Pity!
Core function: extensive document creation and serial mailing function
Price: with costs
Type: Software for Windows and Mac
We'll take the Excel article, which will come later, first: Word is primarily about the serial mailing function. With the help of this, individual e-mails can be created efficiently and in great abundance. You have an exciting campaign that you only want to communicate to a handful of partners? No problem - with an Excel template, e.g. B. contains the first name, the e-mail address and the URL, e-mails can be sent that look very individual. The keyword here is the mail merge field. You can also create individual tracking links right away by adding the publisher ID to the template and recreating the link structure of the respective networks. So the partners can use this link directly. The subject can then be stored using the “Finish and merge” function and you can start with a click on “Ok”: Tip: To prevent errors from creeping in and mailings with incorrect content being sent out, Outlook recommends “Working offline” " to deliver. So the serial mailings end up in the outbox first.
Core function: SEO link management and content marketing software
Price: with costs
Type: online tool
Contentbird , previously known as Linkbird , is actually a tool from the SEO or content marketing area. But the distribution function can also be a relief for affiliate managers. Because acquisitions can be easily organized and sent. If there is no answer, the same partner can be selected and contacted again.