ShoutOut Affiliate Marketing System – Review
Affiliate Marketing is the core of Affiliatemepro!
So, this week we wanted to run a review of our most liked platform ShoutOut. This platform has been downloaded and used by many SME’s that we work with. Having had many discussions, we have found that the resounding feedback has been that it is:
– Easy and fast to install
– A clean and super simple interface
– Loads of features
In this article we will have a reviewing the ShoutOut platform from the perspective of a an SME looking to set up an affiliate marketing program.
ShoutOut For SME’s
Whenever you want to start using a new piece of software as an SME, the two burning questions are:
– Ongoing Cost
– Ease of setup and ongoing use
The great news is that ShoutOut is amazing value for money!
Most partners we work with are ‘website dummies’. As SME owners we generally are good at what we do and technology is usually not one of them. The great news, is that, ShoutOut is perfect for noob technology users.
It seamlessly integrates into the following platforms
Speaking specifically with regards to the Shopify Integration it is as simple as:
– Going to the Shopify App store
– Downloading the plugin
You’re done!
Setting Up The ShoutOut System
Once you have downloaded the ShoutOut App into your e-commerce store, the first thing you want to do is familiarise yourself with the menu and get setting up of the system!
Within the menu there are a number of tools to help you to manage your affiliates/ influencer, empower them with your images and collaterals and also set up some email templates.
However, there is not much to see and do here until you have some rock star’s on-board, so the best place to jump to are your general settings.
To get setup quickly you should roll through the following items one-by-one to ensure that every new influencer who joins, is all set to go!
In order, the specific tools to set up are:
– Overall settings
– Account settings
– Preferences
– Email templates
The account settings section is very easy to get set up.
This is where your ShoutOut system is linked to, as well as the specific pages for terms of the program and privacy.
The preference section is where you set up all of the specific characteristics of your program as well as over-arching ‘terms’ that will apply to all affiliates who join.
You can choose if you would like to auto-join to your affiliate program (this would be used in very few instances)
The second option is more to do with MLM elements. For most of us, we will only want to turn on 1-2 ‘levels’ of affiliate referral’s (unless you want to be a fully fledged MLM structure).
The reason you may want to have two layers of ‘depth’ in your direct sales program, is so you can set up quality partnerships. We will dive into this in a future article.
The next options are:
– Affiliate purchase notifications. This is fantastic to help motivate your affiliates and keep them engaged in your program
– Setting up automated reporting. Once again, affiliates will feel GREAT seeing commissions come through each month.
It is unlikely that you want to pay your affiliates commission on taxes! This is easy to remove in the system.
Similarly, shipping is often a dynamic feature on sites. So it can also be excluded as an affiliate payout option
Most of the preferences are fully self explanatory and the ShoutOut system offers excellent overviews for every feature that you can turn on.
From the below, setting ‘cookie expiry’ is important. This is how long a potential customer will be tracked and attributed the sale for on a purchase.
You want to be able to scale an Affiliate Program. By fixing a 10% discount that your affiliates will receive as a standard setting is perfect. Once you are locked in, all you need to think about is growth!
Give it some thought as to industry standards for a program ‘like yours’.
Offering too little or too much commissions can help or hinder your growth curve. We have some ideas on this and will share them to this site soon.
CONGRATULATIONS
Your main set-up is complete in the ShoutOut program. But there are more customisations for you to make, to ensure the system is driving sales forward at an ever increasing speed.
If you are liking what your seeing in the ShoutOut system so far – follow this link to go to the ShoutOut website to set up an account!
Custom Branding – Welcome Email –
Manage Fields and Variations
Setting custom branding within ShoutOut is an important step to making sure your program is on-brand and looks amazing!
You can set all sorts of customisations including background colors, button colors and also a customised logo
Making sure your affiliate system looks on-brand is important to build initial trust with new advocates.
Making new affiliates feel welcome is also enhanced within ShoutOut.
You can drag and drop HTML tags into the text so you can populate things like:
– Affiliate Names
– Logos
– Program details
And more!
When affiliates sign up, you may want more information about them, so you can make your program more personalised
Russel Brunson talks about this in his book here – Traffic Secrets. Take a look on how he goes as far to send birthday pizzas to top affiliates and more ‘insider knowledge’
Advanced Options Within ShoutOut
Sometimes you may want to add an enhancement to your affiliate program.
For example; you launch a digital product that has not ‘extra costs’.
To help promote and scale this product, you may want to offer a high commission rate of 70-90% in order to:
– encourage affiliates to get ACTIVE
– drive that site TRAFFIC so you can get busy on your up-selling and cross-selling!
Email Templates
The final section of the ShoutOut system is where you can create a load of email templates.
As you can see below there are a number of options when it comes to harnessing the power of email, to gain, encourage and report to your influencers.
We hope this article will help you get up and running quickly on your affiliate marketing program.
We have found it to be a fantastic system in order to scale our businesses using the power of ‘cost per acquisition!’
In a future article we will be digging into how to manage advocates within the ShoutOut system, sending payments and finally a review of the system from the perspective of an Affiliate.