Affiliate Marketing for Subscription Services
Why Subscription-Based Services Use Affiliate Marketing
No matter what kind of subscription service or product you sell, affiliate marketing can help you reach your target audience at every stage of the customer journey. And because you only pay for measurable results in affiliate marketing, it’s a low-risk way for subscription businesses to drive more engagement, awareness, and sales.
GROWTH PER YEAR OVER THE PAST FIVE YEARS IN SUBSCRIPTION E-COMMERCE*
SALES GENERATED BY THE LARGEST SUBSCRIPTION RETAILERS IN 2016*
OF PEOPLE WHO CONSIDER A SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE ULTIMATELY SUBSCRIBE*
*https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/thinking-inside-the-subscription-box-new-research-on-ecommerce-consumers
Subscription Services
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
Subscriptions require commitment, and it can be a challenge for businesses to find the right customers for them. Affiliate marketers — influencers, content creators, loyalty partners, and others — can help. As expert promoters in their chosen field, affiliates know exactly how to drive incremental profit for your business. They can also provide valuable new insights into your subscribers and their communities. In the subscription economy, an industry where companies live or die based on the strength of their customer relationships, those insights can be the key to success.
Benefits of affiliate marketing for subscription-based services:
- Access to engaged, highly qualified audiences
- Increased brand awareness
- Guaranteed, measurable results
- Cross-channel promotion
- Comprehensive fraud prevention tools
- New insights into customer behavior
- Unique, exclusive relationships and opportunities
Affiliate Marketing
Solutions for Subscription-Based Services
Most subscription companies have two options when it comes to starting a partner marketing program. The first option is to join and pay a traditional affiliate network. Generally, an affiliate network provides two things: access to a proprietary platform to manage and track your offers, and a marketplace of affiliates and partners for you to choose from. The size of these marketplaces, as well as the type and quality of partners in them, varies from network to network.
The second option is to purchase a software solution. A SaaS affiliate marketing platform like TUNE provides the same foundational technology as a network, but with total control over how you use and customize it. It is also partner agnostic, allowing you to measure, manage, and work with anyone: affiliates, influencers, agencies, business development relationships, and even affiliate networks.
If you’re looking to market a subscription with a unique set of products and partners, a SaaS platform provides everything you need to track and optimize partnerships, at a fraction of the cost of traditional affiliate networks. In addition, software like TUNE's offers far more freedom when it comes to program control, customization, integrations, development, and partner choice. This is important if you want to maximize customer lifetime value via custom tools or features, or work with different kinds of partners than what a network has to offer.
Signing up for a traditional affiliate network is still a viable option for subscription companies, and the one to go with if you’re looking for a “plug-and-play” solution — or don’t have the tech resources to take advantage of the flexibility that a SaaS affiliate marketing platform provides. You will simply be more limited in your program choices if you use a network alone.
For subscription services, the TUNE Partner Marketing Platform offers an all-in-one SaaS solution that delivers the right mix of features and affordability:
- Granular, cross-channel attribution
- Cookieless tracking
- Promo code functionality (clickless tracking)
- Customizable dynamic payouts — multi-action, partner-specific
- Real-time reporting and data sharing
- In-platform payments via PayPal, Transferwise, direct deposit
- Built-in proactive fraud prevention
- Integrated partner marketplace
- Two-way APIs for unparalleled custom development
- Global support with industry-leading 98% customer satisfaction
- Comprehensive data security and privacy practices
- Software-based pricing, no hidden fees
- Partner-agnostic technology — work with influencers, affiliate networks, agencies, and anyone else
Ready to convert more customers with TUNE?
The TUNE platform helped Preply to scale our affiliate program. Thanks to TUNE’s features, our partners are able to track their live campaigns and payouts anytime while providing us with several analytics, fraud fighting capabilities, and payout structure features.
MARTA SOLANAS, GROWTH MARKETER
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