Are you looking for the right affiliate marketing agency for your retail business?
We know it can be quite a daunting experience, but don’t worry; we’ve done the heavy lifting for you!
In this article, we’ll introduce you to some of the best affiliate marketing agencies around and give you a few guidelines on picking the right digital partner for your business!
Many affiliate marketing agencies are full-service digital marketing agencies, which specialize in performance and affiliate marketing.
As such, they offer a full suite of marketing services and can tie your affiliate program into the rest of your marketing strategy.
The most frequently offered affiliate marketing services include:
As you can see, there is a great deal of work that goes into establishing and maintaining a successful affiliate marketing campaign.
If you do not have the necessary time, skills, and resources in-house, an affiliate marketing agency is the best way to go!
Location: Philadelphia, PA, and Santa Barbara, CA, United States
Founded: 2007
Gen3 Marketing is an award-winning digital marketing agency and the largest independent affiliate agency in the world.
As such, Gen3 Marketing has access to an extensive publisher network and a huge pool of diverse talent and expertise, as well as access to a scope of data that cannot be matched by smaller agencies.
However, despite being such a big agency, Gen3 Marketing maintains close relationships with its clients, giving them personal, one-on-one attention and fully customized services. They go out of their way to understand their client’s business, customers, and industry to create tailored affiliate programs for each client.
In addition to Affiliate Marketing, Gen3 Marketing is a full-service agency that specializes in paid search management and SEO. They also offer PPC management, paid digital media management, social media management, digital PR and outreach, and Amazon advertising.
As an affiliate marketing agency, Gen3 Marketing offers a full set of services from program strategy and development to affiliate/publisher recruitment to ongoing management, analysis, and program optimization. They provide customized services that meet their client’s unique needs, managing the whole program for them or working closely with the client’s in-house teams.
Location: Chicago, IL, United States
Founded: 2019
Hamster Garage is a leading partnership and affiliate agency servicing global brands like Uber, Airbnb, Canva, Turo, Brex, etc.
After managing a multi-million dollar affiliate program at Airbnb, the founder of Hamster Garage realized there was a need for an agency that understood growth from the inside.
Brands value Hamster Garage’s in-house background and ability to grow with its clients. Hamster Garage is as close to an in-house marketing team as an agency can get, which is why they often beat established global agencies head-to-head.
The Hamster Garage team brings decades of experience across traditional affiliates and strategic partnership opportunities, including influencers, podcasts, brand partnerships, and third-party email.
As a performance agency, Hamster Garage can take channels typically managed by brand teams — influencers and podcasts — or business development teams — brand partnerships — and make them work on a performance basis.
Location: New York, NY (Fully remote agency with employees all over the US)
Founded: 2006
PartnerCentric, Inc. is the largest woman-owned (WBE-certified) affiliate marketing agency in the industry. They are experts at employing revenue-producing affiliate marketing strategies through a mix of service and our proprietary Control Suite technology tools.
PartnerCentric drives the highest ROI (7x across our portfolio) for some of the world’s most respected brands, from emerging startups to F500 leaders and our clients are supported by the most tenured account managers in the industry, with an average of over 14 years of experience.
Discover their new Control Suite and get affiliate marketing right the first time.
Location: Boston, MA, USA; with teams in London, Berlin, Singapore, and Sydney.
Founded: 2007
Acceleration Partners is a premier global partner marketing agency with programs in 40 countries, for over 170 brands. They’re experts in affiliate, influencer, content, mass media, and B2B partner marketing.
Acceleration Partners emphasizes developing performance-based, scalable, sustainable affiliate programs, and offers a full suite of expert affiliate marketing services to help you set up, manage and optimize your affiliate marketing programs at a regional or international level.
You can count on Acceleration Partners to develop an affiliate marketing strategy that is unique to your brand’s needs, thoughtfully and strategically recruit the right partners for your brand, and build a data-driven affiliate program to drive measurable outcomes that are meaningful to your business.
Acceleration Partners will support your brand’s goals with a dynamic range of capabilities and high-touch client service. Their dedicated publisher development teams focus on developing meaningful, lasting, relationships, with the right strategic partners, that go beyond traditional affiliates to include influencers, mass media publishers, tech, and even brand-to-brand partners.
Acceleration Partners is a six-time Global Performance Marketing Award (GPMA) winner in the “Best Affiliate and Partner Marketing Agency” category and has won numerous other industry and culture awards.
