#56 - Build A Successful Shopify App - Affiliate Marketing 🚀

Last week I shared with you how I created my affiliation system if you wanted to do the same.

In today’s email, I will share with you how you can bring in affiliates and how you can make your affiliation program a success.

Creating an affiliation program is a great way to increase trust from merchants and increase your number of users.

But the primary goal is to create authority in your niche.

Because potential users might find your app online to see if it’s worth it.

And with affiliates talking about it, they will:

• Watch videos talking about your app from someone else than you

• Read a blog post from another blog they trust

• See your app in many different communities

So perhaps the affiliates won’t directly bring an installation, but they will help you close the deals.

And the installations that in fact happened thanks to affiliation will have a better conversion rate and a lower churn because this is something like a referral.

How to get affiliates?

In the previous email, we saw how to create an affiliation system and I gave you alternatives that work great.

Now you need affiliates to enter your system.

There are 2 ways:

• Inbound (Affiliates coming themselves)

• Outbound (You reach out)

Inbound will start if you have a great product and you already have some authority.

So in the beginning you will need to do outbound.

You have different types of affiliates:

• Influencers

• Agencies

• Other Apps

• Freelancers

• Community Owners

• Events Organizers

• Course creators

Basically all the people engaging daily with your potential users.

So take some minutes to list all the types of people I didn’t mention. You might know some secret ones.

Then for each category you will need to go on the internet to list all the people you find. And you can even do sub-categories.

For example in “Influencers” you can have Twitter influencers, Youtube influencers, Instagram influencers, etc.

For Freelancers you can have: freelancers on Upwork, on Fiverr, etc.

Once you have your list you’ll need to contact them.

How to contact affiliates?

Most people won’t even contact affiliates because they don’t like hard work (yet the most powerful way is to contact 1 affiliate and do it a hundred times).

And some of them will contact affiliates through their email without thinking about it too much.

I will teach you 2 powerful methods that I applied.

Method #1: Ask people from your network to introduce you to the affiliate.

This is the best one. I closed most of the deals when I was introduced by someone else because the trust from that person is reflected in us.

And the person will likely accept if you get introduced. That is why I always tell you to meet new people, reach out, attend events, etc…

The more people you know, the more you may know through introduction!

So ask yourself, who should I contact to get an introduction with [affiliate]?

Method #2: Contact the affiliate on the best platform

Back in the day, we would be so happy when we received an email. Cause we had only a few.

Now we barely read them because we have so many!

This is the same with your affiliates. If you contact them on the platform where millions of people follow them, they may receive hundred of messages every day making your outreach less powerful.

What I personally check is on which platform they have fewer followers.

Some people are followed by millions on Instagram and only have 3000 people on Linkedin.

So they will value a message on Linkedin higher than one on Instagram!

If you can’t do one of them, you can contact them through email.

And your email should be a classic cold email.

Now I’m not the best to tell you how to write a great cold email but I will share with you what I do (even though a warm intro is better).

There are a few things for my “framework”:

1. Say Hi and introduce yourself

2. Add a bit of social proof about you that is relevant

3. Add an icebreaker to show that it’s not automated

4. Ask them what you want

5. Add social proof about the affiliation

6. End with CTA

“Hey [name]! 😁

I don’t know if you know me, I’m Mat De Sousa, the founder of the Shopify App WideBundle.

We currently have 3500+ Shopify stores using my app.

I’ve been following you for months on Instagram (and your tips regarding X are the best honestly).

We have an affiliation program for WideBundle and we’d love to have you as one of our affiliates.

We are already working with [someone they probably know] and we’d love to have you!

Would you like more info about it?”

The goal here is to get them to know me, show them it’s not automated and start the conversation.

When you send cold emails it’s a matter of numbers.

Send 100 emails, get 5 responses, and work with 2.

But that’s ok cause those 2 people may help you bring $1K, $10K, or even $20K monthly!

I can then follow up with a bigger email explaining what we do, how much we pay, and stuff like that. I try to avoid calls. Affiliates are constantly contacted so save them time and explain everything by writing. They can easily scan.

What deal should you offer?

Another question I received is what should be the deal? How much should you offer?

There are 2 ways we do it:

1. Commission based

2. One-time fee

The first one is the best, you basically pay the affiliate a % of all the users he referred. They will earn more than a one-time fee, they will be more engaged and you won’t need to pay upfront if they don’t do any work.

The 2nd one is when you pay only once at the beginning, for example $500 for them to talk about your app.

We don’t have many people with a one-time fee. E-com influencers from USA usually do one-time fees from my experience. For France it’s different; we’ve had more people with commissions.

For the one-time fee:

You should calculate your installation rate on the app store and the conversion rate free to paying users.

Then you should calculate your users’ LTV.

For example, you have a 20% installation rate, a 30% conversion rate, and an LTV of $100.

If an influencer quotes you $1000, you would need to get 10 paying users. So 34 installations. So 170 people coming to your app listing.

Can the influencer bring 170 people?

Usually you try once and you see, and as you do more partnerships you’ll see where your numbers are.

Remember also that the win isn’t only in the number of installations but the trust you receive.

For a commission based:

You should offer 10 to 50%. 50% if it’s a big influencer you really need. Otherwise you can stick between 20 to 30%, this is a pretty good number.

You must show them some examples: “If you get only 100 users from your link, that’s a $500 per month”

How to help the influencer be successful?

You can then help the influencer with content.

Record a video if he needs it, give him some specific point he can tell his audience, give an example of the tweet, Facebook post, etc…

Basically, try to do the work of the influencers! If you want them to create content, help them create it.

And follow-up a loooot! Sometimes they just forget about it or are doing other things, so don’t hesitate to follow up so do what you need.

That’s it for today’s email!

I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to share my newsletter with someone else: https://news.matdesousa.com/

See you next week,

Mat 😁