“Affiliate” is a term that has been around for centuries. The word comes from the Latin stem affiliare, meaning “to adopt.” From a marketing perspective, affiliate refers to a person or an organization that is associated with your brand and willing to promote that brand to their customer base. In consumer marketing, affiliates have traditionally been celebrities, but over the past several years we have seen the rise of YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter influencers. Every country has their influencers, but the specific social media platforms that are most widely used by influencers tend to vary by country or region. Influencers can have a huge follower base and, depending on their specific focus and the size of their audience, may provide enormous value to brands by reaching a loyal base in a much more targeted way than traditional mass marketing is able to do. Today, there is partner management software in the marketplace that focuses exclusively on consumer affiliate marketing and management.

When it comes to businesses, affiliates tend to be individuals who are consultants or experts in a specific domain; technology bloggers are great examples of that. However, the majority of affiliates tend to be smaller organizations or individuals who consult with and/or support their client base in various aspects of a solution, rather than carrying a product to resell. The primary difference between a B2B affiliate and a reseller is that the latter not only promotes a brand and finds a customer, but also actually completes the transaction. Affiliates, on the other hand, tend focus on promoting a brand and finding prospect buyers rather than completing a transaction. However, in many cases a partner may be both – an affiliate as well as a transacting partner. There are a handful of companies today providing partner management software that can manage both affiliates and transacting partners. ZINFI is a leader in both areas.

Given this context, if you are thinking about automating your onboarding workflows, you should take some time to think through what you need from your partner management software. To make your onboarding highly personalized and adaptable, here are the capabilities you’ll need from your partner management software:

I hope this article lays out a logical approach to onboarding your affiliate marketing partner using state-of-the-art partner management software. While there are many more things your partner management software needs to do – such as tracking the efficiency of promotions, allowing partners to publish and track promotional content, providing commissions for generating referrals and associated analytics – we will discuss those functions in other articles. If you are interested in learning more, please give us a call.

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Essential capabilities include granular Groups and Profiles management to define unique access rights and content visibility for affiliates, and flexible Programs and Tracks functionality to automate personalized onboarding workflows specific to their non-transacting, lead-generation roles. This structure ensures that affiliates receive relevant marketing and training assets without unnecessary steps.

Affiliates primarily focus on promoting a brand and finding prospect buyers, and typically receive commissions for generating referrals, while transacting resellers also complete the final sales transaction. Effective Partner Management Software manages these differences by automating distinct compensation models and providing separate workflows for referral registration versus deal registration.

Yes, state-of-the-art Partner Management Software is designed to manage various partner types, including B2B consultants/experts and high-follower B2C influencers. This is achieved by offering configurable engagement models and providing co-branded marketing tools optimized for different platforms, such as email automation for B2B and social media syndication for B2C.

Point Scoring is critical because it moves tracking beyond static medallion status to a modern, real-time activity management system, as noted by leading industry analysts. The Partner Management Software automatically allocates points based on completed tracks and activities, providing partners with instant status changes and transparent performance visibility.

The main purpose of dynamic Business Analytics is to provide intelligence on the partner ecosystem’s effectiveness, which is considered the “Holy Grail” of partner management. The system ties specific onboarding programs and partner profiles back to measurable outcomes like lead generation or sales volume, which determines what channel strategies are working most efficiently.