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Want to know if Affluent is the right affiliate reporting tool for your program? Read our detailed Affluent review.
What Is Affluent?
Affluent is a third-party affiliate reporting tool that connects with your affiliate networks via an API. This enables it to pull in your affiliate network data and allow you to create custom dashboards. They track over $10 billion in annual affiliate revenue for publishers, agencies and advertisers alike.
There are a few different affiliate reporting tools, but this is the software I personally use. Having been a user of Affluent for just over two years I will go through the key features of the tool and how I utilise them to manage my accounts.
Objectively, I would also like to point out areas where I think the software can be improved.
You might be reading this and thinking why do I need an affiliate tool? My network shows me how I’m performing, so why pay out for something extra.
The key difference is time. Any affiliate data on a network is normally hidden in many different reports. Program managers then have to spend important time trying to find actionable insights. A reporting tool allows you to see all those individual reports in one handy dashboard.
Secondly, you want to attribute your affiliate data against internal KPI’s. With this software, you can add targets, agency fees or even placement costs. This ensures you are aligning your affiliate performance with that of the wider digital business. Even working back to your programs true ROI.
Affluent Features
Okay, so there are quite a few different Affluent features. But, here are my top ones.
Brand Dashboards
- I send my clients weekly reports. These are automatically updated in Affluent, so all I need to do is give them a once-over then send them through.
- Sometimes I work with retailers with various brands. These dashboards mean I can give them one holistic view of all affiliate performance.
- Multiple dashboards mean I can include or exclude information based on the recipient.
Partner Performance
- Alerts inform you of any drop in partner performance or potential opportunities for growth.
- Grab a view of partner performance across all brands to add greater weight to any negotiations.
- Manage partner ROI by including placements costs and track these over the programs lifetime.
- Run a GAP analysis to assess current recruitment and where there are chances for partners to improve.
Custom Reports
- Instead of only working with the functionality of your network I can visualise any data I want.
- All my clients analyse gross vs gross when looking historically. Networks always update numbers to the net (once cancellations have been processed). Affluent makes this no longer an issue for me.
Any affiliate marketers reading this can also benefit hugely from Affluent. It isn’t only for program managers.
As an affiliate, your performance data will be across multiple networks. Affluent can enable you to merge all that activity into one place.
Next, let’s look at pricing.
Affluent Pricing
The great thing about Affluent is there is an option to try out their software for FREE. Although there are limitations around the number of transactions, it’s a good starting point.
Here are all Affluent’s pricing options as of April 2021:
Affluent Free Plan
- $0 /month for up to $5,000 commissions
The FREE plan includes:
- 10 Integrations
- Data Updated Every 24 Hours
- KPI Overview and Drilldowns
- Automated Email Updates
- Historical Data Up To 6 Months
- Basic Support
Affluent Startup Plan
- $19 /month for up to $35,000 commissions
The Startup plan includes:
- 20 Integrations
- Data Updated Every 12 Hours
- KPI Overview and Drilldowns
- SKU Level Data
- Historical Data Up To 24 Months
- Automated Email Updates
- Standard Support
Affluent Business Plan
- $100 /month for up to $70,000 commissions
The Business plan includes:
- All the features of the Startup plan
- 100 Integrations
- Data Updated Every 6 Hours
- Historical Data Up To 36 Months
- Custom Reports
Affluent Enterprise Plan
- Contact for prices
The Enterprise plan includes:
- All the features of the Business plan
- Unlimited Integrations
- Data Updated Hourly
- Standardised Transactional API
- Push to Google Analytics
- Expedited Integration Requests
- Opportunities (Algorithmic Alerts)
- Priority Support
Benefits of Affluent
I have used Affluent to help me manage my affiliate programs for several years. In this time, my clients and I have found it an integral tool for analysing our affiliate data in more detail.
Looking at the tool, the key benefits can fall into two main categories: user benefits and the affiliates benefit.
Affluent Benefits for the User
Affluent has everything an affiliate manager needs to get started. You can:
- Easily integrate with all the major affiliate networks
- Almost instantly start filtering your data into custom reports and dashboards
- View any events (placements, promotions, tracking issues or otherwise) in one convenient place
These tools alone replace your complicated spreadsheets to get an accurate view of performance.
Weekly, monthly and quarterly reporting can be time-consuming. With the time it takes to find, download and repurpose your affiliate network data, you could be doing more beneficial tasks.
Affluent allows you to spend more time analysing and creating actionable insights.
From a program managers perspective adding an additional brand into the mix can lead to more headaches. Another brand means more numbers to sift through and partners to engage and incentivise. By streamlining a lot of this process, Affluent will give you extra hours in the day to build your relationships. Enabling you to better optimise your affiliate partners.
The UI for this reporting tool is simple and intuitive. Upon login, you are met with your account overview (which includes all your brands). A sidebar helps navigate the user to their desired destination within the platform.
Fewer distractions increase your focus on the key task at hand, analysing the numbers.
Affluents Benefits for Your Affiliates
The typical affiliate program can consist of hundreds even thousands of partners. It is difficult for everyone to get their voices heard.
Affiliates put in a lot of hard work to promote brands. Affluent makes it easier to see these efforts.
By alerting you of any affiliate opportunities it is drawing the program managers eye away from the big players. Some managers just rely on the top affiliates to make the majority of their revenue. But, we know a healthy affiliate program should always be engaging with new partners for continued growth.
Drawbacks of Affluent
Not every tool I use is going to be perfect. There are always going to be tweaks that can cater to our individual needs.
- Can't download reports. Downloading dashboards is ideal for my weekly reports. I add some commentary to give context to the numbers when exporting. But, I would love to be able download a bar chart report as I use these a lot in presentations. Currently you can export table reports in xml but can't export a bar or pie chart.
- No data highlights. Linked to the previous comment. When exporting the pie chart or bar chart I'd like to be able to add some annotations. This could be a key week or particular category performance that I want to highlight.
- Awin product performance. Currently the reporting tool doesn't enable me to be able to see my individual product performance for any Awin clients. But, I expect that to change over time.
- Branding. Affluent gives you the chance to allow access to dashboards or reports for your clients. What would be an added bonus is making the UI reflect your branding colours.
These are fairly small drawbacks and will not stop you from jumping in and using Affluent with ease. They definitely do not outweigh the benefits that I and lots of other users get from the platform.
Conclusion
So, that is it – my review of the affiliate reporting tool I use almost every day to manage my programs.
You can find access to more Affluent resources below.
Feel free to drop me a note in the comments section if you use Affluent or prefer a different affiliate reporting tool.