Acceleration Partners is also credited with the expansion of the hugely successful Pura Vida brand ambassador program, which we recently covered in:
9 Best Brand Ambassador Programs and How to Simply Create Yours
Location: Sarasota, FL. United States
Founded: 2002
Perform[cb] Agency is notably different from other affiliate marketing agencies due to a diversified service offering that is scalable and customizable to your specific business needs.
Utilizing strategies across 25+ digital channels, Perform[cb] targets your ideal audience and promotes your brand with AI-powered and high-value placements.
Perform[cb] Agency helps brands along every stage of the brand journey, from launching a brand new app to helping to grow an established e-commerce brand’s affiliate program incrementally.
Its data-driven approach ensures that you only pay for meaningful results that move the needle toward your specific business goals.
Perform[cb] drives customer acquisition across multiple pricing models, including CPA, CPI, CPL, CPE, CPS, CPC, and PPC, using distribution channels such as native, mobile, social, contextual, SMS, search, and more.
Perform[cb] Agency has won several awards and the affiliate management team was shortlisted for ‘Best Performance Marketing Agency’ by the International Performance Marketing Awards and named a Top App Marketing Agency by Mobile App Daily.
Bonus: They offer a free affiliate marketing audit via their website.
Location: Philadelphia, PA. United States
Founded: 2003
DMi can scale and diversify affiliate programs away from deal and coupon sites by working with industry-leading media and content partners for brand exposure, implementing a sales-driving influencer marketing strategy and honing in on the recruitment and development of traditional affiliate partners.
DMi’s Affiliate Marketing is relentless when applying data-driven insights into customer conversions. As part of their affiliate program management services, they determine how to properly reward and incentivize high-value partners who focus their strategies around incrementality.
For 18 years, DMi has championed a collaborative, people-focused approach to navigating the affiliate marketing landscape to get results for their business partners.
Location: Orlando, Fl. United States.
Founded: 2002
Affiliate Manager places a strong emphasis on ethical affiliate marketing. The award-winning agency also boasts a product development team and produces tools for custom campaigns and client needs. Top clients include Athletic Greens, Tony Robbins, and Groupon.
PS: They also provide a free affiliate strategic consultation!
Location: Almere, The Netherlands
Founded: 2002
This Dutch affiliate marketing agency forms part of a larger marketing collective called Linehub. Their main service regions include The Netherlands, France, Germany, and Belgium. Daisycon is positioned as a one-stop shop for all performance marketing solutions. Top clients include Vodafone, Doktor Online, and media agencies like OMD.
When it comes to running successful affiliate marketing programs, businesses do not always have the resources or the expertise they need to make the most of an affiliate marketing campaign.
Here are four reasons your business will benefit from professional affiliate marketing services:
The best affiliate marketing agencies have established relationships with many influencers, brands, ambassadors, and publishers, in a variety of niches.
Top affiliate marketing agencies will select the best affiliates for your program, based on your unique needs, niche, and target audience, from their pool of known, vetted, and trusted publishers.
This takes a huge amount of work off your plate and allows your affiliate marketing campaign to get off on the right foot. Partnering with high-quality affiliates, that are perfect for your brand, and have a proven track record gives your affiliate program an immediate competitive advantage!
Top affiliate marketing agencies also know how to nurture relationships between brands and their affiliate publishers.
This is particularly useful for partnerships with in-demand influencers and desirable brand ambassadors in your niche. Competition is fierce, and a professional affiliate program manager constantly maintaining those relationships is a huge advantage for your business.
Professional affiliate marketing agencies are experts in their field. They have extensive experience working with every aspect of an affiliate marketing campaign, from influencer/ambassador discovery to contracting, commission calculation, ongoing affiliate program management, and content curation.
This level of skill and experience is seldom available to in-house teams, even if they have a good handle on how affiliate marketing works.
Top affiliate marketing agencies use advanced analytics to provide data-driven decisions to drive a successful campaign. In addition to accessing the data, they have the skills to interpret it and translate it into actionable insights to optimize your affiliate marketing campaign for ongoing success.
A successful affiliate marketing program can:
Managing your affiliate marketing program in-house limits both. However, using an experienced affiliate marketing agency allows you to do both with ease.
Top affiliate marketing agencies have the skills and expertise to analyze and gather actionable insights from advanced campaign data, and they know how to implement those changes effectively.
Affiliate marketing companies also can manage your affiliate program as it grows, no matter how quickly, without you having to hire or train new employees.
The same goes for campaigns that are shrinking (in terms of size, not necessarily profitability) and need less time and attention.
An agency can reallocate employees to other projects so that you don’t have to carry the cost of a team that is now bigger than you need it to be.
“Affiliate Marketing Statistics show that in 2023 more than 80% of brands had affiliate programs, and the US, 40% of merchants reported affiliate programs as their top customer acquisition channel. Globally, the affiliate marketing industry is responsible for over 16% of online sales”
Some businesses will benefit from professional affiliate marketing services more than others. So, how exactly do you know if an agency is the best option for your business?
Let’s break it down so you can see at a glance if an affiliate marketing agency is the best fit for your business.
Consider the following to see if your business is ready to work with a top affiliate marketing agency, or if you would be better off managing your program in-house for a while longer:
Businesses that will benefit from using an affiliate marketing agency:
If any of the above sounds like you – an affiliate marketing agency is the right choice for your business!
Businesses that would be better served to keep their affiliate marketing campaign management in-house:
If any of the above sounds like you – you could still benefit from using an agency, but you do not necessarily need one (yet!).
The simple concept behind affiliate marketing is this: you share revenue with people who promote your products on their online outlet.
In other words, you have a product you want to sell and you work with an affiliate agency that manages the program for you.
Affiliates promote your products to followers. Consumers buy your products, and revenue is split across all channels involved.
Consider which affiliate management agencies you want to work with based on their previous clients, fees, technology, approach and ethics.
What is Affiliate Marketing and How You Can Leverage it – Neil Patel
The best affiliate marketing agencies are ones that can provide you with detailed information that backs up their promises and showcases their track record working with similar affiliate campaigns.
Once you have been through the steps above, and shortlisted the agencies you want to interview, take note of what they will offer you and how they compare to one another.
Right from the start the best affiliate marketing companies will plan to provide:
Now that you have some basic guidelines in place, you might want to scroll back up and take another look at our affiliate agency list or navigate to our digital marketing agencies ultimate guide 🙂
To expand your e-commerce business even more, check out our article on conferences you need to attend.
Affiliate marketing agencies use their connections within your industry to identify the most effective affiliates for your business. They achieve this through their existing connections, such as powerful social media influencers and content creators, to drive more traffic to your website and in turn generate more sales. Check out our full article on what the right affiliate agency will offer your business!
When recruiting an affiliate marketing agency, make sure to take advantage of their free consultations and demos. This will help you understand their culture better, as well as whether the software they use will be suitable for your business. Read on further for all the helpful tips in our article, on trying to find the best affiliate agency for you.
These are some of the best affiliate marketing agencies out there today: Gen3 Marketing, Perform[cb] Agency, Acceleration Partners, PartnerCentric, Hamster Garage, DMi Partners, Affiliate Manager, and Daisycon. To see our full list of agencies, and to uncover what makes these agencies so effective, go and check out our full article.
An affiliate marketing company is any company that compensates third-party publishers (affiliates) to generate traffic or leads for them. Affiliates earn a commission, which incentivizes them to promote the company and its products or services. Check out the full review for some of the best affiliate marketing agencies to partner with, as a company or as a publisher.
Affiliate marketing commission structures vary from fixed rates per action or conversion to percentage rate commissions. Percentage-based commissions are usually between 5% and 30%, depending on the nature of the product/service being promoted. Learn more about affiliate marketing in the full review.
There are many companies, big and small, that offer affiliate marketing programs. Some of the most well-known affiliate programs include Amazon Associates, eBay’s Partner Network, ShareASale, GoDaddy, and ClickBank. If you’re interested in being an affiliate publisher or influencer for more specific niches, connecting with an affiliate marketing agency is a good idea. Check out our review of the top affiliate marketing agencies to work with.
The concept of affiliate marketing is very simple: a seller provides a third-party publisher with a commission-based incentive to promote the seller’s products/services. This model drives traffic, leads, or conversions for the seller, and earns a commission for the publisher. While the concept is very simple, running a successful affiliate marketing campaign is complicated and time-consuming. Check out our full review for the best affiliate marketing agencies to run your program for you.
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